Fall 2023 Part 4.

 

 

  

 

Austin, Texas

Living in America, it is important to understand the culture of cities. Today, most Americans live in cities, and Austin, Texas is a very important city of the American landscape. Austin is found in Texas, which is a state with a large amount of culture. Austin being the capital city of Texas making its very vital in the political strength of Texas found in Travis County. It's the 10th most populous city in America and the fourth most populous city in Texas. It is also the second most populous state capital city in America. Since 2010, its population has grown very fast. Austin is found northeast of San Antonio, south of Dallas, north west of Houston far east of El Paso. Now, Austin, Texas has almost 1 million human beings. Many residents to the Main Building at the University of Texas, the Laguna Gloria, Paramount Theater, the Texas State Capitol Building, and other locations. We know of the Austin City Limits concerts hosting artists and being nicknamed "The live Music Capital of the World." Austin is home to many rivers, lakes, and waterways along with college students, musicians, high tech workers, and blue collar workers. The headquarters or regional offices of 3M, Oracle, Tesla, Texas Instruments, Whole Foods Markets, and other corporations exist in the vicinity of Austin, Texas.  In 2021, Austin became home to the Austin FC, the first (and currently only) major professional sports team in the city. Therefore, it is important to know wisdom and appreciate our lives. 

The History of Austin, Texas

Austin, Texas has a long history. Austin, Travis County, and Williamson County have been the site of human habitation since at least 9,200 B.C. The area's earliest known inhabitants lived during the late Pleistocene (Ice Age) and are linked to the Clovis culture at ca. 9,200 B.C. (over 11,200 years ago). This is proven by evidence found all over the area and documented at the much-studied Gault Site, midway between Georgetown and Fort Cavaoz. Two of the oldest Paleolithic archeological sites in Texas, the Levi Rock Shelter and Smith Rock Shelter, are located southwest and southeast of present-day Austin respectively. The original inhabitants of Austin were Native Americans. When European settlers arrived from Europe, the Tonkawa tribe lived in the area. These indigenous peoples fished and hunted along the creeks, including present-day Barton Springs, which proved to be a reliable campsite. At the time of Austin's founding, the Tonkawa tribe was the most common, with Comanches, Lipan Apaches, and Waco also frequenting the area. The Comanches and Lipan Apaches were also known to travel through the area. Spanish colonists, including the Espinosa-Olivares-Aguirre expedition, traveled through the area, though few permanent settlements were created for some time. In 1730, three Catholic missions from East Texas were combined and reestablished as one mission on the south side of the Colorado River, in what is now Zilker Park, in Austin. The mission was in this area for only about seven months, and then was moved to San Antonio de Béxar and split into three missions. The first European settlers in present-day Austin were a group of Spanish friars who arrived from East Texas in July 1730. They established three temporary missions, La Purísima Concepción, San Francisco de los Neches, and San José de los Nazonis, on a site by the Colorado River, near Barton Springs. The friars found conditions undesirable and relocated to the San Antonio River within a year of their arrival.

During the 1830s, pioneers began to settle the area in central Austin along the Colorado River. Spanish forts were established in what are now Bastrop and San Marcos. Following Mexico's independence, new settlements were established in Central Texas, but growth in the region was stagnant because of conflicts with the regional Native Americans. In 1835–1836, Texans fought and won independence from Mexico. Texas thus became an independent country with its own president, congress, and monetary system. Many people who fought for Texas' independence from Mexico wanted slavery when Mexico had a law banning slavery forever. Many racist settlers brought slaves into Texas too. By 1839, the Texas Congress made a commission to seek a site for a new capital of the Republic of Texas to replace Houston. When he was Vice President of Texas, Mirabeau B. Lamar had visited the area during a buffalo-hunting expedition between 1837 and 1838. He advised the commissioners to consider the area on the north bank of the Colorado River (near the present-day Congress Avenue Bridge), noting the area's hills, waterways, and pleasant surroundings. It was seen as a convenient crossroads for trade routes between Santa Fe and Galveston Bay, as well as routes between northern Mexico and the Red River. In 1839, the site was chosen, and was briefly incorporated under the name "Waterloo." Shortly afterward, the name was changed to Austin in honor of Stephen F. Austin, who was called by many people, "Father of Texas" and the republic's first secretary of state.

