- [Narrator] ATX Together is made possible by Texas Mutual Insurance Company, workmans' compensation insurance for Texas and by Roxanne Elder and Scott Borders.

- [Narrator] Just ahead on ATX Together, the roots of racism in Austin planned by city leaders.

- City Council decided that we're going to pass an ordinance that every person of African descent who desires to have water, if you wanted to have utilities, you had to move to East Austin.

- One of the biggest obstructions to me is I-35, I call it the Red Sea, it takes an act of God to cross it.

(gentle music) - Hello, I'm Judy Maggio and this is ATX Together.

For the next half hour we'll unearth some of the remains of Austin's segregated past and explore how they continue to influence systemic racism today.

I'm talking about the 1928 Master Plan passed by city leaders.

It all but ensured Blacks and eventually Latinos lived East of what is now Interstate 35.

Joining us to shed light on the lasting impact and history of the 1928 Plan, are Dr. Kevin Foster, Associate Chair of the Black Studies Department at the University of Texas.

Ora Houston, former member of the Austin city council and Yasmine Smith, a local attorney and community advocate.

Thanks for being with us.

So I wanna start with you Dr. Foster, shed some light on the historical significance of this 1928 Plan.

It's been billed as kind of the beginning, as a beginning of racial divisions in our community but you've told me it was actually the culmination of several decades of policy here in Austin.

- Yeah, and thank you Judy and I loved your initial framing of that '28 Plan, it's important.

So the 1928 Plan is as you said, this moment where we formally, as a city, decide to push Black folk this way and preserve more favored lands for white folk.

But you have to go back well before that to see this process start.

So if you go back to 1865, and the end of the Civil War and the Juneteenth decree you have Black folk coming into Austin.

You had some Blacks here already as the formerly enslaved.

Then you had an influx of more Black folk, and it was in June of 1865, when the city council first decided to beef up their police department because they were afraid of too many Negroes in the streets.

So our first vagrancy laws which are like a precursor to homeless laws criminalizing homelessness, our first attempts to control Black populations and poor populations, we see that as early as 1865.

From 1865 up all the way up into the early 1900s as Black folk were coming in they set up their own townships all over, what was then Austin.

So what is now West Campus was Wheatville, there's Gregory Town, there's Robertson's Hill, there's all these communities and the key thing is that as the city grows those lands, Clarksville is another one, become valuable and as the city wants those lands, where in other places open racial terrorism, lynchings, burning down townships that sort of thing took place, here it was death by policy cuts.

So we would push in to these freedmen communities until it became impossible for those Black folk to stay there.

So the 1928, is the moment when it comes to a head and it becomes robust, openly acknowledged city policy, but these policies had been developing over the previous decades.

- So here we are in 2021, and I think it's important that each of you because you come from very different perspectives talk about how you view the lingering impact of this plan that was passed way back in 1928, and is obviously still influencing our community today.

I'm gonna start with you Yasmine, as a young professional in our community.

You've called Austin home your whole life and you have said that it's a beautiful city with an ugly history.

Talk about the bad part of our history and how it's impacted you and your life.

- For sure, so it is true that the 1928 Plan, impacts still linger to this very day.

As a child I was fortunate enough to live on the south side and east side of our beautiful town.

But the transition from the -41 to -O2 was different, right?

But it wasn't startling, it was familiar.

It was the same people, the same vibe, the same moralities, morals, values, integrity, resilience but also the same dilapidated housing, the same food deserts, library deserts, hospital deserts, the lack of investment in education and infrastructure the same potholes, the same grocery stores without the fresh fruits and vegetables.

This in comparison to when I transitioned to the West side of Austin was startling.

At 13, I was admitted into a prestigious boarding schools in the hills, as a scholarship kid and with my mother having to cash in her 401k, but admitted nonetheless.

And I remember getting to the west side of Austin a place I had never been in a city I had always been.

And the first thought being, this is how y'all live?

No one was worried about food on the table, or rent being provided, or their neighborhood friends parents being deported or which childhood friend that year would be shot by the police.

No one was worried about any of those things.

Instead they were beautiful trees and water and fresh fruits and vegetables that felt like they'd been picked that day in their grocery stores.

Even the air seemed to be purified.

See, a lot of us want to think that the 1928 Master Plan is just that, a master plan that happened in 1928, but that isn't the case.

The 1928 Plan and the policies and procedures that followed it, the redlining, the lack of infrastructure, the lack of transportation, the food deserts, the hospital deserts, the over-policing heck up until a couple of weeks ago the distribution of the vaccines, right?

