Leon Phillips: Heart & Soul!

Meet Leon "Fat Cat" Phillips, one of the island's most colorful community leaders. He was kind enough to share his thoughts with Humans of Galveston.

Humans of Galveston: Tell us a little something about yourself, Leon.

Leon: My name is Leon Phillips. I was born on Galveston Island on March 7, 1948, and graduated from Central High School. My father and mother were Leon and Hazel Phillips. My mother was a beautician and my father was a longshoreman – a foreman for the Railroad Gang. He retired at 72 years old. My mother retired at (age) 63 because the chemicals that they used back then in processing hair she no longer could have it in her system. It always made her sick.

Humans of Galveston: What was it like for you growing up in Galveston?

Leon: Growing up in Galveston was great, man. We had the run of almost anything we wanted to do here in this city. Galveston is an island. We have a beach. The last few months of high school, myself and a couple of friends decided we were going to become surfers. We were the only black guys on the island who had surfboards hanging out the windows of our cars. So, it was neat growing up here. I don’t think anybody could have a better place to grow up because we all cared about each other.

Humans of Galveston: Would you say that racism in the 1960s was more prevalent in other cities than in Galveston?

Leon: Just like a slave is born into slavery, he doesn’t know anything about freedom. If you were born during segregation, you didn’t know anything about the freedoms of going in certain places. Galveston is one of those places where you didn’t hear the “N” word used a lot. There was a lot of respect for each other no matter what race you were. I can give you an example. When I was about 4 years old, there was a store downtown called McCrory’s. It had a budget shop upstairs and that’s where most of us African Americans shopped and there was a lunch counter at the entrance. As my mother and I walked in the front door, I wanted to hurry up and go get a drink of water, and she told me to ‘Go ahead, Junior.’ So I’m drinking some water, and someone grabbed me by the back of the collar, and all I can remember is the back of my heels hitting on some steps and my mother’s voice saying, ‘Boy, come on here! You gone get us both killed!’ Well, it was because at 4 (years old) I couldn’t read, and I was drinking out the white water fountain. That was one of those incidents where race played a part in my life. I didn’t understand it then but later on I understood exactly what was going on.

Humans of Galveston: How many brothers and sisters do you have?

Leon: I’m it. That’s why I used to play tag by myself (laughs). I would run around the house and tap myself on the shoulder and say, ‘You it!’

Humans of Galveston: How old were you when integration came to Galveston and what do you remember about it?

Leon: In 1964 I was going into the 10th grade at Central (High School) and I decided that I wanted to go to Ball High and get a diploma there. That would mean that I wouldn’t have to have a job on the wharf, which meant a labor job. The very first day that I went to Ball High and opened the doors to go into the school, I smelled bacon cooking. That’s an aroma that you can’t mistake. You could order your breakfast on one end of the line the way you wanted it and pick it up on the other end of the line just as you had ordered it. But at Central (High), if I had even opened the doors to the cafeteria I would have been told, ‘Junior Phillips, get out of here. It’s not your lunch time.’ At Ball High, the kids started off with a nutritious meal, where at Central if you didn’t have a meal when you left home you just don’t eat until much later. The schoolbooks that were new at Ball High were later sent to be used at Central. I graduated from Central in ’66 and I went to Prairie View (A&M) College and discovered I didn’t like college so I decided not to go. Just before Christmas in ’66 a friend of mine called me and said there was a lady at the Jean LaFitte Hotel who was hiring for Jet Magazine. I went down to meet her and got hired by the Johnson Publishing Company, and wound up in Chicago, Illinois.

Humans of Galveston: What was your job there?

Leon: I was a door-to-door salesman. Our sales crew sold magazines in Chicago and all over the United States. We traveled by station wagon, by car and by van and we’d go to the next city and register with the police department, then we’d go door-to-door. I did that for nine years. The good thing about it was I got a chance to see parts of the country that most people don’t get the opportunity to see. It was such a learning experience. At my age now, I’m still at awe about all the things that I can remember from working for the Johnson Publishing Company.

Humans of Galveston: When did you come back to Galveston, and why?

Leon: In 1977 I came back home to visit my parents and I saw that they were getting old. I knew that I had to be closer to them. I found a way to sell magazines in Houston for about nine months. I had become a manager at Johnson Publishing and had 11 people working for me. I had worked in Miami and Dallas before coming back to Texas. I was a skycap for American Airlines for nine years, until I moved back to Galveston in 1997 and opened a women’s clothing store, Plus Size for Women at 504 University Blvd. It stayed open there for two years.

Humans of Galveston: How had Galveston changed when you moved back to the island?

Leon: When I left Galveston in ’66, the same guys that were on the corner in ’66 were on the same corner doing the same thing when I got back – going to Farb’s Liquor Store, getting a half-pint (of liquor) at a time and sitting there on the corner telling stories and playing dominos and cards. It made me wonder how could these guys be here, and nobody moving on? Growing up in Galveston, the African-American community had everything you needed to live in any city in the United States. We had doctors, we had lawyers, we had pharmacies, restaurants and stores. We had everything it takes to be a community. When you spent your dollars there, because of segregation your dollar got a chance to re-circulate in the black community. With integration, your dollar left because you went to buy your merchandise somewhere else. When I came back to what used to be the black community, and seeing vacant lots, it astounded me. Galveston had no preservation of anything that was black history. Everything that was black history got torn down or thrown away, including the public housing that was our neighborhoods. Right now the black population in Galveston is about 7,000 to 8,500 African Americans short of what we were prior to (Hurricane) Ike.

Humans of Galveston: At what point did you decide to become a community activist?

Leon: I’m not a community activist. I’m an ‘actionist.’ The reason I say that is if someone creates a problem, I take action. I’m not an activist who’s going out and looking for what the problem is. About a year after I moved back to Galveston I got involved with a gentleman named Craig Bowie, and we opened a school of entrepreneurship for African Americans with a grant from the (Galveston) Housing Authority. Craig taught me a lot about going in front of the right entities to talk about things. The school operated for four years.

Humans of Galveston: What prompted your decision to become a community leader?

Leon: I was an individual who knew how to speak. I was always being asked to go before (Galveston) City Council and speak on behalf of one thing or the other. In 2007 we began to see that so many African-American young people were being beaten and abused by the Galveston Police Department. We began to look at how these things could happen without the community being in an uproar. I’m president of the GalvestonCoalition for Justice, an organization formed in 2007 that intervenes on people’s behalf who are having a problem dealing with something in the system. It could be kids taken away by the court system, or individuals being thrown out of their house by the lack of rent being paid. I’ve learned to become an ‘actionist’ through the school of hard knocks. When an individual comes to you with a problem, I learned that you don’t just run head-on at that problem. You do the investigation to find out whether the problem is legitimate. The way to solve the problem is starting with the root issue.

Humans of Galveston: What are your thoughts on Galveston’s future, given where we’ve been and where we’re going? Are you optimistic about the island’s future?

Leon: I’m in position now where I’m seeing young people who are coming up behind me and looking to righting things that have been wrong. In years past, the Anglo population on Galveston Island felt like they had to take care of African Americans. That’s a good thing. The Anglo population on the island now are middle-aged individuals who just moved here from somewhere else, and they don’t feel that obligation. But the young people that are following us are doing things to try and make Galveston move forward. A lot of the older African Americans don’t understand because they’re (young people) not coming to get permission from them. They know how to get things done, and they’re getting things accomplished.

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Published by Bobby Stanton