African Americans in Austin before 1865:
In 1847, enslaved African Americans comprised approximately 17 percent of Travis County's total population
Although there may have been close to 1,000 free African Americans in Texas in 1850, the majority of Texas' African American population in the mid-nineteenth century was enslaved.[1] In 1860, enslaved African Americans comprised approximately thirty percent of both Austin and Texas' total populations.[2] Twenty to forty percent of enslaved people in Austin worked on farms or ranches; others worked as farmers, blacksmiths, butchers, hotel keepers, and domestic workers. Many enslaved African Americans in Austin labored as members of Edwin Waller's Construction crew--the first permanent capitol building was constructed in significant part by enslaved persons. The industry and skill of enslaved African Americans played a critical role in the economic development of Texas, including Austin and its surrounding countryside. [3]
Choosing people and events
The timeline covers 1865-1965, a period wrought with change for African Americans, from emancipation to the civil rights movement. Although the information listed here is not exhaustive in content, the timeline highlights people and events to tell a story of struggle and change, particularly regarding issues of segregation and civil rights.
Timeline
1865
Enslaved African Americans Emancipated
General Gordon Granger landed at Galveston on June 19 and declared Texas' 250,000 enslaved people free under Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863.[4] Five days later, the sheriff of Travis County read the Proclamation aloud to a group of Anglo and African Americans in Austin.
Freedmen's Bureau Established
The United States Congress established the Freedmen's Bureau to assist African Americans in the South with making the transition from enslavement to freedom. When Bureau agents arrived in Texas in September 1865, however, many Texans saw them as outsiders from the North and detested their presence and the changes they sought to make. Despite hostility and inadequate funding from the federal government, the Bureau began operating sixteen schools for African Americans in Texas this year.[6]
1866 – 1867
Black Codes Enacted in Texas
In order to regulate the lives of recently-emancipated African Americans and to legally define their places in society, the Texas state legislature enacted a black code, a body of laws that dictated ways in which African Americans could earn their living. For example, the code included a law that required laborers working for more than thirty days to enter into a binding agreement. African Americans were also prohibited from holding public office and interracially marrying. With these acts and measures, Conservative Democrats hoped to reaffirm the inferior position enslaved and free African Americans held before and during the Civil War. The establishment of these codes revealed not only Anglo Texans fears that freedmen would not work unless coerced, but their unwillingness to accept African Americans as equals.[7]
1867 - 1871
African American Settlements Established in Austin
During the late 1860s and early 1870s, recently emancipated African Americans established the residential communities of Masontown, Wheatville, Pleasant Hill, Kitcheonville, and Clarksville.[8]
1868
African Americans Involved in Texas Politics
All male citizens over the age of 21, including African Americans, were eligible to vote for delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1868-69.This election was the first time African Americans had a voice in state government. Ten African Americans were elected to the convention.[9]
Freedmen's Bureau School Opens in Austin
The Freedmen's Bureau School, which had been attended by African American children and adults since 1866, moved into a building constructed with funds contributed by African Americans in Austin. This was the first school building for African Americans in the city.[10]
1870
African Americans Elected to Texas Legislature
Two African American senators and twelve African American representatives were elected to Texas' Twelfth Legislature (1870-1871), constituting about 12 percent of the entire membership.[11]
Texas Formally Legalizes African American Marriages
The Freedmen's Bureau outlined a policy in 1865 which stipulated that African American couples who had lived together outside of wedlock while enslaved were legitimate spouses. Many African American couples, however, remained uncertain about the legality of their marriages until they were officially recognized by the state in 1870.[12]
1870 - 1890
Violence Against African Americans in Texas
All racial and ethnic groups in Texas felt the effects of rampant violence. Many Texans engaged in violence towards African Americans with hopes of diluting the strength of African American voters or as a form of persecution. Lynching, or the threat of it, became common practice in cities across Texas, often motivated by crimes allegedly committed by African Americans against Anglo Americans. It is estimated that this sort of extralegal justice was responsible for the murder of about 500 African Americans in Texas during this time period.[13]
1875
Civil Rights Act of 1875
The United States Congress approved this act, guaranteeing freedom of access to many public accommodations, regardless of race. Citizens were also able to sue for personal damages. These rights were applicable to citizens of every race and color, regardless of any previous condition of servitude. [14]
1877
Wheatville School Opens
Travis County Court designated surplus funds for the building of public schools for African Americans. Wheatville School was built on West Twenty-Fifth Street.[15]
1881
Tillotson Collegiate and Normal Institute Offers Enrollment
Founded by the New York-based American Missionary Society of Congregational churches, Tillotson Collegiate and Normal Institute was established to provide educational opportunities for African Americans after emancipation. 171 students enrolled in its first year.[16]
1883
Civil Rights Act Overturned
The United States Supreme Court declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional, arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment forbade states, but not citizens, from discriminating.[17]
The University of Texas – Austin Opens
The University offered admission to Anglo Americans only.[18]
1892
Austinite L.L. Campbell Begins Publishing The Herald
The Herald, a weekly African American newspaper published by the Publication Board of the General Convention of Texas, contributed to the development of African American journalism in Texas.[19]
1896
Major Supreme Court Case Supports Segregation
In Plessy v. Ferguson, The United States Supreme Court declared it legal to have separate but equalî facilities for African Americans and Anglo[20] In practice, facilities for African Americans were of much lower quality.
