Anna Dupree Papers

Prominent African American philanthropist Anna Johnson Dupree was born in Carthage, Tx in 1891 to Lee and Eliza Johnson. In 1904 her family moved to Galveston where she worked as a nurse maid and domestic house keeper. She moved to Houston in 1911 to be a seamstress. She also continued to do house work and became an apprentice at Ethel Baird’s Beauty Shop. She met Clarence A. Dupree a year later in 1912. He worked at the Tremont Hotel in Galveston. They married in 1916 shortly before he entered the Armed Services for World War I. The Duprees made the commitment early on in their relationship to help African Americans in need. The Duprees saved much of what they made, with Anna working as a residential beautician and C.A as porter at the Brazos and Bender Hotels and the River Oaks Country Club. These savings and eventual business ventures, such as the ownership and operation of the Pastime Theater and the El Dorado Ballroom, allowed the Duprees to make many influential contributions to the African American community in Houston. In the mid-1940s, the Duprees donated $20,000 to the Negro Child Center for the creation of an orphanage cottage. In 1946, along with the help of customers and businesses, they donated $11,000 to the Houston College for Negroes (Texas Southern University) for their first permanent building. Starting in 1948, they began raising money for the development of a nursing home for African Americans. In the meantime, their philanthropy continued with donations to the development of Camp Robinhood, the first Girl Scouts camp for African Americans in Texas, and financed the first little league baseball for African American youth in the city. In 1952, the Eliza Johnson Home for Aged Negroes officially opened on 35 acres off Chocolate Bayou Road (now Cullen Boulevard). C.A. Dupree died in 1959. Anna Dupree’s activity dwindled with the death of her husband. She died a resident of the Eliza Johnson Home after a lengthy illness in 1977.