The 1940 Census and the Segregation of Data

As a supplement for the 1940 Census, the U.S. The Department of Commerce provided a report on population and housing data in Austin (right), proving that Koch & Fowler’s plan worked. Ten years after their report was published, 73.5% of Austin’s Black population lived in the area described by page 71 of the 1928 City Plan. Most of Census Tract 8’s population, around 83%, was Black, as was a fourth of the Tract 9 population. 

The data also highlights the existence of an unspoken facet of the 1928 plan– the decision to concentrate Austin’s Black residents to East Austin was not a neutral strategy. About 17.3% of the Austin housing units did not have running water, but almost half of the households in both Tract 8 and Tract 9 went without plumbing. Segregation as a tool to strip agency from people of color in Austin is evident in the real estate market as well. Homes from East 11th street to East 19th were valued at a third of the city’s average market price, well below the rate at which homes in the poorest white area of the city, Tract 10, sold at. Higher-value homes create a measure of generational wealth for their occupants that was actively prevented from accruing for Black people.

The 1940 Census reported race in two major categories- white and “nonwhite.” While white people were further separated based on immigration status, “nonwhite” people fell into two categories: one for Black people and one for “other races.” Of all the “nonwhite” citizens listed in the Census for Austin, only 44 were listed in the “other” category. Whether or not they were born outside the United States is not recorded, and the data tables do not provide information on ancestry for people of color.

The data itself is, in a way, segregated: “white” is treated as a default category, where the country of origin matters, while people of color are shunted to the side, classified based on the color of their skin. There is no distinction made between African-Americans and Africans, or between Native Americans or Koreans. To be recorded in the census as “nonwhite” was to be treated as an unfortunate anomaly.