This thesis attempts to provide a better understanding of the urban black experience in the first decade and a half following the war by focusing on the development of a single black neighborhood called Freedmantown in Houston's Fourth Ward. In the post-Civil War period, the black population in Houston increased dramatically. Through blacks' efforts to establish themselves as property owners, Freedmantown developed into a stable, black residential neighborhood quickly after the war's end. Black residents of Freedmantown, however, did not form their own separate social community, nor did Freedmantown become the focus for the rest of the ward's black community institutions. Instead, the residents of Freedmantown remained actively involved in the larger black community of the Fourth Ward. As a result, Freedmantown's residents formed only one part of a multi-neighborhood black community, indicating that individual neighborhoods could develop and prosper without threatening the cohesiveness of the city's larger black community.