The city grew throughout the 19th century and became a center for government and education with the construction of the Texas State Capitol and the University of Texas at Austin. Edwin Waller was picked by Lamar to survey the village and draft a plan laying out the new capital of Austin, Texas. The original site was narrowed to 640 acres (260 ha) that fronted the Colorado River between two creeks, Shoal Creek and Waller Creek, which was later named in his honor. Waller and a team of surveyors developed Austin's first city plan, commonly known as the Waller Plan, dividing the site into a 14-block grid plan bisected by a broad north–south thoroughfare, Congress Avenue, running up from the river to Capital Square, where the new Texas State Capitol was to be constructed. A temporary one-story capitol was erected on the corner of Colorado and 8th Streets. On August 1, 1839, the first auction of 217 out of 306 lots total was held. The Waller Plan designed and surveyed now forms the basis of downtown Austin. In 1840, a series of conflicts between the Texas Rangers and the Comanches, known as the Council House Fight and the Battle of Plum Creek, pushed the Comanches westward, mostly ending conflicts in Central Texas. Settlement in the area began to expand quickly. Travis County was established in 1840, and the surrounding counties were mostly established within the next two decades. The Austin city capital grew, but Lamar's political enemy, Sam Houston, used two Mexican army incursions to San Antonio as an excuse to move the government. 

 Sam Houston fought bitterly against Lamar's decision to establish the capital in such a remote wilderness. The men and women who traveled mainly from Houston to conduct government business were intensely disappointed as well. By 1840, the population had risen to 856, nearly half of whom fled Austin when Congress recessed. The resident African American population listed in January of this same year was 176. The fear of Austin's proximity to the Native Americans and Mexico, which still considered Texas a part of their land, created an immense motive for Sam Houston, the first and third President of the Republic of Texas, to relocate the capital once again in 1841. Upon threats of Mexican troops in Texas, Houston raided the Land Office to transfer all official documents to Houston for safe keeping in what was later known as the Archive War, but the people of Austin would not allow this unaccompanied decision to be executed. The documents stayed, but the capital would temporarily move from Austin to Houston to Washington-on-the-Brazos. Without the governmental body, Austin's population declined to a low of only a few hundred people throughout the early 1840s. The voting by the fourth President of the Republic, Anson Jones, and Congress, who reconvened in Austin in 1845, settled the issue to keep Austin the seat of government, as well as annex the Republic of Texas into the United States. In 1860, 38% of Travis County residents were slaves. In 1861, with the outbreak of the American Civil War, voters in Austin and other Central Texas communities voted against secession. However, as the war progressed and fears of attack by Union forces increased, Austin contributed hundreds of men to the Confederate forces. The African American population of Austin swelled dramatically after the enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas by Union General Gordon Granger at Galveston, in an event commemorated as Juneteenth. Black communities such as Wheatville, Pleasant Hill, and Clarksville were established, with Clarksville being the oldest surviving freedomtown ‒ the original post-Civil War settlement founded by former African American slaves ‒ west of the Mississippi River. In 1870, black Americans made up 36.5% of Austin's population.

After learning in late April 1865 of the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, civil order in Austin began to break down. Governor Pendleton Murrah vacated his office and fled to Mexico with other officials. Lieutenant Governor Fletcher Stockdale then stepped up to serve as Acting Governor. In May, Captain George R. Freeman organized a company of 30 volunteers to protect the city. On June 11, a group of 50 men broke into the state treasury northeast of the Capitol. A gunfight ensued when Freeman and his volunteers arrived at the treasury. One of the robbers was mortally wounded, and the others fled west toward Mount Bonnell with $17,000 in gold and silver, trailing currency along their path. None of the thieves and none of their loot were found.

The end of the Civil War brought Union occupation troops to the city and a period of explosive growth of the African American population, which increased by 57 percent during the 1860s. During the late 1860s and early 1870s the city's newly emancipated black human beings established the residential communities of Masontown, Wheatville, Pleasant Hill, and Clarksville. By 1870, Austin's 1,615 black residents constituted some 36 percent of the town's 4,428 inhabitants.

