The Civil War was over.
Eventually three and a half miln
enslaved black Americans would be free.
Even though the Emancipation Proclamation
that ended slavery in the Confederacy
was issued several years before,
it wasn't until June 19th,
1865, Juneteenth.
That word reached Texas when
Union General Gordon Granger.
Announced the order to
the people of Galveston.
As the news spread across Texas,
250,000 enslaved people suddenly
face the reality of having to
figure out how to make a home,
put food on the table and creata
better future for their familie.
But in the period after the Civil War,
matters could not have been more difficult.
Confederate states like Texas we
determined that exslaves would
neither be truly free nor equal.
Jim Crow and black codes were te
frameworks for a strict system f
racial segregation and white supremacy.
By 1870, blacks made-up 30%
of Texas total population,
but there had been so much
violence against them.
Many would travel to bigger cities where
federal troops could offer protection,
and for some that met a trek to Austin.
Many blacks in Central Texas,
which settled in what were knows
Freedman's Communities at one time Austin,
had 15 separate enclaves where
black Americans live close toge,
establishing their own business,
schools and churches.
That was Clarksville,
established by Charles Clark in 1871,
home to hundreds of freed slave.
Today, located just West of Mo C
between W 6th and 10th streets,
the Clarksville neighborhood
is known as a place.
For expensive homes and familiar businesses.
And there was Wheatville,
established by James Wheat in 1.
The first black newspaper West
of the Mississippi was published
there after the Civil War.
It was called the Gold Dollar and was
printed in this building on San Gabriel St.
still there and surrounded
by high rise student condos,
now on what has become the
University of Texas West campus.
But Austin City Hall in 1928
developed a plan that would fore
black Americans out of their hos
in Wheatville and Clarksville ad
others scattered around the cit.
To ensure that people would mov,
the city warned it would not
provide paved roads or sewer li.
There.
They were to merge into a single
neighborhood on the east side of town.
Blacks were forced to settle int
city planners called the* District.
Still, E 11th St.
would become the focus of a
thriving business community.
From the 1940s on,
East Austin developed into a
Center for black-owned business,
cultural life and education,
a community bonded together
by neighborhood churches.
But having a place in the politl
process was virtually not exist.
Black Austinites were shut
out of holding elected offices
or developing public policy,
making conditions worse.
E Austin was considered an industrial zone.
In 1948,
the big oil companies built a tk
farm that would later cause grod
contamination around a number of homes,
then isolation in the 1950s,
when construction began on an
Interstate highway that would
run right through E Avenue,
what was once an open and accessible Blvd.
That linked East and West Austi.
For many,
I-35 created a concrete barrier between
the prosperity of downtown and e
neighborhood on the other side of town.
But there were positive changes,
too.
By the 1950s,
there was growing awareness on
the part of politicians and the
courts that black Americans dese
the same opportunities as white.
With the passage of civil rights
legislation and the Voting
Rights Acts of the 1960s,
black participation and politicl
life took on new urgency.
The first black American electeo
public office in Austin occurred in 1968.
When Wilhelmina Delco won a spot
on the city school board in 197,
she was elected to represent Austin and the
Texas Legislature until she retired in 1995.
In 1971, Austin elected its first black
City Council member, Berle Hanc.
Voter registration projects beca
centerpiece of East Austin life in the 1980s.
In the 1990s, families in East Austin
want a victory in the courts whn
the oil companies agreed to dismantle
the storage tanks near their ho.
But even as early as the 1970s,
Austin's black population began leaving.
E Austin historian Lisa Bird has written
that even before gentrification that forced
many longtime families to move ,
black family started moving
to suburbs and smaller
communities surrounding Austin.
For black Americans in Austin,
past and present a long history
of struggles and triumphs, witho
many new chapters of that histoy
yet to be written. Bob Buckalew, K View News.