1897
Texas Passes an Anti-lynch Law
Racial violence in Texas continued to escalate, and the state ranked third nationally in the lynching of African Americans.[21] The law proved ultimately ineffective, as mobs murdered more than 100 African Americans between 1900 and 1910.[22] Lynchings continued in Austin until 1925.[23]
Musician Cancels Segregated Performance
Maud Cuney Hare, a Galveston native who had lived in Austin, refused to perform in Austin's segregated Opera House. She later became a noted music historian, folklorist, pianist, and playwright.[24]
1900
Samuel Huston College Opens
This coeducational school for African Americans in Austin developed from an 1876 plan projected by the Methodist Episcopal conference. An 1883 agreement with the Freedmen's Aid Society resulted in the land purchase on which the college was built. The enrollment in 1900 was eighty students, but it grew to 517 by 1906. In 1927, the school was recognized as a class A senior college.[25]
1902
Texas Passes Poll-Tax Law
The Texas legislature passed a poll-tax law, in which eligible voters had to pay a fee in order to vote. The poll-tax was one method of disenfranchising African Americans, poor Anglo Americans, and Mexican Americans.[26]
1906
Public Transportation Segregated in Austin
Despite a two-month boycott by the African American community, the Austin city council passed an ordinance mandating separate streetcar compartments for African Americans.[27]
1907
Anderson High School Opens
Anderson High School opened at 1607 Pennsylvania Avenue in East Austin as the only high school for the African American community.[28]
1910 - 1911
Segregation in Public Facilities
For Jim Crow laws in Texas, click on http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/geography/geography.htm
The Texas legislature ordained that railroad stations must have separate waiting rooms for African Americans and Anglo Americans. Soon after, virtually all public facilities had separate water fountains and restrooms as well.[29]
1915
Texas' first NAACP Chapter Founded
Texas' first chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was formed in El Paso.[30] A chapter was formed in Houston soon after, and by 1930 approximately thirty chapters existed throughout the state.[31]
1919
Violence Against NAACP's Secretary in Austin
In an incident that gained national attention, John Shillady, the secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was severely beaten near the Driskill Hotel in downtown Austin. He was then forced to leave town.[32]
1920
The Texas Commission on Inter-racial Cooperation Formed
The Commission included an equal number of Black and white women and men.[33]
1921
Ku Klux Klan March on Congress Avenue in Austin
Five hundred white-robed and hooded Klansmen from Austin and San Antonio marched single file in silence up and down Congress Avenue, while thousands of spectators looked on. Capital City Klan No. 81 was organized this year, and a year later had 1,500 members including the sheriff of Travis County.[34]
1922
Ethel Ransom Appointed Texas Director for the National
Anti-Lynching Crusaders
Ransom, a nurse and club leader from Fort Worth, and many other southern women during the 1920s and 1930s, spoke out against racial violence. Also this year, the Women's Division of the Texas Commission on Inter-racial Cooperation issued a strong statement condemning lynching.[35]
1923
Texas Legislature Passes a White Primary Law
This law explicitly barred African Americans from voting in Democratic primaries.[36] Since the Democratic Party dominated Texas politics, the Democratic primary was paramount to statewide disenfranchisement.
