As is my personality, I have had the tendency to strike up conversations with people whether standing in line at the grocery store, at the airport while waiting for my seat, or while sitting idly at the park amongst parents watching their kids.
At the auto parts store, I spoke with a man who mentioned that he lived not too far from the store throughout his life. He talked fondly about this time growing up over the years in East Austin.
From behind prescription sun glasses, the older Latino American man stood under my hood installing a new battery into my car. He told me the story about how he lived in East Austin, especially, during the times when it was hard. Though he did not go into the details, the lottery winner talked about one the biggest things to happen on the East side.
Back in the 1900s, Austin was referenced to as the City of the Violet Crown. It's a reference starting in 1890, where an atmospheric phenomenon known as the Belt of Venus created at sunrise or sunset that forms a pinkish or antitwilight arch.
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| Belt of Venus, antitwilight arch |
"(T)here I found people living in such squalor that Christmas Day was to them just one more day of filth and misery. Forty families on one lot, using one water faucet. Living in barren one-room huts, they were deprived of the glory of sunshine in the daytime, and were so poor they could not even at night use the electricity that is to be generated by our great river (Colorado River). Here the men and women did not play at Santa Claus. Here the children were so much in need of the very essentials of life they scarcely missed the added pleasures of our Christian celebration."
As the result of the Housing Act of 1937, Santa Rita, Rosewood, and Chalmers Courts, the first public housing residences, were built, which were the first of their kind in the United States. Public housing remained segregated so Santa Rita was for Mexican Americans, Rosewood for African Americans, and Chalmers was reserved for White Americans.
When the man at the auto parts store said that they won the lottery, he explained that the Santa Rita Courts was a huge improvement over the housing they had prior. The aforementioned excerpt from LBJ's radio address illustrated the deplorable conditions people lived in the East Austin slums from slum lord owners unwilling to maintain reasonable accommodations.
Although public housing (commonly known as the Projects) may be considered a sore spot for many in Austin because of drugs, crime and other difficulties, it is a huge improvement over the slum conditions of the past.
I recalled this conversation with the man at the auto parts store after attending the Austin African American Community Heritage Festival at Huston-Tillotson University. I made the kids come on a short East Austin bike tour started at HTU. However resistant at first to go the morning bike tour, the kids ended up having a great time riding with nearly thirty other cyclists around the East Austin area.
For me, it was a great opportunity for exercise, communion with cyclists, time with the kids, and opportunistic time to learn more about East Austin. From the bike tour, I also learned about the start of public housing in Austin, the first celebration on private lands of Juneteenth, which is the oldest celebration of slavery's end, at Emancipation Park in Austin. There also was the existence of Gregorytown, the third freedman's community based in East Austin.
The importance of Gregorytown was that the school preceding the historic African American elementary school in East Austin named Blackshear Elementary replaced an older slum like school called Gregorytown School. The school served African American children in surrounding community along with Olive Street School, Robertson Hill School, and the old E. H. Anderson High School.
E.H. Anderson was renamed L.C. Anderson High School for E.H. Anderson's brother and eventually moved to the last East Austin location at 900 Thompson Street, which was closed as result of court order in 1972 due to school desegregation. Old Anderson High School's mascot was the Yellow Jackets, which is the name of the pee wee football team who practices at the current Boys and Girls Club located in the old L.C. Anderson building.
My kids enjoyed themselves riding and learning what they could. I was way too excited after the ride since it was also an opportunity to engage so many people and learn more rich information about East Austin.
For the next blog entry, I'll talk more about Major Taylor group, another piece I learned during the tour.
As far as everything else, I did not drink my water until the end of the day. Dehydrated, I slipped and drank a full mouth's worth of soda, root beer to be exact. I do not feel guilty about it. Rather, I know why and how to avoid it in the future. I'm not immune to the temptations. However, after having the soda, I definitely did not enjoy it as I had in the past. It was a real disappointment actually. Drinking a tall glass of water was very rewarding.
What a change of events in one day!
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