Family and Community Persist in Struggle and Achievements

David Willard

I’m going to talk to you a little bit about my family history; last name is Willard, as I said. And I’m going to try and make a connection between the growth and development of my family here in Beaumont and how that intersected with the development of the African American community here in Beaumont.

Elmo Riley Willard Sr. seemed to be an extremely industrious man. His father passed away not too long after he was born; I think he was about the age of 10 or so when his dad passed away. He had seven other brothers and sisters and he went to work. He was born a slave himself, as were most of his brothers and sisters, but he set out to try to provide for his mother and provide for his brothers and sisters. He rode horses in races and won quite often, from what I understand. He worked at the old Long and Company shingle mill.

He was so respected here in Beaumont by both Black and white that he was asked to sit on jury trials, which meant that he might have been sitting on a jury that involved white Caucasians here in Beaumont, which was absolutely unheard of for an Afri- can American to be able to do something like that.

It was Elmo Willard Jr. and his brother Joseph who started Willard and Willard Mortuary on Forsythe Street. A few doors down was the Atlanta Life Insurance Building that Pritchard H. Willard and my family raised the money to actually build the building where the Atlanta Life Insurance Company was housed: 790 Forsythe Street. It still stands; it’s now owned by the Catholic diocese here.

A booklet was published in 1936 by the South Texas State Fair when the fair was coming here to Beaumont. A group of African Americans in the city, my great-grandfather and others, the Wallace family, the Price family, the Sprott family, many of these old African American families here in Beaumont got together and wanted to have a Negro Department, as they called it back then.

People could go and see the achievements of African Americans throughout the United States in the Negro Exhibit Hall here in Beaumont. They raised money for this, they had committees, several committees, put together a program for the South Texas State Fair so those that came in could see the achievements and learn about African American history. And this is 1936.

L to r, five generations of Willards: (1st) Riley Willard’s 1860 permission to marry Margaret Rannell, identifying them as FMC and FWC, that is, free persons of color; (2nd) Elmo Riley Willard, Sr. (1869-1926); his wife Sarah Adams Willard (1888-1946); (3rd) their son Elmo Riley Willard II (1904-1953); (4th) his son Elmo Riley Willard III (1930-1991) and wife Patricia Ann Green Willard (1930-2019); (5th) their older son Elmo Michael Willard (1951-2005); their younger son David Willard with wife Kim Taft Willard.

And then of course we get to my dad, who many of you knew well and his story. My father was Elmo R. Willard III. He went off to Fisk University and then from there he went to Howard University Law School, Howard University under Mordecai Johnson, who was the first African American president of Howard University, and Charles Hamilton Houston, who started the law school at Howard, had designed the law school to attack and dismantle segregation in the United States through legal means.

My father started there in 1951 for that sole pur-