Object Type: Folder
In Folder: AF Subjects
Photographs of Clarksville from the Austin Files collection. Clarksville is just northeast of the intersection of the Missouri Pacific Railroad and West Tenth Street in west Austin, Travis County. The land, containing streams and steep hills, had previously been part of a plantation owned by Governor Elisha M. Pease. It is said that Pease gave the land to people he formerly had enslaved with the vain hope that they would remain near his mansion and be available for further service. Clarksville was founded in 1871 by Charles Clark, a freedman who changed his name from Charles Griffin after emancipation. Clark bought two acres of land from Confederate general Nathan G. Shelley and built a house on what is now West Tenth Street. He subdivided his land among other freedmen to start a community outside of Austin. Despite its isolation Clarksville came within the jurisdiction of Austin early in its history. Early Clarksville has been described by its older residents as a wilderness broken by an occasional dirt road and train tracks laid by the International-Great Northern Railroad in the 1870s. The Sweet Home Baptist Church served as the community meeting center. The church was organized in the home of Mary Smith on the Haskell homestead sometime before 1882, when the congregation purchased land on which to build a church. Rev. Jacob Fontaine served as the first minister. Elias Mayes, a black state legislator from Grimes and Brazos counties in the Sixteenth and Twenty-first legislatures, lived in Clarksville as early as 1875. He built a home on land purchased from Charles Clark in 1884. Many Clarksville residents worked in the cotton industry or farmed; others held jobs in surrounding communities. Leroy Robertson owned and operated a community store. In 1896 a school at Clarksville had an enrollment of forty-seven. In 1917 a new one-room schoolhouse was built and named Clarksville Colored School. It offered six grades. Early in the twentieth century developers began to realize the land value of Clarksville, which lay near growing downtown Austin. Austin city policy aimed to concentrate the local black population in the east, and pressured black communities in west Austin, such as Clarksville and Wheatsville, to move. In 1918 the Austin school board closed the Clarksville school. Clarksville residents were later forced to use city services in east Austin or none at all. The 1928 master plan of the city of Austin recommended "that all the facilities and conveniences be provided the Negroes in this district, as an incentive to draw the Negro population to this area." Most Clarksville residents endured the lack of services, however, and refused to move. The community did experience two small emigrations to California, the first during World War I and the second in 1943. Clarksville maintained its school, which enrolled sixty-nine students in 1924, sixty-six in 1934, and seventy in 1940. Sometime in the 1960s the school building was moved to O. Henry Junior High School. The Sweet Home Baptist Church was rebuilt for a third time in 1935. Until 1930 Clarksville residents used kerosene lamps, and the community remained surrounded by woods. In later years Clarksville began to feel the pressure of Austin's expanding White community, which filled the surrounding area with spacious, middle-class homes. In 1968 Clarksville residents unsuccessfully protested a state and local plan to build a highway along the Missouri Pacific Railroad, which extended along the western boundary of Clarksville. The completed MoPac Expressway cut through the community, causing twenty-six families to be relocated. Twenty-three families left of their own accord. The number of homes in Clarksville decreased from 162 in 1970 to less than 100 in 1976. Residents of Clarksville began requesting Austin city funds for the improvement and preservation of their community in 1964, but dirt streets crossed the area until 1975, and a creek carrying sewage periodically flooded homes. In 1975 the Texas Historical Commission designated a two-block-wide strip of Clarksville as a historic district, and the city paved the streets with asphalt. In 1976 the Austin City Council approved the use of $100,000 from a federal housing and community-development grant to pave streets permanently, improve drainage, and expand the playground in Clarksville. Another $100,000 was designated for housing rehabilitation. The same year Clarksville residents and supporters defeated a plan to build a thoroughfare through the community connecting Interstate Highway 35 and the MoPac Expressway. The Clarksville Neighborhood Center, the third community center in Clarksville's history, opened in 1976 to provide information and referrals to community members. The center, remodeled from an old home with volunteer labor, also served as a base for community-improvement projects. Land values in Clarksville rose with the municipal improvements, and in 1977 a development company began buying lots and building houses that attracted a young, predominantly middle-class White population to the community. Rent costs subsequently increased for the older residents. The Clarksville Community Development Corporation, formed in 1978, worked to establish community services and low-cost housing in the area to retain its black population and promote the return of former residents.
Photographs of Pleasant Hill from the Austin Files collection. Established in 1865, this settlement took the highlands above Waller Creek just beyond East Avenue (now Interstate 35) between Seventh and 11th streets. With a population of 180, it included houses and tents.
Media documenting East Austin neighborhoods from the Austin Files collection
Photographs of Wheatville from the Austin Files collection. Wheatville, the first Black community associated with Austin after the Civil War, was located at the western edge of Austin on former plantation land. The boundaries of Wheatville corresponded to present 24th Street to the south, 26th Street to the north, Shoal Creek to the west, and Rio Grande Street to the east. James Wheat, formerly enslaved, from Arkansas, brought his family to the area and founded the community in 1867. In 1869 he bought a plot of land at what is now 2409 San Gabriel Street and became Wheatville's first landowner. Wheat raised corn in a site now bounded by Guadalupe, West 24th, and San Gabriel streets. Wheatville residents worked mainly as domestics in White households, merchants in the community, and as semiskilled laborers in the Austin construction industry. A few blacksmiths lived in Wheatville, and some residents farmed and raised livestock. George Franklin, also formerly enslaved, and a carpenter, purchased land at the site of present-day 2402 San Gabriel in 1869 and constructed a stone building with walls four stones thick. Now known as the Franzetti building, it became the center of the community as subsequent owners used it to house families, grocery stores, various other businesses, and churches. Jacob Fontaine, a prominent Baptist minister, settled at Wheatville in the late 1860s. The St. John Regular Missionary Baptist Association, organized by Fontaine and originally named the Travis County Association, convened at Wheatville in 1868. Fontaine and his family lived in the Franzetti building periodically from 1875 to 1898. In 1876 he used it for the office of the Austin Gold Dollar, an early Black newspaper. In 1889 Fontaine organized and opened the New Hope Baptist Church at the site. It moved to another location in Wheatville several years later. In 1904 the Pilgrim Home Baptist Church organized at Wheatville. The Wheatville community had what was probably an informal school in 1876, attended by sixty-six students. In 1877 the Travis County Court designated surplus building funds from its sixth district for the building of free public schools for African Americans. Two schools, one at Wheatville, the other in East Austin, were built. The Wheatville school opened in 1881. W. H. Passon, a prominent Black educator in Austin, served on the school staff and later became principal. In 1896 the school had an enrollment of sixty students. In 1904 ninety-seven students attended the school.
