East Austin historian Harrison Eppright, a native Austinite, was barely 13 years old when Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. We caught up with him to learn more about Austin’s Black history.
➡️ Most Black Austinites in the 1950s Lived in East Austin.
Eppright was born into a racially segregated Austin in 1955, and remembers the Black community mostly living in East Austin. In fact, 80% of Austin’s Black residents lived in East Austin by 1930, after the city’s 1928 master plan forced them to move there.. A six-square-mile area in East Austin was labeled the “Negro District” by the city.
“We grew up in East Austin because that was the only place where my folks could buy a house, lest they maybe moved out to St. John in North Austin,” Eppright said.
🏠 Austin Voters Rejected a Fair Housing Ordinance.
After King was assassinated, former President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Fair Housing Act, preventing discrimination when renting or buying a house. But just days before Johnson signed the act, Eppright said, voters in Austin chose to overturn an ordinance that was in accordance with the president’s incoming law.
🛣️ Creating Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard Was Met With Opposition.
Renaming East 19th Street to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard was hard, Eppright says. At first, there was widespread resistance to renaming the road: Many white business owners in the area were opposed, with some suggesting it should be renamed only in the Black part of town.
“Just the idea of naming a street after a Black person was just too much for so many people,” Eppright explains. Black businesses, meanwhile, were in favor of the project.
Eventually, in 1975, Austin City Council voted to rename the entire road after King.