And if look this up on the DHS website, the east side of I-35, we were scrounging begging pleading to get our grandparents vaccines, while the west side of Austin has such a surplus that their citizens were being called to be chauffeured to get their vaccines.

The 1928 Plan and the policy and procedures that followed, practices that followed after it, and furthermore, the racism and pure greed that made those policies able to come to effectuation, it was never cured.

It was just transferred from generation to generation with different mutations that gave us the particular nuanced flavor of racism we have in our account today to this day.

- Ora, you are from a different generation.

I'd like to compare your view of the 1928 Plan and I bet you reflect a lot of same things that Yas, said.

- I reflect as much as she reflects except I grew up completely on in the east side in the area where we were forced to move.

It was called the Negro District and I grew up on East 11th Street, until my folks were able to purchase land and buy a house on 22nd Street where I live today.

And so people think that history once it becomes history it's forgotten, but in this city the history of the 1928 Plan, permeates everything we do, every move we make, every job we have an opportunity to take, where our healthcare is delivered.

And so when we talk about the '28 Plan, it is still in effect today.

It's another permutation of the '28 Plan, they call it, they've re-imagined, how we do the 1928 Plan.

So people who were at once moved to the Negro District they are now being moved out of that district, so that other people who wanted their freedmen's colonies in Kitchenville, and Clarksville, Wheatville and Robinson Hill, now they're moving in.

And so we're continuing to be pushed further and further away from the resources, from the attention, from the financial support that most communities in this town get west of the interstate.

And so it's been a difficult thing to watch as I grew up and grew out and came back into Austin and thought things have changed.

They say they're progressive, they say they're very liberal, when, in fact, that systemic institutional racism still controls the city.

- Yeah, Kevin the irony of what Ora was talking about, the fact that people of color were forced to move east of the highway and now are being forced out because of affordability issues, because the taxes are so high.

Talk about your view of this lingering impact of the 1928 Plan.

- So an important lens on this is to look back again at the 1928 Plan very closely to understand the way people talked about it and thought about it back then, alright.

So what we often do is we'll say here we are today and I'm just trying to do what's best for my family.

And then once I've done what's best for my family we'll try to make sure everyone else is taken care of.

And then we'll say, so that's not classism, that's not racism, that's not discrimination, alright.

So we'll say I'm gonna take care of my family first, then after that I'm gonna try to see everyone else is taken care of.

Well, if you go back to 1928, and then what we'll do is we'll say it in the past they wore Klan hoods and they maraud in the night and they murdered people and this sort of thing.

And what it does is it creates this false difference between the past and the present.

Go back to read the 1928 Plan and they say, "We further recommend that the Negro schools in this new area be provided ample and adequate playground space and facilities similar to the white schools of the city.

All the facilities and conveniences should be provided to the Negroes in this district as an incentive to draw the population in."

So they talk as if this is gonna be good for Black people, we promise.

Now it's our plan and we're choosing the land we're gonna own and grab and take from you, but it's gonna be good for you, we promise.

When you look at it through the lens of these folks, not trying to be racist but simply trying to take care of themselves first, and then with the leftovers, do what they can for others, we see that is how nothing or little has changed.

We still live in a world where those with power, whatever race, whatever background, whatever will take care of themselves first, and then make decisions about what's gonna happen with the scraps to everyone else.

So that is in the way, I completely agree with Council Member Houston and with Attorney Smith when they talk about the similarities from the past to the present.

But the nuance is to say, it's not about people trying to be hateful.

It's about not understanding what equity and what power sharing really means and what it really requires of us.

- This whole separate but equal idea is more veiled today, but Ora Houston, you endured this as a young person.

I'd like to know what it was like because you told me that growing up in East Austin you felt like you had everything you needed.

You had a loving, wonderful environment but when you'd venture outside of your own to West or Central Austin you really faced that whole idea of segregation, separate water fountains, separate everything.

Talk a little bit about your experiences growing up.

- Well, I'm gonna talk a little bit about that because you've just outlined it pretty much the way it had happened.

All my dentist, my doctors, my professors and elementary school up to high school they all looked like me.

The Harlem Theater was where we would go see movies.

Now we have no theater in East Austin.

So I was very complex, I was nurtured, I was encouraged, I was supported in saying, you know you can be anything that you want to be.

My dad wanted a boy, so I know all about football and basketball and baseball, and so there were never those kinds of caps put on me because I was in a safe environment.

And then we would go across Congress Avenue and we'd have to drink out of the colored fountain or when we'd go to try on clothes they would hold it up to see if it fit, and then we would take it to somebody and have them altered.

But from 2015 to 2019, I was an elected member of the City Council, and I still had those stares.