After the American Civil War, Austin saw massive population and economic growth. The opening of the Houston and Texas Central Railway (H&TC) in 1871 turned Austin into the major trading center for the region, with the ability to transport both cotton and cattle. The Missouri, Kansas & Texas (MKT) line followed close behind.  Austin was also the terminus of the southernmost leg of the Chisholm Trail, and "drovers" pushed cattle north to the railroad. Cotton was one of the few crops produced locally for export, and a cotton gin engine was located downtown near the trains for "ginning" cotton of its seeds and turning the product into bales for shipment. However, as other new railroads were built through the region in the 1870s, Austin began to lose its primacy in trade to the surrounding communities. In addition, the areas east of Austin took over cattle and cotton production from Austin, especially in towns like Hutto and Taylor that sit over the blackland prairie, with its deep, rich soils for producing cotton and hay. By September 1881, Austin public schools held their first classes. In that same year, Tillotson Collegiate and Normal Institute (now part of Huston-Tillotson University) opened its doors. The University of Texas held its first classes in 1883, although classes had been held in the original wooden state capitol for four years before. By the 1880's, Austin's state capitol building was completed in 1888 as the seventh largest building in the world during that time. By the late 19th century, Austin expanded its city limits to more than three times its former area, and the first granite dam was built on the Colorado River to power a new streetcar line and the new "moon towers." The first dam washed away in a flood on April 7, 1900. In the late 1920s and 1930s, Austin implemented the 1928 Austin city plan through a series of civic development and beautification projects that created much of the city's infrastructure and many of its parks. In addition, the state legislature established the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) that, along with the city of Austin, created the system of dams along the Colorado River to form the Highland Lakes. These projects were enabled in large part because the Public Works Administration provided Austin with greater funding for municipal construction projects than other Texas cities. 

During the early twentieth century, a three-way system of social segregation emerged in Austin, with white Americans, African Americans, and Mexican Americans being separated by custom or law in most aspects of life, including housing, health care, and education. Many of the municipal improvement programs initiated during this period—such as the construction of new roads, schools, and hospitals—were deliberately designed to institutionalize this system of segregation. Deed restrictions also played an important role in residential segregation. After 1935, most housing deeds prohibited African Americans (and sometimes other nonwhite groups) from using the land. Combined with the system of segregated public services, racial segregation increased in Austin during the first half of the twentieth century, with African Americans and Mexicans experiencing high levels of discrimination and social marginalization. In 1940, the destroyed granite dam on the Colorado River was finally replaced by a hollow concrete dam that formed Lake McDonald (now called Lake Austin) and which has withstood all floods since. In addition, the much larger Mansfield Dam was built by the LCRA upstream of Austin to form Lake Travis, a flood-control reservoir. In the early 20th century, the Texas Oil Boom took hold, creating tremendous economic opportunities in Southeast Texas and North Texas. The growth generated by this boom largely passed by Austin at first, with the city slipping from fourth largest to tenth largest in Texas between 1880 and 1920. 

Between the 1950s and 1980s ethnic relations in Austin were transformed. First came a sustained attack on segregation. Local black leaders and political-action groups waged campaigns to desegregate city schools and services. In 1956 the University of Texas became the first major university in the South to admit black people as undergraduates. In the early 1960s, students staged demonstrations against segregated lunch counters, restaurants, and movie theaters. Gradually the barriers receded, a process accelerated when the United States Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed racial discrimination in public accommodations. Nevertheless, discrimination persisted in areas like employment and housing. Shut out of the town's political leadership since the 1880s, when two black people had served on the city council, African-Americans regained a foothold by winning a school-board seat in 1968 and a city-council seat in 1971. This political breakthrough was matched by Hispanics, whose numbers had reached 39,399 by 1970, or 16 percent of the population. Mexican-Americans won their first seats on the Austin school board in 1972 and the city council in 1975.

After a severe lull in economic growth from the Great Depression, Austin resumed its steady development. Following the mid-20th century, Austin became established as one of Texas' major metropolitan centers. In 1970, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Austin's population as 14.5% Hispanic, 11.9% black, and 73.4% non-Hispanic white. In the late 20th century, Austin emerged as an important high-tech center for semiconductors and software. The University of Texas at Austin emerged as a major university. The 1970s saw Austin's emergence in the national music scene, with local artists such as Willie Nelson, Asleep at the Wheel, and Stevie Ray Vaughan and iconic music venues such as the Armadillo World Headquarters. Over time, the long-running television program Austin City Limits, its namesake Austin City Limits Festival, and the South by Southwest music festival solidified the city's place in the music industry.  

