Introduction

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When the government encodes racial inequality into law, it creates conditions that marginalized communities are forced to confront and whose effects continue to shape who has access to resources and care in the city today. In Austin, the racial segregation of neighborhoods and resources created environmental and social conditions that disavantaged communities of color across the city.

The cover and opening pages of the 1928 City Plan for Austin. The text opens with a letter to the Chairman of the Austin City Plan Commission, introducing the plan and thanking citizens and Austin City Officials for their help in creating the plan. The introduction goes on to explain the history of the creation of the plan and encourages the city government to work with officials from the University of Texas at Austin.

The 1928 Austin City Plan & Racial Segregation

In 1928, the City of Austin hired the Dallas-based engineering firm Koch & Fowler to create a plan for the future development of the city. The first page of the report is a letter to Austin's Planning Commission Chairman from Koch, ending with the firm's wish that "this report will be of inestimable value and of material assistance to the City Planning Commission of Austin in their efforts to build Austin in the proper manner." The "proper manner" did not include any mention of Austin residents of color until pages 71 and 72, where two paragraphs are dedicated to what the plan calls "the race segregation problem."

These paragraphs outline Austin's segregation policy. Reasoning that the cost of building "separate but equal" facilities throughout the city is too high a financial burden, the authors suggest that Black residents should be "encouraged" to move to a single area in East Austin the area south of East 19th Street, east of East Avenue, and north of the Colorado River so that only one facility for people of color would need to be built for every facility exclusive to white residents. While Koch & Fowler acknowledge that Black people exist "in practically all sections of the city," they identified this area as a convenient place to concentrate Austin's dispersed Black population and deepen the city's segregation.

Pages 71 and 72 of the 1928 Austin City Plan. The plan argues that, to cut down on the cost of building "separate but equal” facilities throughout the city, Black residents should be “encouraged” to move to a single area in East Austin.

By only providing utilities and city services for people of color in this area, Black residents (and to a lesser extent Hispanic residents) were forced to leave their homes and communities and make a “choice” between moving to East Austin or moving out of the city entirely. Many left Austin as the percentage of Black Austinites dropped from 20% in 1920 to 13% in 1930.

The plan’s presentation of the “race segregation problem” is not just a relocation strategy, it provided Koch & Fowler, and then the City of Austin, a mechanism of segregation and discrimination that has been used as a way to make the lives of people of color worse. It is a racist document whose effects Austin is still grappling with today.

NOTE: Many of the items in this exhibit and its associated collections use the term “negro” as a racial term for Black people. Today, this term is outdated and derogatory, but to preserve the historical integrity of this archive, these items remain uncensored.

Credits:

Julie Huth, Katharine Meyer, Maya Perez, Eleanor Power