If I went into an establishment downtown sometimes in the district to get something to eat, so again, those things are still happening in this time they're from people who are young Americans that don't understand the history of our country, and so the waiters would give me poor service.

They would just kind of discount the fact that I was there and needed support or services of water, and so when I would leave, I would have to give a big tip and then I would have to write on the slip, by the way I am your City Council Member in District 1, and then they would be so apologetic, but everybody, everybody should be treated without those stares those looks like you really don't belong here.

And to think in 2015, 2018, '19 and '20 we're still getting those same kind of stares in this city.

So even though we have new people moving in and old people still here, they seem to have that same kind of racist attitude about, Ora Houston, you don't belong in this city and you don't belong in my place, this is my place.

So that still is going on that has not gone away.

- Yas, I'd like to hear about your experiences because you're a young professional in our community and I know that people watching probably aren't surprised to hear about the systemic racism and segregation that Ora experienced in the '50s and the '60s, but this is 2021, as she said, and as a young professional do you feel comfortable in all parts of our city now?

- Unfortunately, absolutely not.

It may come to a surprise to some people but even though I lived on the west side of Austin for a number of years in boarding school I never felt completely safe or comfortable there.

And the same instances of being looked at and treated differently because I literally did stick out like a Black person in a white space.

It made me feel as though there was something wrong with where I came from and internally something was wrong with me because of how other people interacted with me.

It didn't matter how straight I straightened my hair, or how I changed my dialect.

At a certain point I was treated differently.

Years after I graduated from boarding school, I was asked by a church to come and speak to them about racism and what they could be doing better on the west side of Austin, all those good questions, good allies ask you, and at the end of that conversation, they asked, you know Yas, is there anything else we could be doing?

Is there anything else?

And I had to explain to them, as I'm explaining now that I as a Black woman on the west side of Austin, after night had fallen with my natural hair, driving around in a car that was literally being held together by duct tape at that point, I was a target and I did not feel safe, and that my drive home was going to be stressful.

My drive home, I was going to be afraid that I would be harmed.

And that fear goes with me anywhere across this city.

Years after that, I was in Mueller, completely different area of town.

Years later in the Mueller development, no less, surprisingly and ironically having a meeting on systemic racism within transportation before we passed Project Connect.

And after that meeting, this was right before COVID locked us all down.

Right before that meeting or after that meeting, I went back to my car and was welcomed by not one but two racist and vile notes left on my car.

Now, these are instances that span over my very young lifetime as a millennial, as a young professional.

And it shows that as for me as a Black person at any time and any space, I can be told that I do not belong there.

And that threat is corroborated by not only the 1928 Plan but all the practices, policies, and culture after the fact.

This is even more hurtful for me considering this is my home.

This is where I was born and raised.

This is where I took my first steps.

And at any moment, someone can tell me that I don't belong here and that I need to leave.

And that has been my perception throughout my entire life and truly is my reality.

- Kevin, I think the realities of racism, you probably see in a different light as a member of the Austin School Board.

And I wanna point out, too, that even though we are talking about the Black community, that this 1928 Plan also impacted our Brown neighbors.

So tell us more about what you are seeing now that you're on the Austin School Board about racism that still exists in our education system.

- One of the most important things is that, it's not about I'm trying to be racist, I'm not trying to, you know, I'm trying or I'm not trying to be.

It's about the outcomes, the predictable outcomes of our choices.

So what we have to look at in terms of our schools is what services, what academic programming, the depth of experience of our teachers how is that distributed across our city?

And we are still facing a reality where there is an unequal distribution of resources across the city.

So I represent District 3, and in school district terms, District 3 is basically starts down South Mueller and shoots up Airport then Lamar and is north Central Austin.

So lots of new immigrants, new immigrants from not just Mexico, but throughout Central America, lots of refugee resettlement.

And those communities are often invisible, kind of silently, quietly neglected, and sometimes even abused.

In our schools, we have a responsibility to serve all of our kids excellently, not just adequately but excellently, and we're not doing it yet.

And there are folks, there are teachers who are like my heroes at Navarro High, at Webb or at Burnet who are like holding it down and trying to get it done, but we're still operating in a structure where the programming isn't there, the distribution of resources, all of those things.

So, yeah, so this stuff is impacting folks and what I say about it quite candidly, and I say this by the way not just as a Black man, but as a light-skinned Black man is that the darker you get, the more stuff you face, the lighter you get the better it is.

And it's an absolute unfairness that we don't like to deal with.

So I deal with privilege.

In other words, I sometimes am looked at this way and I face the things that Yasmine is directly talking about and then sometimes I pass, I don't mean to pass but I just, you know, he looks a certain way, he talks a certain way, Oh, he must be this and it gets better for me.