On August 1, 1966, UT student and former Marine Charles Whitman killed both his wife and his mother before ascending the UT Tower and opening fire with a high-powered sniper rifle and several other firearms. Whitman killed or fatally wounded 14 more people over the next 90 minutes before being shot dead by police.

From 1940 to 1990 Austin's population grew at an average rate of 40 percent per decade, from 87,930 to 472,020. By 2000 the population was 656,562. The city's corporate area, which between 1891 and 1940 had about doubled to 30.85 square miles, grew more than sevenfold to 225.40 square miles by 1990. During the 1950s and 1960s much of Austin's growth reflected the rapid expansion of its traditional strengths—education and government. During the 1960s alone the number of students attending the University of Texas at Austin doubled, reaching 39,000 by 1970. Government employees in Travis County tripled between 1950 and 1970 to 47,300. The University of Texas buildings multiplied, with the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library opening in 1971. A complex of state office buildings was constructed north of the Capitol. Propelling Austin's growth by the 1970s was its emergence as a center for high technology. This development, fostered by the Chamber of Commerce since the 1950s as a way to expand the city's narrow economic base and fueled by proliferating research programs at the University of Texas, accelerated when IBM located in Austin in 1967, followed by Texas Instruments in 1969 and Motorola in 1974. Two major research consortia of high-technology companies followed during the 1980s, Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation and Sematech. By the early 1990s, the Austin–Round Rock–San Marcos Metropolitan Statistical Area had about 400 high-technology manufacturers. While high-technology industries were located on Austin's periphery, its central area sprouted multi-storied office buildings and hotels during the 1970s and 1980s, venues for the burgeoning music industry, and, in 1992, a new convention center.

In 2004, the Frost Bank Tower opened in the downtown business district along Congress Avenue. At 515 feet (157 m), it was the tallest building in Austin by a wide margin and was also the first high rise to be built after September 11, 2001. Several other high-rise downtown projects, most residential or mixed-use, were underway in the downtown area at the time, dramatically changing the appearance of downtown Austin, and placing a new emphasis on downtown living and development.

In 2006, the first sections of Austin's first toll road network opened. The toll roads were extolled as a solution to underfunded highway projects but also decried by opposition groups who felt the tolls amounted in some cases to a double tax. By 2010, the Capital MetroRail starts to operate. 

 

The Civil Rights Movement in Austin

Civil rights history has been found prominently in Austin, Texas. Many black people were slaves and free during the 19th century. The Texas Revolution was created to maintain the Republic of Texas's slavery policies against the Mexican ban on slavery. The private Historically Black University of Huston-Tillotson University (HT) was created in 1875 as the first higher learning educational location in Austin, Texas.  The university is affiliated with the United Methodist Church, the United Church of Christ, and the United Negro College Fund. Huston–Tillotson University awards bachelor's degrees in business, education, the humanities, natural sciences, social sciences, science, and technology and a master's degree in educational leadership. The university also offers alternative teacher certification and academic programs for undergraduates interested in pursuing post-graduate degrees in law and medicine. Since 2022, Melva K. Williams serves as president of Huston–Tillotson University. She was preceded by Archibald W. Vanderpuye, an interim president. After the American Civil War and Reconstruction, black people in Austin fought for voting rights and human rights in general. Also, Latino Americans in Austin fought for human rights too. In 1940, Arthur De Witty becomes the first African American to be appointed to a Travis County Grand jury. In May 1946, Heman Marion Sweatt files a lawsuit against The University of Texas at Austin president Theophilus Painter and other school officials for denying him admittance into The University of Texas School of Law because he is African American. Representatives of the Campus Guild at The University of Texas at Austin congratulated Hazel Scott, a nationally known African American pianist, for refusing to perform before a segregated audience at Gregory Gym in 1948. After four and one half years of legal battles, Heman Marion Sweatt registered at The University of Texas at Austin in 1950. By 1951, Austin City Council abolishes racial segregation in the Main Library and the Carver Branch Library in December. August Novel Swain (1927-2006) becomes first African American to receive a master’s degree from the School of Social Work at The University of Texas at Austin in 1953.

