‘Exclusively for white people’ : a history of segregation in Austin neighborhoods

[struggle4progress]

Kevin Schwaller
Published: August 20, 2015, 10:37 pm
Updated: August 21, 2015, 11:35 am

... Shipe Park gets its name from the man who started developing Hyde Park in the 1890s. Monroe Shipe backed construction of a dam on the Colorado river and was key in creating a street car system in Austin. But his marketing for the Hyde Park community, which was a suburb of Austin at the time, also included segregation.

“Hyde Park is exclusively for white people,” stated one advertisement from the turn of the century.

“Moreover, <Shipe’s> antipathy toward non-whites became embedded in the very way Austin grew,” stated a 2012 report out of the University of Texas at Ausitn. “For generations, Shipe’s planned development, the first planned subdivision in Austin, excluded certain people from some of the best real estate opportunities in the city for no other reason than their lack of perceived similarity to a social group called the ‘white race'” ...

“In many respects, the story of racial segregation in Austin, Texas, is not unique. It is the story of nearly every major city in the United States, especially those in the South and all major cities in Texas,” stated the report ...

http://kxan.com/2015/08/20/exclusively-for-white-people-a-history-of-segregation-in-austin-neighborhoods/

[marble falls]

1. Austin has a dual history, though......

North of the river is Dixie, south is home to "yellow-dog Democrats". I worked at Green Pastures, an old antebellum that was also home to John Henry Faulk. Green Pastures did not follow Jim Crow and always had black customers.

All the streets between Green Pastures and the river were first named, ie: Jane, Mary etc. These are named after freed slaves who were given land by a neighboring plantation owner who released his slaves when Lincoln signed the Proclamation Emancipation - during the civil war.

John Henry Faulk's book "the Making of a Liberal Mind" is well worth the read. The entire Faulk family, even the ones around now, is a collection of wonderful people. Mary Faulk Koock's Green Pastures Cookbook is also a treasure trove of both old timey recipes and wonderful anecdotes of south Austin.

Judge Henry Faulk defended Eugene Debs at Deb's Treason trial.

Another great post I can really appreciate, thank you again.