During the early years of the 20th Century, African Americans occupied settlements in various parts of the city of Austin. By and large, these residential communities had churches at their core. Some had Black-run businesses and schools for African American youth. Though surrounded by Anglo neighborhoods, these island enclaves functioned as fairly autonomous residential neighborhoods often organized around family ties, common religious practices, and connection to pre-emancipation slave-status relationships with common slave holders/land owners.

In East Austin’s African American community the legacy of the Black Codes, Jim Crow, and the 1928 Austin City Plan presents a bundle of ironic and counter-intuitive issues with which to deal. Legally prescribed and sanctioned segregation of African Americans was obviously fueled by the belief that Blacks Folks were inherently inferior to the ruling class of Anglo Americans. After Emancipation, Reconstruction, and Federal repeal of the Civil Rights Act of 1876 (repealed 1888), the City of Austin instituted local ordinances that created a “Negro District” in Central East Austin.

"Respect + Restore + Revitalize"