This is the third and final part in a series of three articles detailing the difficulties inner-city programs in Texas face in pursuit of on-field success. Check out the first part here and the second installment here. 

Carl Davis still vividly recalls his excitement and anticipation as a young Houston kid in the 1960s going to the Turkey Day Classic.

“I remember running across the street with my uncle as a kid, trying to get to the game,” Davis said. “There’d be a big parade that morning, and then everyone went to the game that evening. It was like a Super Bowl.”

When the Yates Lions faced off against the Wheatley Wildcats, the final score signified more than the game’s result. It showed which Houston ward was best.

Houston was carved into four political wards when the city was established in 1836. The Fourth Ward became a Black community known as Freedmen’s Town in the late 1860s once formerly enslaved people flocked to the region. Later, as more and more African Americans migrated to the Fourth Ward to escape the harsh Jim Crow segregation laws in the Deep South, they filtered into the newly created Fifth Ward and already established Third Ward.

By the time Davis was a young man attending the Turkey Day Classic, Jack Yates High School was the pride and joy of the Third Ward, while Phillis Wheatley High School represented the Fifth Ward.

But both were powerhouse all-Black high school football programs in the Prairie View Interscholastic League. Yates made four PVIL state championship appearances in five years in the early 60s, while Wheatley made it to three between 1941-1954. Over 35,000 people packed Jeppesen Stadium in their finest attire to root for two teams representing their community.