Day 26 - From East Austin With Love

Old Anderson High School (Boys & Girls Club)

Another weekend bike ride across East Austin included a trip over to old Anderson High School's football field. Today, the old building is a Boys and Girls Club location on 901 Thompson Avenue (1st picture to the left).

Shot of Austin downtown from old Anderson HS

As I rode up the incredibly steep hill on Thompson to arrive from the East Campus of Austin Community College, I worked hard with deep peddling several gears lower to make it up the hill.  I powered up the hill and passed Booker T. Washington Terraces in the nearly perfect weather conditions, sun up with a slight chill in the air.

Looking at the pictures to left, I started to wonder back to my days growing up in the day.  I tried to take from my personal experiences and imagine going to school at old Anderson High School, home of the mighty Yellow Jackets.

Weekend flag football game at Yellow Jacket Stadium

Guys play flag football at Yellow Jacket Stadium

The scene of downtown Austin was quite beautiful.  The green grasses under the Pleasant Valley Street bridge looking over Boggy Creek Greenbelt made me wonder about the day to day experiences of a regular Yellow Jacket.

I came around to watch nearly fifty or sixty men playing flag football from different teams.  Listening to the commotion and banter among the men was reminiscent of my days in college.  Small spats with referees about their calls on the play, deliberations among team members talking about their next play, and cheers about extended plays down the field made me feel at home.

I sat on my bike to side taking a few pictures.  In a moment, I started to fantasize about being a millionaire, adopting a school, and making a real difference in East Austin.  It was the kind of serial daydreaming that people often have about the East side.

I'm not sure that I could make a difference.  I do think about how to strategically be an active member of the community.  Passively, this blog serves to explore my experiences openly.  Actively, I am still considering how to be involved.  This discovery process will help me to find what is best for my talents and interests.  My first priority continues to be a good parent.  Anything additional will be something to uncover.

At times, I have complained about difficulties with maintaining goals to drink water, avoid sweets, and explore East Austin.  Reflecting on this day, I am pleased about the wonderful experiences that I've had with my kids, celebrating all the beautiful aspects of the community, and enjoying the community trying to make a real difference.

One particular community that I came across was the Major Taylor Austin Cycling Group started recently.  I learned about them at the Austin African American Community Heritage Festival.  The Major Taylor Austin Cycling Group started in 2011 to honor and extend Marshall Walter "Major" Taylor's legacy as the first American and African American champion in cycling history in 1899.

The cycling group is part of a national network of cyclist from minority communities who promote cycling as an alternative transportation, competitive sport, healthy physical activity, and build community. It seems that this is a perfect time to connect with others.

Enjoy the video below of dancing at the heritage festival in honor of Mardi Gras.

Make a comment or give feedback below. Share Brother From Another Planet blog with friends or Enter your email in one easy step with button from the right column.

Day 25 - Fortuitous History Rediscovered

"We won the lottery," said a man I met several months ago at an auto parts store in East Austin.

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.

Belt of Venus, antitwilight arch

During Congressman Lyndon Baines Johnson's ambitious early career, he referred to the slums in the East Austin area in a radio address called the "Tarnish of the Violet Crown" on January 23, 1938.

"(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!

Make a comment or give feedback below. Share Brother From Another Planet blog with friends or Enter your email in one easy step with button from the right column.