1928
City Plan Encourages Segregation
The City of Austin completed a plan that sought to designate East Austin as a Negro District. Municipal services such as schools, sewers, and parks were made available to African Americans in East Austin only. Click on these links to see the original 1928 City Plan: City Plan cover and City Plan page.[37]
Texas Committee on Interracial Violence Formed
Anglo American reformers began to join African Americans in their call to end racial violence. Together, they formed a committee to fight extralegal acts against African Americans. Local newspapers, including the Dallas Morning News and the San Antonio Express also openly condemned lynching.[38]
1930
Separate Proves Unequal
Illiteracy in the African American community had fallen statewide to 13.4 percent, and more African American students were attending school, and for longer terms. Comparisons to Anglo American schools, however, revealed the unfairness of separate but equal facilities. African American students attended school an average of 106 days a year, as compared to 131 days for Anglo students; African American teachers earned about $92 per month versus $121 for Anglo American teachers, and three-quarters of the African American schools were one-teacher one-room facilities.[39]
Mary Elizabeth Branch Becomes President of Austin's Tilllotson College
Branch won accreditation for the institution, and became the only African American female president of a senior college accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools.[40]
1932
Wheatville School Closes
Due to the relocation of nearly the entire African American community to East Austin, the Wheatville School, which had been one of the main schools for African American children for sixty years, closed.[41]
1933
East Avenue Divides Austin
East Avenue was completed, creating a major thoroughfare that divided East from West Austin. To see a historic photograph of East Avenue, click here.[42]
A Library for the African American Community
Austin's first library, built at the corner of Ninth and Guadalupe Streets, was moved to East Austin in response to petitions from African American residents about the lack of a library in their community. After its establishment on Angelina Street in East Austin, the library was known as the Colored Branch until 1947 when it was named the George Washington Carver Branch Library.[43] Because libraries were segregated, African American access to a library was only possible with the establishment of this branch library.
1939
Lulu B. White Becomes President of Houston NAACP
Under White's leadership, the Houston branch became the largest in the South.[44]
1944
Smith v. Allwright
This case declared the white primary in Texas unconstitutional, stating that the Democratic primary was an integral part of the general electoral process. African Americans could no longer be prohibited from voting in the Democratic primary. The number of African Americans registered to vote in Texas increased from 30,000 in 1940 to 100,000 in 1947.[45]
1946
Heman Sweatt Denied Acceptance to UT Austin's Law School
Houstonian Heman Sweatt responded to an appeal by Houston's NAACP and volunteered to serve as civil rights plaintiff against the University of Texas. Sweatt applied to the UT Law School and was denied admission on the basis of race. A separate law school was hastily created for African Americans in the basement of a building on East 13th Street.[46]
The 1950s and 1960s-An Era of Transformation
During the 1950s and 1960s, ethnic relations in Austin radically changed, as many individuals and groups increasingly took a stand against segregation. Local African American leaders and political-action groups waged campaigns to desegregate city schools and services, and students staged demonstrations against segregated schools, lunch counters, restaurants, and movie theatres.[47]
1950
Sweatt v. Painter
Heman Sweatt's case against UT's Law School was tried in the Supreme Court. The Court's decision eliminated segregation in the South's graduate and professional schools. This case laid the groundwork for the NAACP's challenge to segregation in public schools in Brown
v. Board of Education four years later.[48]
1954
Supreme Court Case Outlaws Segregation in Schools
On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court decided that separate educational facilities were unequal. The Brown v. Board of Education decision denied the legality of segregation. [49] For photographs and more information about this
decision, click http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/brown/brown-brown.html.
