One Fight At A Time

Raised by a single mother, her great grandmother, and aunt, Kathy Blueford-Daniels is a native Houstonian from Fifth Ward. The third of nine children, Blueford-Daniels said her mom “did the very best she could.” Although her mom worked a lot to support herself and her nine children, she instilled good work ethics in all her kids.

On Saturdays, Blueford-Daniels would go to work with her mom to clean houses and would earn a few dollars a day. Her mom insisted that she take up sewing when she was in the seventh grade, and “I’m glad I did,” Blueford-Daniels mentioned. One of the ladies she cleaned for bought her a sewing machine. The machine was $29, and she had to pay every dollar back to her. The lady would also give her fabric, and this is where she learned the basics of sewing. Her aunt was an “excellent seamstress,” so she was able to help her as well.

Starting her ninth-grade year at Wheatley High School, Blueford-Daniels had the desire to be a cheerleader but could barely afford to buy the fabric that she needed for her uniform. All the other cheerleaders were able to buy the fabric and to pay someone else to make their uniform. Because she worked a part time job, she was able to make just enough to buy the fabric, but to be able to cheer with the other cheerleaders, she would have to make the uniform herself, and that’s just what she did. “I was proud of the fact that I had completed that task…I did not know that it was instilling in me a determinant spirit.”

After graduating from high school, she started nursing school, married her high school sweetheart, and had her daughter. After time passed, she then got divorced and opted to start working at the post office so that she could provide for herself and her daughter. Working at the post office was good for her as she was surrounded by different individuals who could teach her the different aspects of life such as saving, investing in stocks, and so much more. She was like a sponge absorbing so much of their knowledge.

The post office gave her the support and stability she needed to take care of her family. She stated, “The post office provided a good salary or means to be able to have a comfortable lifestyle for myself and my children.” She was even able to buy her first home at the age of 23. One of her goals in life was to give her children their own bedrooms because she grew up with nine siblings who had to share everything.

Little did she know, she would serve 28 years with the post office. “I really thank God for the fortitude and being surrounded by people that helped direct me, from whom I’ve learned life lessons that have helped me even today.”

Although Blueford-Daniels was doing well in life, tragedy struck her family one Sunday night in 2006, with her son being murdered based on mistaken identity at their neighborhood store. Her son was very young and was preparing to enroll in Texas Southern University to begin the next chapter of his life. It was extremely traumatic…my daughter is my heart, but my son was my soul,” she said. Two weeks after her son was killed, she was at a city council meeting expressing her concerns regarding the operation of stores.

“I complained about the lack of lightning and the fact that they did not have any recording on what was going on outside of the store, and how there were no loitering signs.” There was an ordinance that stores had to have no loitering signs properly displayed, had to have cameras, and keep the videos for an extended period. The stores had overwritten the video. This gave Blueford-Daniels more fuel to add to her fight.

Since then, “I have been an advocate for my communities and communities in general. The person who killed my son was a high school dropout, and since then, “I’ve always been under the mindset that we the community, the village, we failed that man, and in turn, because of that failure, the cause and effect was that it had an impact on my family because my son was murdered.”

Blueford-Daniels is currently on the Houston Independent School District Board of Education as a Trustee for District Two, and she has made it known that her role is not an exercise for her, and that she has been working tirelessly in the community. People call on her all the time for various things, and she tries to help everyone that she can, and if something is out of her “scope of ability to help,” she tries to give them direction as to where they can get proper help.

After 28 years of service in the post office, Blueford-Daniels retired in 2008, but her service did not stop there. She would then go on and become Super Neighborhood President of the greater Fifth Ward from 2014 to 2017. Because of her advocacy and her being president, they were able to accomplish a lot of good for the community. “I brought to light that Union Pacific was starting to disturb the property that was supposedly identified as being contaminated.” Her and State Senator Miles at the time began questioning the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), and Senator Miles was making necessary inquiries about the issue at hand. In addition, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee joined forces and organized a town hall to see if there was cancer in these communities along the rail line that was higher than most other places, and it was found that there is.

“I just thank God for the foresight to be able to look at and see things and issues and bring them to the proper authorities,” she stated.  Another issue she fought was the need for seating and shelter at different bus stops. Blueford-Daniels and another president at that time, rode around several communities to take note of the bus shelters and seating that was needed at the various stops. They worked with Metro when they started doing the Reimagine Program and redid all the routes in the city. They made it known to Metro that there were routes associated with communities that you just can’t change. “Everybody knows that when you catch the “44,” you’re going to Acres Homes,” she mentioned while giving an example. Her and several others made sure that the routes that were attached to different communities remained the same.

In addition to her various roles, she worked at the Harris County Appraisal District as part of the Appraisal Review Board and used that knowledge to help educate people in the communities as to what they could do to protest their taxes and to try and get their taxes lowered. She also used that knowledge to let seniors know that they could file for tax exemptions.

Over the years, Blueford-Daniels has used all her gifts and talents to help as many people and communities as she can. “God prepared me in my 25 plus years of management with the post office. He prepared me. I didn’t know it that he was preparing me to be that Conduent with these agencies and people in general to be a voice for the voiceless.”

She further expressed, “I’m so blessed because I use what has been poured into me to help others, and I am so grateful that people had the confidence in me to elect me to the school board. It wasn’t because I was in education, but people knew my integrity and my track record.”

She concluded with, “I do what’s necessary because our communities have not had people truly fighting for what’s important to the children. I am very sincere about what I’m doing so that we can close that gap, that loophole, so we won’t have to continuously have our children feeding the pipelines to prison.”

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