Charles Walker "Tex" Harrison (1933-2014)

    Charles Harrison was born in Gary, Indiana on January 20, 1933, but Houston became his home when his parents, Alexander and Lullelia Walker Harrison, relocated to the historic Fifth Ward. He attended Phillis Wheatley High School and competed in varsity basketball until his graduation in 1950. He won an athletic scholarship and was recruited by North Carolina Central University, where he received the nickname "Tex" because he was 6'5" and everything is bigger in Texas. He was an exceptional basketball player, the first player from an African-American institution to capture College All-American honors, and still holds NCCU's second highest scoring record. During his senior year, the Harlem Globetrotters noticed him when they played opposite the College All-American team during the 1954 World Series of Basketball. When he graduated later that year, he was immediately drafted by the Globetrotters. 

    Tex was one of the team's quickest players, an awesome rebounder and a stellar exhibition dribbler, quickly becoming one of the "faces" of the team. His resume detailed a career in which many athletes fantasize: he drank tea with Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip; had private audiences with three Popes; enjoyed cocktails with Orson Welles and Marlon Brando; and while on tour in Moscow, he ate caviar with Nikita Khrushchev. During the Cold War, the Globetrotters received the Athletic Order of Lenin Medal in 1959, an event that solidified them as global ambassadors. He did everything from playing alongside the immortal Wilt Chamberlin to joining several Globetrotter teammates on the Harlem Globetrotters Popcorn Machine, a television variety series where the players sang, danced and performed comedy sketches. In 1972 Tex retired as an active player and became the team's coach and advisor for the next thirty-plus years.

    In 1964, Tex met and married his wife Tommye; during their forty-seven years together the couple would go on to have three daughters. To the very end of his days, he was honored and respected for his contributions to both sports and as a global goodwill ambassador. He was inducted into the North Carolina Central University Athletic Hall of Fame in 1984, and in 1996, he received his "Legends" Ring and had his number retired by the team. Source

Block D

Golden Gate Cemetery

Houston

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29° 83.464, -095° 32.517