Harry Akins, owner of the Night Hawk Restaurant, is “instrumental in the desegregation of most of Austin’s major restaurants.” In 1953, Mrs. Myrtle Washington is arrested for refusing to move to the rear of the bus when asked by an Austin Transit Company bus driver. The Austin Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) represented Mrs. Washington who is charged with violating the 1945 Jim Crow law requiring Blacks to sit at the rear of the bus. The Austin Chapter of the NAACP wants the abolition of segregation of Austin public schools in 1954. In 1955, in a unanimous decision, The University of Texas Board of Regents voted to admit African American undergraduate students starting in the fall semester, 1956. Racists fight back against this policy, but their actions fail. Arthur De Witty, public relations officer for the Austin Chapter of the NAACP in Austin, secures an attorney to aid in the case of Mrs. Howellen Taylor who has been charged with “violating the state Jim Crow Law” by refusing a driver’s request to move to the back of the bus. Austin schools start to integrate by 1956. University of Texas student Barbara Smith Conrad was removed from the opera of Dido and Arenas, because she is black in 1957. Bishop John E. Hines of the Episcopal Diocese of Texas calls for racial integration and equality in local congregations and in Episcopalian schools and camps. When fourteen-year-old Sandra Kay Hall is admitted into Allan Junior High, she became the first African American in Austin to attend a white junior high school. By the 1960's, students pick area colleges and businesses on Congress Avenue to end Jim Crow apartheid. Many black and white students at the University of Texas have demonstrations against the segregated Texas Theater on the Main Campus by 1960. By 1963, The Austin Chamber of Commerce adopted a resolution recommending the “immediate and complete integration of all public facilities.” In 1964, Mrs. Cora Eiland Hicks, who in 1953 became the first African American to hold a position higher than a clerk at The University of Texas, is appointed to the University faculty as a teaching assistant in the English Department. Racism persists with the racist Cowboy Minstrel Show. Then, it was finally banned of its blackface perforance by 1965. In April 1968, Wilhelmina Fitzgerald Delco is elected to the Austin ISD Board of Trustees, becoming the first African American in Austin to be elected to such a position. After Dr. King's unjust assassination in 1968, many students hold a campus memorial service and a march to the Texas Captiaol building. There was a service sponsored by the Austin Council of Churches at Municipal Auditorium (filled with people of many colors and backgrounds). 

In 1969, John Warfield created the Department of Black History and Afro-American Studies. By the 1970's, debates on desegregation continue and the federal government brought a suit against the Austin ISD for alleged failure to comply with desegregation guidelines. By 1971, the Tri-Ethnic Community Council is formed in January to work for equal educational opportunity for all Austin students. Anti-busing movements grows by the 1970's and 1980's. From voting rights protests, anti-police brutality rallies, pro-immigration rallies, and other protests in the 21st century, Austin has always been a homebase on social activist activity. 

The Culture of Austin

The Culture of Austin, Texas is very diverse. It is known for its powerful local independent businesses, it eccentricity, and its diverse museums. Its people are known for the history of its local citizens resisting development projects perceived to degrade the environment or threaten the natural and cultural landscapes. The Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center is located on Lady Bird Lake at 600 River Street.  According to the Nielsen Company, adults in Austin read and contribute to blogs more than those in any other U.S. metropolitan area. Austin residents have the highest Internet usage in all of Texas. South Congress is a shopping district stretching down South Congress Avenue from Downtown. This area is home to coffee shops, eccentric stores, restaurants, food trucks, trailers, and festivals. The O. Henry House Museum hosts the annual O. Henry Pun-Off, a pun contest where the successful contestants exhibit wit akin to that of the author William Sydney Porter. Other annual events include Eeyore's Birthday Party, Spamarama, Austin Pride Festival & Parade in August, the Austin Reggae Festival in April, Kite Festival, Texas Craft Brewers Festival in September, Art City Austin in April, East Austin Studio Tour in November, and Carnaval Brasileiro in February. Sixth Street features annual festivals such as the Pecan Street Festival and Halloween Night. The three-day Austin City Limits Music Festival has been held in Zilker Park every year since 2002. Every year around the end of March and the beginning of April, Austin is home to "Texas Relay Weekend."

By Timothy