Henry Miller Morgan
Tyler, Smith County, Texas
Marker Inscription
On August 25, 1895, Henry Miller Morgan was born in Tyler's St. Louis community to Henry and Alice Ingram Morgan. He attended school in the St. Louis community, completing his education at East Texas Academy, which later became Butler College. He is listed as a barber in Tyler's 1918 city directory. He and his wife, Mabel (McLellan), had two daughters and one son. In the 1920s, Texas enacted laws requiring licenses for barbers, but African Americans were excluded from the requisite education. In 1929, Morgan began developing ideas for a barber college for African Americans. By 1933, he opened a college on Irwin Street with five chairs. He established male and female student dormitories, and in 1937 he opened a branch in Houston. In 1945, he opened a location in Jackson, Mississippi, adding a branch in Little Rock, Arkansas the next year. In 1948, his Manhattan location opened, and a Dallas branch opened in 1949. The Tyler headquarters quickly grew to accommodate the expanding business, and at one time the school reportedly was training a majority of the nation's African American barbers. The school's curriculum included subjects ranging from scalp and skin diseases to electricity, chemistry and anatomy. Morgan went on to help found the Texas Association of Tonsorial Artists, a professional barbers' organization, as well as the Tyler chapter of the Democratic Progressive Voters League. He also served as vice-president of the Texas Association of Barber Schools and as a trustee of Butler College. He was an active member at St. Louis Baptist Church. Morgan died in 1961 and is buried in Tyler's Evergreen Cemetery. Today, he is remembered as a civic and political activist, as well as a leader in his profession. (2005)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Born in Tyler in 1895, Henry Miller Morgan worked as a barber before confronting a Jim Crow system that licensed barbers while shutting African Americans out of the required schooling. In 1933 he opened a barber college for Black students, and within two decades it had branches from Houston and Dallas to Manhattan, at one point reportedly training a majority of the nation's Black barbers. Morgan also helped found professional associations and a local Democratic Progressive Voters League before his death in 1961.
Why it matters
Morgan turned a trade closed to Black Texans into a national institution and a path to livelihood, linking economic self-help with the voter-organizing that fed the broader civil rights struggle.
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Themes & tags
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