Houston has lengthy been formed by the imaginative and prescient of Black ladies, and immediately, that legacy remains to be alive within the halls of native and state authorities. From the courthouse to Metropolis Corridor to the Texas Capitol, Black ladies are holding positions of energy and advocating for the wants of their communities. Throughout Worldwide Black Girls’s Historical past Month, it’s price remembering the leaders who’re aiming to take motion on points corresponding to housing fairness, reforming the felony justice system, championing employees’ rights, and constructing safer neighborhoods for Houstonians. Every of those ladies carry a definite background and areas of focus to their roles.
1. Teneshia Hudspeth: Harris County Clerk
Teneshia Hudspeth assumed workplace on January 1, 2021, and her present time period ends on December 31, 2026. She made historical past by changing into the primary African-American girl elected to this workplace. Because the clerk of Harris County, she oversees particular, major, and common elections for the county with a various inhabitants of greater than 4.9 million folks. She has been with the County Clerk’s workplace for greater than 16 years and served underneath 4 County Clerks earlier than being elected. She started her profession as a Mickey Leland Congressional Intern and labored her method up via a number of positions earlier than reaching her present position. Clerk Hudspeth earned her diploma in Communications from Texas Southern College and can be a graduate of Management Houston and the Girls’s Marketing campaign College at Yale College. Throughout her tenure, Hudspeth has labored to modernize the workplace, digitizing historic data and bettering signage and accessibility within the downtown courthouse. She additionally transitioned the County Clerk’s Workplace out of election administration and at the moment serves on the Election Fee. In December 2012, Hudspeth co-founded the Houston Black Management Institute (HBLI), a management growth program for African-American younger professionals centered on succession planning, which has produced greater than 100 graduates since 2013.
2. Jolanda Jones, Texas State Consultant
Credit score: Jolanda Jones
Jolanda Jones, a Houston native, first gained public recognition as a member of the Houston Metropolis Council, the place she served two phrases. Professionally, Jones is an lawyer and former decide, bringing courtroom expertise into her legislative work. After returning to elected workplace as a Texas State Consultant, she has leveraged her private experiences and authorized background to push ahead a slate of justice-centered insurance policies within the Texas Legislature. Representing Home District 147, Jones has made felony justice reform and training fairness central to the payments she filed within the 89th Legislative Session. Jones’ proposals embody expunging drug-related convictions the place no substances have been discovered, limiting extreme pretrial detention and reforming juvenile justice to prioritize rehabilitation over punishment. Jones has additionally taken on points corresponding to police accountability, opposing faculty voucher packages and increasing healthcare entry via traditionally Black establishments. A survivor of home violence, she has integrated that have into laws centered on prevention and regulation enforcement coaching. Earlier than her time on the Capitol, Jones performed a key position in exposing points throughout the Houston Police Division’s DNA crime lab, serving to result in its shutdown. As a former Houston Metropolis Councilmember, she additionally advocated for increasing contracting alternatives for Black- and brown-owned companies.
3. Lauren Ashley Simmons, Texas State Consultant
Credit score: Lauren Ashley Simmons
State Rep. Lauren Ashley Simmons is a Houston native, raised within the Third Ward. She graduated from Jack Yates Excessive College and earned her bachelor’s diploma from the College of Texas at Austin. She turned a mom at 19 throughout her first yr in faculty. After graduating, Simmons constructed a profession as a union organizer, working with the Texas State Staff Union, and spent almost 5 years with the American Federation of Lecturers. Her entry into politics was sparked in 2023 throughout a Houston ISD neighborhood assembly, the place she ‘went viral’ for confronting the state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles following the Texas Training Company takeover of the college district. Then she launched her candidacy for Home District 146, the place Simmons unseated Shawn Thierry, an incumbent, within the 2024 major, earlier than successful the final election in November. Now serving her first time period within the Texas Home, Simmons is the inaugural chair of the Labor & Workforce Caucus and is a member of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Texas Legislative Black Caucus and the Texas Home LGBTQ Caucus. She has been significantly vocal in opposing GOP redistricting efforts and framed the restrict on educating Black historical past as a direct assault on marginalized communities.
4. Martha Castex-Tatum, Mayor Professional Tem and District Okay Metropolis Council Member
Credit score: Martha Castex-Tatum
Martha Castex-Tatum serves as Houston’s Mayor Professional Tem and Metropolis Council Member for District Okay, the place she focuses on a variety of native points. Representing a district that spans various neighborhoods that stretch throughout southwest Houston into Fort Bend County, she has prioritized bettering public security and strengthening infrastructure. As Mayor Professional Tem, Castex-Tatum performs a key position in guiding council priorities. Inside the Metropolis Council, she serves on the Price range and Fiscal Affairs, Financial Growth, Ethics and Governance, Labor and Proposition A Committees. Extra lately, Castex-Tatum has taken a management position in addressing Houston’s housing challenges. She has helped lead neighborhood engagement efforts round a proposed condo inspection ordinance aimed toward figuring out substandard housing situations and holding landlords accountable, whereas additionally emphasizing the necessity to broaden reasonably priced housing provide. Castex-Tatum gained the Might 2018 particular election to meet the unexpired time period of the late Houston Metropolis Council Member Larry Inexperienced. She was the primary African American feminine to serve on the San Marcos Metropolis Council, the place her colleagues elected her Deputy Mayor Professional Tem. She holds a Grasp of Public Administration and a Bachelor of Enterprise Administration from Texas State College and is a life member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., with over 31 years of energetic membership.
5. Tiffany D. Thomas, District F Metropolis Council Member
Credit score: Tiffany Thomas
Council Member Tiffany D. Thomas represents District F. Re-elected in 2024, she has centered her work on housing and infrastructure. Her path to public workplace started in 2013 when she ran for Trustee Place 7 with Alief ISD. She then gained a runoff election for the district in December 2019. Within the Metropolis Council, Thomas has led efforts to enhance neighborhood security via expanded avenue lighting, elevated license plate recognition know-how and focused cleanups addressing unlawful dumping. Thomas earned her bachelor’s diploma from Sam Houston State College and her grasp’s diploma in neighborhood growth from Prairie View A&M College, the place she additionally serves as an assistant professor. As Chair of the Housing and Affordability Committee underneath two mayoral administrations, she oversaw priorities associated to housing, veteran affairs, homelessness, and stable waste. In 2025, she championed an modification for the HUD $314.6 million catastrophe restoration plan, securing $100 million for housing restoration packages in stark distinction to the preliminary $0 allocation. She additionally spearheaded the condo inspection ordinance alongside Castex-Tatum. Thomas is a founding member of New Giving Collective, the primary Black giving circle in Houston, and is a member of the North Harris County Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc. and the Houston chapter of The Hyperlinks, Inc.
Her initiatives, together with the Religion & Inexpensive Housing Summit and teaching programs on heirs’ property, intention to protect generational wealth in traditionally Black and brown communities.