1955
Austin School Board Takes First Steps Towards Desegregation
The Austin School Board permitted African American high school students to attend formerly all-Anglo high schools.[50]
1956
The University of Texas at Austin Integrates UT's
Board of Regents 1955 decision to integrate undergraduate educational programs became effective in September of 1956, when African Americans enrolled for the first time. [51]
1960
Students Protest for Civil Rights
Students from the University of Texas and Huston-Tillotson picketed restaurants on Guadalupe Street (The Drag) and staged sit-ins at downtown lunch counters, encouraging Austin businesses to integrate.[52] To see a photograph of students participating in a
sit-in in North Carolina, click http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/odyssey/archive/09/0909001r.jpg.[53]
1961
Lillian K. Bradley receives a Ph.D. in mathematics from UT Austin
Bradley was the first Black woman to earn a doctorate at the University of Texas at Austin.[54]
1962
East Avenue Becomes Interstate 35
East Avenue was enlarged to become Interstate 35, a highway that many modern-day Austinites see as the traditional dividing line between East and West Austin.[55] To see a photograph of the Interstate's grand opening, click IH 35 Grand Opening.[56]
Activists Protest at the Ice Palace
When the Ice Palace, a skating rink that opened on Airport Boulevard, declared it was to be for whites only, Ada Anderson, members from the Mothers Action Council, and others from the African American community began picketing. Pickets were held the day the rink opened, every weekday evening and all weekend until racial barriers were dropped a year later.[57]
1963
March on State Capitol
In conjunction with the National March on Washington,[58] approximately 900 protesters marched on the Texas State Capitol, including Hispanics, African Americans, and Anglo Americans, attacking the slow pace of desegregation in the state and Governor John Connally's opposition to the pending civil rights bill in Washington.[59]
1964
A Long Filibuster for Civil Rights in Austin
In response to the City Council's failure to pass a tough anti-segregation ordinance, Volma Overton, the head of the Austin NAACP and other advocates of the ordinance, launched a week-long filibuster in response to the injustices of segregation. The city council and the NAACP finally reached an agreement, and in May the council created Austin's first official human relations commission. However, to the disappointment of NAACP members, the commission received no funds, had no effective authority, and no staff. Two weeks later, it had no members.[60]
Segregation Outlawed in the United States
President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act on July 2, 1964, prohibiting discrimination in
public places and providing for the integration of schools and other public facilities.[61]
The 24th Amendment is Ratified
On January 24 the 24th
Amendment was ratified, outlawing the use of the poll tax in federal elections. At the time, the poll tax was still in effect in five Southern states: Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Texas.[62]
UT Integrates Housing
After several years of student protests and sit-ins at dormitories, UT regents voted to approve integrated student housing.[63]
1965
President Lyndon Johnson Signs Voting Rights Act
This act, which had been advocated by Martin Luther King, Jr., outlawed discriminatory voting practices, including literary tests, that hindered many African Americans from voting.[64]
Bibliography
Credits Timeline text prepared by Catherine Fraser
Draft timeline prepared by William Bacon
Segregation and Civil Rights 1865-1965, An Interpretive Timeline Covering African American History in Austin, Texas was produced for The Project in Interpreting the Texas Past. The Project in Interpreting the Texas Past (ITP) at the University of Texas at Austin was created by Dr. Martha Norkunas to shed new light on the Texas and American past by researching, interpreting and presenting the histories of women and minority communities. Students have engaged in historical and ethnographic research and created innovative interpretive projects for historic sites and museums all over the state of Texas. Another important part of ITP is conducting in-depth oral history interviews. Beginning in 2004, graduate students enrolled in Dr. Norkunasí course, "Oral Narrative as History" conducted oral history interviews with African Americans in Texas, particularly Travis County. The goal of the African American Texans Oral History Project is to come to a deeper appreciation of the important events, values, and intellectual perspectives in the lives of African Americans, and to examine the importance of race in America. From 2005-2007 The Project in Interpreting the Texas Past worked with the George Washington Carver Museum and Cultural Center as the featured museum. Each semester graduate Students from the University of Texas visited the museum, talked with site staff, and created focused interpretive projects. Ms. Bernadette Phifer, Curator of the Carver Museum, along with Dr. Norkunas, guided the development of the projects. ITP is an initiative of the Intellectual Entrepreneurship Consortium, created by Dr. Richard Cherwitz (e-mail spaj737@uts.cc.utexas.edu) Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Texas Austin. The IE Consortium is committed to building interdisciplinary, collaborative, and sustainable ways for universities to work with their communities to solve complex problems. For more information, please see: https://webspace.utexas.edu/cherwitz/www/ie/
For more information about the Project in Interpretive the Texas Past, please contact Dr. Martha Norkunas, Head of the Project in Interpreting the Texas Past, Department of Anthropology, EPS 1.130, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78727, e-mail m.norkunas@mail.utexas.edu
[1] According to the Handbook of Texas Online: African Americans, The 1850 Texas census reported 400 free African Americans, although there may have been close to 1,000.
[2] Humphrey, David C. Austin: An Illustrated History (Northridge: Windsor, 1985) 46. There were approximately 3,500 people in Austin, about 1,000 of whom were enslaved; and more than a third of Austin's Anglo families owned enslaved people. According to Handbook
of Texas Online: Slavery, the state census of 1860 reported 182,566 enslaved people.
[3] Humphrey 46.
