0.33 Carroll harris simms, b. 1924

September, 1950

I came to Houston in September of 1950 looking for a job. And I got a job at Texas [Southern University] teaching sculpture and ceramics. John Biggers was here when I came, but I met John Biggers before coming [to Houston], which was quite a surprise.

I spent my first year of college in Hampton Institute in Hampton, Virginia, and that is where I met John Biggers first. There was a naval base at Hampton, and Biggers was working on his art degree at Hampton, but he got inducted into the Navy. So his teacher, Dr. Viktor Lowenfeld, convinced the naval commander not to ship him out but to induct him at the naval base at Hampton so he could continue to work on his degree in art. So when I would go to paint, Biggers would come over into the art center and paint too. So this is how I met Biggers.

[After graduating from Hampton] one of the benefactors of the Toledo Museum gave me a full scholarship to the Cranbrook Art Academy. And I graduated from Cranbrook in May of 1950. A teacher of mine at Cranbrook [who]had taught sculpture at Rice University and done sculpture in Houston said, “What are you going to do for a job?” I said, “I don’t know.” He said, “Well, I’ve heard of a new school, a small university which is for Negroes.” (They weren’t saying “black” back then.) He says, “Would you go there if you could get a job?” I said, “Sure, I’d go anywhere.”

He helped me write a letter to the art department saying, “I can teach sculpture—do you need a sculpture teacher?” And the letter came back, “Yeah, we need a sculpture teacher, but we need a man who can teach ceramics, too.” Cranbrook had at that time a five-week summer term, and [my teacher] said, “Simms, there’s this nice lady who’s sending you there for nothing so we can write that man in Texas and say, ‘Yeah, you can teach ceramics.’” So I wrote whoever was the head of the art department and he answered me back that I could teach. And I had ceramics in my transcripts. That’s how I got here.

Bayou city in the fifties

Houston was a village. You could stand on Wheeler Avenue and look up to Sears and Roebuck, but it’s all changed now. The names of the streets weren’t even on a post so you could see where you were going. When I came here in ’50 it was still that way. Like if someone would say, “Come around to my house,” they would just [tell you to go] until the end of the street and come around and make a U-turn—this is Rosedale, for example—and that’s where I live. And when I’d get up there I’d turn and look and say, “There ain’t no Rosedale around here.” And they’d say, “Well, you have to look at the gulley.” I’d say, “The gulley? Are you crazy? What gulley?” They’d say, “Look down, Simms, where the water runs into the sewer.” And sure enough, there’d be the name of the street in little blue and white ceramic tiles! So that’s the way it was.