As with nearly every other sizable city in the United States, until the 1950s Houston had a robust, heavily travelled street railway system (aka “tram” or “streetcar”) which enabled mobility both within downtown and to nearby suburbs. At its peak, the Houston Transit Company (HTC) maintained over 50 miles of tramway tracks, carrying 12 different lines.

While trams were indeed segregated for passengers onboard, with black riders having to sit either at the back (or in the last car in cases where trams consisted of multiple cars), they nonetheless formed a critical network of mobility, providing access to jobs, education, medicine, and leisure for people of all classes. Moreover, the bulk of HTC’s lines served the heavily African-American Third and Fourth Wards, as well as the primarily Mexican-American Second Ward.

Houston’s transit network was another victim of freeway construction and urban renewal. The city’s dense network of streetcars had been ripped up by the 1950s, replaced with infrequent bus service. In cities around the country, new freeways and suburbanization led to an influx of automobiles on legacy infrastructure. This convinced many of the need to remove what were at the time viewed as obsolete streetcar systems in order to free up space for cars. Moreover, because streetcars generally served the redlined areas directly adjacent to downtowns, there was little political will to revitalize systems which were of the most use to those in "blighted" areas (aka citizens of color and recent immigrants). In Houston, the streetcar system was entirely destroyed, forcing those who had previously relied on it to either buy an expensive automobile (and all related expenses) or to be left stranded in their own city.