[4] Handbook of Texas Online: Juneteenth.
[5] Humphrey 64.
[6] Calvert, Robert A., Arnoldo de Leon, and Gregg Cantrell. The History of Texas. 3rd ed. (Wheeling: Harlan Davidson, 2002) 155.
[7] Handbook of Texas Online: Black Codes.
[8] Handbook of Texas Online: Austin, TX.
[9] Texas State Library & Archives Commission. The 1860s: The 1868-69 Constitutional Convention.
http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/exhibits/forever/freedom/page6.html African American delegates included Charles W. Bryant, James McWashington, Stephen Curtis, Sheppard Mullens, Wiley Johnson, George Ruby, Mitchell Kendal, Benjamin Watrous, Ralph Long, and Benjamin Williams.
[10] Humphrey 12, 68.
[11] Calvert 163. G.T. Ruby and Matt Gaines were African American senators in the Twelfth Legislature.
[12] Calvert 166.
[13] Calvert 188.
[14] The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow: Civil Rights Act (1875). http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_civil.html
[15] Handbook of Texas Online: Wheatville, Texas; Humphrey 100.
[16] Humphrey 97-99.
[17] The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow: Civil Rights Act (1875).
[18] Winegarten, Ruthe. Black Texas Women: A Sourcebook (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996) 282.
[19] Handbook of Texas Online: Herald.
[20] Our Documents: Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=52
[21] Calvert 189.
[22] Calvert 261.
[23] Winegarten 294.
[24] Winegarten 68.
[25] Handbook of Texas Online: Samuel Huston College.
[26] Handbook of Texas Online: Election Laws.
[27] Handbook of Texas Online: Austin, TX.
[28] Orum, Anthony M. Power. The Making of Modern Austin: Power Money & the People (Austin: Texas Monthly Press, 1987) 176; Humphrey 176.
[29] Calvert 261.
[30] Handbook of Texas Online: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
[31] Handbook of Texas Online: Civil Rights.
[32] Humphrey 15.
[33] Winegarten 293.
[34] Humphrey 174.
[35] Winegarten 194.
[36] Handbook of Texas Online: White Primary.
[37] Handbook of Texas Online: Austin, TX; images from the original City Plan (1928).
38] Calvert 262.
[39] Calvert 266.
[40] Winegarten 296.
[41] Handbook of Texas Online: Wheatville.
[42] Austin Streets: Path to the Present, an online exhibit from the Austin History Center; photograph from http://www.texasfreeway.com.
[43] History of the Carver Museum http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/carver/history.htm.
[44] Winegarten 300.
[45] Handbook of Texas Online: White Primary; History of Texas, p. 337.
[46] Handbook of Texas Online: Sweatt, Herman Marion; Also "Courage and the Refusal to be Swayed": Herman Marion
Sweatt's Legal Challenge that Integrated the University of Texas. TxTell UT Stories. http://txtell.lib.utexas.edu/stories/s0010-full.html
[47] Handbook of Texas Online: Austin, TX.
[48] Handbook of Texas Online: African Americans; Orum 198.
[49] With an Even Hand: Brown v. Board at Fifty, an online exhibit from the Library of Congress. http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/brown/brown-brown.html
[50] Humphrey 1.
[51] Humphrey 16.
[52] Humphrey 16.
[53] Copyprint. New York World-Telegram & Sun Photograph Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress; Photo caption: Robert Martin, Robert Patterson, and Mark Martin start sit-down strike after being refused service at an F.W. Woolworth Luncheon counter, Greensboro, N.C. 1960. Available online.
[54] Winegarten 307.
[55] According to East Austin Stories website.
[56] Photograph from http://www.texasfreeway.com
[57] Winegarten 210-11.
[58] March on Washington, August 28, 1963. Copyprint. U.S. News and World Report Photograph Collection, Prints and Photographs Division , Library of Congress. Available online.
[59] Handbook of Texas Online: Civil Rights Movement.
[60] Orum 259-61; Humphrey, 218-20.
[61] Our Documents: Civil Rights Act (1964).
[62] Justice Learning: 1964, 24th Amendment is Ratified, http://www.justicelearning.org/justice_timeline/AmendmentsRights.aspx?ID=23&RightID=33&TimelineEventID=438 and The New York Times, 1/24/64, PDF file.
[63] Humphrey 217.
[64] Our Documents: Voting Rights Act (1965). http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=100
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