Publications

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves created by the W.P.A. As part of the New Deal National Writers Project in 1937, journalist Alfred Menn interviewed formerly enslaved persons and transcribed their narratives, which produced a volume of over 300 pages. The narratives recount the lives of people, some very old at the time of their interviews, many of whom had toiled in the fields and worked as craftsmen or domestic servants.

The 1928 Austin city plan (also known as the 1928 Austin master plan) was commissioned in 1927 by the Austin City Council. It was developed by consulting firm Koch & Fowler, which presented the final proposal early the next year. The major recommendations of this city plan related to Austin's street plan, its zoning code, and the development of major industries and civic features, but it is most remembered for institutionalizing housing segregation by designating East Austin as the city's "negro district". Koch & Fowler submitted their finished proposal to City Council in January 1928, in a document titled "A City Plan for Austin, Texas". The 80-page report included a large section on the development of the city's street plan, another on the design and placement of municipal parks and other urban green spaces, and a number of shorter sections on other public amenities such as public schools, cemeteries, fire stations, and a proposed civic center. Other sections discuss the development of the city's railroad and streetcar networks, the desirability of a municipal airport, the establishment of a new municipal zoning code and rules for land subdivision, and the city's integration into the development of the surrounding region. Creation of the Negro District on the land targeted in the 1928 Master Plan was enforced by the city’s land use regulation. The legalized segregation of African Americans by the 1928 Master Plan evolved into the effective and real segregation of African Americans and Latinx people in East Austin. The "pull" incentives recommended in the city plan were complemented by "push" incentives when the city avoided extending the sewer system or paved roads into the existing freedmen communities elsewhere in Austin, and real estate "redlining" also pushed African Americans east of the central city. By 1932 almost all of the city's black residents had relocated to East Austin, and the other black communities across the city had largely disappeared. This pattern of racial housing segregation persists in Austin to the present day.

The Tonkawa Tribe, indigenous to Austin, Texas was forcibly removed to Oklahoma over one hundred years ago. Today’s members still consider themselves as being from the Austin area and carry an emotional attachment to the city of Austin. In the 1800s, the Tonkawa were consistently friendly to Texas settlers, providing countless acts of assistance to them over six decades of contact. In a little-known story, the tribe provided its finest help directly to the people of Austin at the time of our city’s greatest need, during Texas’ “Archive War.” When Texas President Sam Houston tried to remove the “capital of Texas” status from Austin, after three-quarters of our city’s population relocated eastward for safety, the Tonkawa Tribe moved into Austin in the summer of 1842, doubled the city’s population, lived peaceably with the remaining settlers, and worked cooperatively with them for eighteen months to protect the city from Comanche raids. By the end of 1843 when political winds shifted in the city’s favor, the Tonkawa Tribe was asked to leave the city. In the following years, the tribe suffered much at the hands of Texans and others, declining almost to the point of extinction. Today the tribe is mostly forgotten in Austin, however, on its reservation in northern Oklahoma, the tribe has made an amazing comeback in recent decades. Now with over 800 persons it is one of the smallest yet up-and-coming federally recognized tribes in Oklahoma. A feature-length documentary, Tonkawa: They All Stay Together, currently being produced in Austin, Texas, and Tonkawa, Oklahoma, will tell the tribe’s story including their presence in Austin (Sugarloaf Pictures LLC, 2023). Research performed during the planning phase of the film was the catalyst for this paper. This paper reviews evidence for the Tonkawa Tribe having lived in Austin and suggests the parameters of the unusual arrangement the tribe had with the city. The forced displacement of two-hundred or more Tonkawa tribal members from within Austin’s city limits was the first ethnic removal event in Austin’s history. To the author’s knowledge, the City of Austin has never acknowledged its debt to the Tonkawa Tribe for the city’s survival.

Austin/Saltillo Sister City Association History (A 303.482 PE) written by Gloria Mata Pennington

History is My Home: A survey of Texas Architectural Styles is a series of three filmstrip courses produced by the Texas State Historical Association in 1980. The three parts are: European Origins and the Early 19th Century, The Victorian Period, and The Twentieth Century. Along with three 35mm filmstrips and three audio cassettes, this course kit comes with study guides and brochures. As a whole, the series explains major architectural influences on buildings in Texas (with many examples from Austin), making the case that a lot can be learned about the history of Texas by understanding where the architectural styles came from and why they became dominant. First developed in the 1940’s, the filmstrip was a classroom educational technology that was comprised of a small roll of 35mm film that would be advanced one frame at a time through a projector, along with an audio recording that narrated the lesson. Filmstrip became an alternative to the more expensive 16mm educational films until it was replaced by videocassettes in the 1990s. You can read more about the history and technology of filmstrips here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filmstrip Unfortunately the Austin History Center does not have the equipment necessary to be able to view filmstrip programs. Additionally, the History is My Home filmstrips are beginning to deteriorate with the distinct beginnings of vinegar syndrome. So in the interest of access and digital preservation, the each frame of the filmstrips was scanned and the audio cassettes digitized to create a video representation of what it would be like to watch this form of instructional media. The three filmstrips in this course are combined into one video, but the table of contents below will allow viewers to select topics that might interest them.