Hillcrest History: A Neighborhood Fights for Justice
As the Port of Corpus Christi seeks to rezone residential areas adjacent to the Hillcrest neighborhood for heavy industrial use, the Current highlights Hillcrest residents’ decades-long fight for justice.
Corpus Christi’s Hillcrest neighborhood has a rich but turbulent history. Originally an all-white neighborhood and home to Corpus Christi’s country club, after oil was discovered nearby in the 1930s and refineries sprang up on the neighborhood’s edge, white residents began relocating to escape the noise and pollution. Over the subsequent decades, Corpus Christi’s discriminatory housing policies transformed Hillcrest and the adjacent Washington-Coles neighborhood into the only area where Black residents were allowed or able to buy property. Despite its segregationist origins, by the 1960s, Hillcrest residents had built a proud, tight-knit community – churches, schools, businesses, and homes – that stood as a cornerstone of Black life in Corpus Christi.
But year after year, step by step, Hillcrest has been boxed in, isolated, and subjected to a non-stop invasion of new industrial projects and infrastructure. While Refinery Row continued to expand along the neighborhood’s western edge and tank farms increasingly lined the ship channel to the north, construction of Interstate 37 along Hillcrest’s southern edge effectively cut off the neighborhood from the rest of Corpus Christi.
As early as the 1980s, Hillcrest residents showed their determination to protect their neighborhood. As the adjacent refinery complex grew, Hillcrest organized and sued the refineries over the worsening conditions. The resulting settlement bought out around 100 homes on the refinery fence line and created a small buffer zone between the neighborhood and the plants. Unfortunately, it was only the first time that Hillcrest would be required to fight for justice.
In 2006, the City of Corpus Christi advanced a plan to build a second wastewater treatment plant in Hillcrest, alongside the existing facility built in the neighborhood in the 1930s. Community members were outraged, noting that the City had previously promised to shut down the old sewage plant, not open a new one. In response, residents filed a Title VI civil rights complaint, charging that the project was part of a longstanding pattern of racist land-use decisions. Federal authorities took notice: the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development accepted the complaint, and under that pressure the City agreed to withdraw its plans.
But less than 10 years later, a much larger threat loomed when the Texas Department of Transportation announced plans to replace the aging Harbor Bridge and reroute a section of U.S. 181. Although five alternative routes were studied, the one chosen cut directly through Hillcrest and Washington-Coles, promising to uproot a huge portion of the community and further isolate what remained. In 2015, Hillcrest residents again turned to Title VI, filing a complaint to stop the plan. After federal authorities mediated, a settlement was reached and a program was funded to allow residents in the route’s path to sell their homes at fair value and move to other parts of the city, and to finance improvements to the neighborhood.
On paper, it looked like an attempt to right some wrongs; in practice, the outcome was bittersweet. Hundreds of residents took the buyouts, and entire blocks of Hillcrest were razed, leaving a patchwork of vacant lots where a vibrant neighborhood once stood. Many who left had lived in Hillcrest for generations and found it challenging to start over elsewhere, while those who stayed suddenly found their neighborhood half-empty. Worse – and perhaps predictably – the promised improvements for those who stayed never fully arrived. Even now, with the opening of the new Harbor Bridge on the near horizon, residents are still waiting for the City to deliver park upgrades and other investments it agreed to.
Crucially, not everyone took the buyouts. Some families refused to be pushed out, either because the compensation wasn’t truly sufficient, or because their roots in Hillcrest ran too deep to sever. But for the residents who stayed on, determined to keep Hillcrest alive, there has been no respite from the assault on the neighborhood.
In 2022, Hillcrest residents learned of a shocking new City project slated for their community – a massive desalination plant to provide water to the fossil fuel and petrochemical industry. Adding insult to injury, the proposed 12-acre location for the desal plant was, as is, inside the buffer zone that had been created decades prior to shield the neighborhood from industrial encroachment. True to form, the Hillcrest community fought back, filing a third federal Title VI civil rights complaint, asserting that siting the Inner Harbor desalination plant in Hillcrest is part of a longstanding pattern of environmental racism by the City. As of this writing, Hillcrest’s latest Title VI complaint remains under investigation by federal authorities, even as the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have both issued permits necessary to proceed with construction of the desalination facility. Nevertheless, Hillcrest refuses to give up the fight – and so do its many community allies.
From segregationist policies to the steady invasion of refineries, tank farms, waste sites, highways, and now a desal plant in the same area, Hillcrest has plainly been the target of decades of systemic racial and environmental injustice. At the same time, Hillcrest’s story is also one of incredible resilience – of community empowerment and the right to self-determination. Time after time, residents have organized, raised their voices, and leveraged the law to defend their neighborhood. Today the remaining residents live with constant life-threatening pollution, noise, and odor, but continue to stand up for their neighborhood with courage and dignity. Institutions like the Hillcrest Residents Association and local AME church fight preserve the neighborhood’s legacy, refusing to view their community as a sacrifice zone.
In solidarity with Hillcrest, the Coastal Action Network coalition will continue to organize and uplift the voices of all those who push back on the powerful interests that would deprive them of the justice the deserve.