After the recent decision to keep the Alamo Cenotaph right where it is, the next controversy in the $450 plan to renovate the plaza is expected to be about what happens to the old Woolworth Building right across from it.

The state owns it and two other buildings which are right where the plan is to put a museum – somehow.  Should they be torn down – or incorporated into the museum?

It’s going to be a battle largely because of what happened in the Woolworth Building and other other sites downtown in 1960 – the first peaceful desegregation of lunch counters in the South.  That put San Antonio on the map as a pioneer in Civil Rights history.

Trinity University history professor Dr. Carey Latimore wrote the report for Alamo Plan leaders about that history which could guide them in deciding the building’s future. It will be released before the end of the year.

But in this San Antonio’s Voice podcast he wanted to make clear that he is not taking any stance on what happens to the building.

He’s also helping to develop Trinity University’s new African American Civil Rights institute in the Kress building, which is the site of another lunch counter.

He talks about race relations at the time, why San Antonio developed a little differently than other cities.  And what’s going on today in 2020.

An expert on African American history, Latimore also shares his thoughts on the Alamo and it’s story. It lacks something, he explains, that he’d like remedied.

Latimore has previously served on the Bexar County Historical Commission and Mayor’s Council on Police and Community Relations. He is the Chair of the history department at Trinity University. These are some of the subjects Latimore teaches:

• The African American Experience Through Reconstruction


• The African American Experience Since Reconstruction


• The Civil War and Reconstruction


• Free Blacks in America


• Black Images in Film


• The Old South


• Seminar in United States History

Podcast, Part I – The Woolworth Building, the Alamo Plaza plan, 2020 race relations

Podcast, Part II - The history of African Americans in San Antonio, race, racism and what it meant for everything from the Battle of the Alamo to present day