People, Locations, Episodes

Doris Pemberton, Civic Leader, and Author born

On this date in 1917, Doris Hollis Pemberton was born. She was a Black civic leader, reporter, and author.

Doris Hollis was born in Nacogdoches, Texas, the daughter of John Henry and Della Mae (Powdrill) Hollis. She spent her childhood in Limestone County near Comanche Crossing, Webb Chapel, Rocky Crossing, and Groesbeck, Texas. She enrolled at Texas College in Tyler when she was 16 and graduated from Texas Southern University in Houston in 1955.

She attracted national attention in 1944 when she became the first Black reporter to cover a state Democratic convention in Texas, writing for the Dallas Express.  Pemberton found a racially offensive placard situated near her seat at the convention and hurled the placard away.  About 4,000 spectators both cheered and booed as newsreel cameras filmed the incident. She later moved to Houston, where during the 1950s, she helped develop arts, crafts, and science classes for black children at the Museum of Fine Arts, the Contemporary Arts Museum, the Museum of Natural History, the Singer Sewing Center, and the United Gas Cooking School.

Eventually, she received a law degree from the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University but never practiced.  Hollis was married to Charles Pemberton and had four children. She was a member of the Newspaper Institute of America, the National Council of Negro Women, the Auxiliary to the Houston Medical Forum, the Houston Council on Human Relations, the 4-H Club, the Blue Triangle YWCA, the National Association for Financial Assistance to Minority Students, the Women of Achievement, and several other organizations.

She wrote a book, "Juneteenth at Comanche Crossing," in 1983 a history and reminiscences of people and places in her native Limestone County. Doris Pemberton died in Houston in May 1990 and was buried at Paradise Cemetery.

to be a Journalist or Reporter