Austin African American
Cultural Heritage District
In East Austin’s African American community the legacy of the Black Codes, Jim Crow, andthe 1928 Austin City Plan presents a bundle of ironic and counter-intuitive issues withwhich to deal. Legally prescribed and sanctioned segregation of African Americans wasobviously fueled by the belief that Blacks Folks were inherently inferior to the ruling class ofAnglo Americans. After Emancipation, Reconstruction, and Federal repeal of the Civil RightsAct of 1876 (repealed 1888), the City of Austin instituted local ordinances that created a“Negro District” in Central East Austin. This District essentially forced Black families tomove to East Austin in order to avail themselves to housing, access to public schools andparks, utilities and other City services. This arrangement at the time was “legal,” but it inno way promoted the health and well-being of the African American community. Cityservices for the African American community were separate-but-unequal to the level ofaccess granted in all other parts of Austin. Funding for schools and parks in the Districtwere a fraction of that provided in the rest of the City. City investment in municipalinfrastructure was miniscule. The results for East Austin were unpaved streets, poor sewer,water, and electric capacity, marginal police protection, and unchecked poverty andgovernmental neglect. The ironic twist here is that, even given the harsh social and politicalrealities of the day, Central East Austin internally nurtured all of the essential elementsfound in healthy communities. In the face of racial discrimination, forced segregation andunaddressed poverty and neglect, the East Austin African American community establishedschools and churches, cultural institutions, commercial business corridors, and aprofessional and civic leadership class that went about the business of sustaining the BlackCommunity. Speaking generally, this trend is borne out from the establishment of theNegro District until the activities of Civil Rights Movement in the early 1960s. Thereappears to be a watershed historical moment that dates to the Voting Rights Act and theCivil Rights Acts of the mid 1960s. It is at this point where irony becomes paradox: aspublic desegregation becomes the law of the land many Black families and businessesslowly begin to abandon Central East Austin. Perhaps propelled by the promise of CivilRights legislation and social mobility, Central East Austin begins a transformation that isfully evident by the mid 1970s. Residential areas that were predominantly African Americanand owner-occupied are more and more populated with rental housing stock. The storiedmusic venues and cafes of East Austin’s heyday are more often sold, closed and shuttered.And the once healthy ring of East Downtown neighborhoods and commercial corridorsbegin to more closely approximate visions of big city, high crime and poverty ghetto areas.By the 1970s Downtown Austin began to experience overheated commercial developmentand subsequent periods of economic of boom-and-bust. Consistent throughout was amassive population influx into Austin and near-downtown residential neighborhoods andcommercial real estate generally, experienced increasing pressure to expand theboundaries of the Central Business District. As the first waves of federally financed UrbanRenewal arrived in Austin, Central East Austin was an easy target for “slum and blight”designation (necessary for federal HUD funding for redevelopment). Those initialrevitalization funds really never reached African American East Austin, but were funneledinto more “desirable” projects closer to the city’s core, such as Waller Creek development. The most recentround of redevelopment activities in Central East Austin is tied also to federally fundedinitiatives and articulated in the Comprehensive Redevelopment Plan for Central EastAustin. This plan is based on a Tri-Party Agreement between the Austin RevitalizationAuthority, the Austin Urban Renewal Agency and the City of Austin. The goal of this Plan isto revitalize the residential and commercial core of the District, encourage and facilitatenew development, preserve the African American cultural legacy of East Austin, and usherin a new era of vibrant and inclusive community life, arts and culture activity, contemporaryeconomic development that serves the local community and cultural tourism alike. Thissection of the website will track the history, and present day challenges, of Central EastAustin and its quest to engage in meaningful cultural and historic preservation anddevelopment, in the face of a rapidly changing and increasingly gentrified modern urbancommunity