So with our Brown brothers and sisters our indigenous brothers, with all our folks coming in, they're facing it too.

And in addition to facing discrimination around their language of origin, their home culture, that sort of thing.

So, the sorry to say is that it's impacting many of our communities.

- We don't have much time left, so I definitely wanna get to a call to action.

I think it's very important for our community, for individuals watching today to understand what each of us, each can do in our lives to address this racism that still exists and started certainly before the 1928 Plan but that just really reinforced it and we're seeing these lingering influences today.

What can all of us do to turn this around?

Ora, I'm gonna begin with you for our call to action today.

- Something that Kevin said about education, that permeates everything that we do you have to have a good foundation in order to get a good job, in order to move up, move out, do the things that all of us want to do and all of us want our children to do.

When I asked the school district about bilingual education for my kids, so that young Black kids could learn to speak Spanish.

They said, "no, that's not what we do here, we teach Spanish kids to speak English but we don't teach English speaking kids to speak Spanish," because most of the employment applications say Spanish is preferred.

That means my kids are out of a whole lot of jobs and so those kinds of things, we have to have allies inside systems who are willing to stand up and speak up and say, what are the unintended consequences of the policies that you all are making or that we are going to make?

And how do we look out to see how will this negatively impact some of the people who have been less than in the eyes of the system for too long.

We have to have those white allies because all of us, Yasmine and Kevin, we're not gonna be at those tables.

We're not gonna be at those power centers where the influences and the people with the dollars are gonna be to direct and make policy.

So we have to have white allies to be able to stand up and don't be afraid, you're going to still have the same power you did when you left, but you will at least say, let's look forward and see what the unintended consequences are for the people who we say as a progressive city that we most care about.

- Yas, give us your call to action today.

- For me, it's stay engaged and check your privilege, okay.

There is so many things happening in Austin, we are a template for great change even though we do have that ugly history, when it comes to things like education, policing, transportation with Project Connect and the future I-35, housing with our land code development, there are so many opportunities for you to be engaged to change the future, to being more equitable.

So be at those tables, do the work and help us be more equitable, but while you're doing that, while you're there, while you're being engaged, check your privilege.

With every step that you take, with every breath in your body from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep you must combat what you believe is normal and say am I speaking for the most vulnerable among us?

And I promise, you may think you're in a space where you can't do that, but you can in every single way, from what you talk about at the dinner table, to what you talk about in your board room.

You have to check your privilege with every step and every move that you make.

- Dr. Foster, I'm not sure I'd wanna follow those two, those were pretty powerful statements, right?

- I love both both of those comments.

So I'll say what I say to my UT students, I teach first year students at this, we call it a Signature Course Program and the students are hecka diverse, they come from a wide number of backgrounds.

And my encouragement to them is to not run to racial alliance, as how you find your first group of friends but rather that you seek to integrate that you seek to get to know different folks from different backgrounds.

For me, when there's not COVID, I have crawfish boils every summer.

And I remember having one of my older white friends, a dear friend, he was kinda almost choked up and at the end, 'cause he said he just was not used to so many people from so many different backgrounds being in the same space just breaking bread or in this case, eating crawfish.

And he said it was just amazing and he loved it.

Well, I think that in our lives, especially for white folk that just in your day to day lives, you should be looking at your spaces, and when your spaces are all white that's probably not a good thing.

Your spaces should be integrated just because, and whether it's that you all like to crochet or like to play basketball or play chess, or do this or do that, or go to parks or love dogs whatever, folks should be looking for building on those opportunities to come together.

That doesn't erase the need to check your privilege.

That doesn't erase the need to seek out, by the way, integrated spaces for education, but it does say that we need to relate to one another as humans, before we relate to each other through our racial lens.

So it sounds old fashioned as heck but integration would kind of be a neat thing.

- Thank you Dr. Kevin Foster, Ora Houston and Yasmine Smith, for giving us a better understanding of some of the roots of racism that still exists in Austin today.

We invite you to take a deeper look at the 1928 Plan and watch Austin Revealed: Civil Rights Stories.

Simply go to the Austin PBS website and click on ATX Together to find links and resources.

Another way to keep the conversation going, join the ATX Together Facebook group or on Twitter use the #atxtogether.

Thank you for watching.

On a future ATX Together we'll take this conversation to the next step and look at ways we can all have a voice in the redevelopment of I-35 so it's more of a community resource rather than a dividing line.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] ATX Together is made possible by Texas Mutual Insurance Company, workmans' compensation insurance for Texas and by Roxanne Elder and Scott Borders.

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