Found on YouTube. Created by "Ship History". Originally published on 2025-12-15.
A pilot’s job is to safely bring vessels in and out of harbor, requiring extensive local knowledge of the waterways. Pilotage is one of the world’s oldest professions and while the job remains mostly unchanged, the complexity of the role and who can become a pilot has changed dramatically.
Across the U.S., pilotage remained a profession for white men until the late twentieth century. In 1983, Captain Paul Brown became the first African American Houston Pilot and the second in the nation. By 2001, the Houston Pilots led the way in hiring minorities and women, and a few years later it formed a nonprofit called Anchor Watch, to offer scholarships to maritime students in need and boost opportunities for minority and women candidates. Captain Holly Cooper joined the Houston Pilots in 1994 as the group’s 151st pilot and the first woman to begin training as a deputy.
You'll hear excerpts from two oral history interviews with the first Black Port Commissioner in Houston, Howard Middleton, who passed away in 2023 and the first female Houston pilot, Holly Cooper, now retired. Both interviews were conducted for the Welcome Wilson Houston History Collaborative, a project of the University of Houston's Center for Public History.
You can watch more of this interview with Holly Cooper at https://av.lib.uh.edu/media_objects/d504rk467.
Learn more about the project and find links to Houston History Magazine and the Oral History Program and Archives at https://www.uh.edu/class/ctr-public-history/welcome-wilson-houston-history-collaborative/index.php.
