Austin and Clarksville

Near Austin High just off West 6th St is the Clarksville neighborhood.  There is no sign to say you are there and for many years when I was in high school I didn't know about its history or much about it.

Clarksville was and is a historically black neighborhood in an otherwise very white side of West Austin.  One time I remember going there I went down Patterson St to take a friend from high school home to pick up something.  I was surprised to see the old Victorian style houses on that street.  Much different than the other side of MoPac,

A number of our Austin High Class of 1983 students were black students from Clarksville.  The neighborhood was zoned to O. Henry Junior High as well and so the students from both Clarksville and Tarrytown went to school together for years.  Interesting that each was probably named appropriately after Tarrytown, NY and Clarksville, MS.

In hindsight it was good to have such integration in our 70s and 80s era.  It certainly did not come fast to Austin.  While my aunt Sharon said that her father Noble Prentice was on the Austin school board when they ingregated in the late 50s, the West Austin area was not integrated until the early 1960s.  Don Baylor, Austin High class of 1967 was one of the first black students at O. Henry.  His nephew Skip Baylor was in my class of 1983.


Interesting Don Baylor was one of the first black football players offered a scholarship at the University of Texas but turned it down to join Major League Baseball where he was an All-Star, MVP, played 19 years and in 3 World Series, and managed for many years thereafter.

Amazing to think that in 1970, there was not a single black player on the UT football team.  Ingregation came very slowly, in Austin, Texas.  The people of Clarksville certainly did their part to make that happen.  And what did they get?   The MoPac Freeway right through the neighborhood.

Our Austin High classmate, RuthAnn Brown, from the Clarksville neighborhood died this month.  As it said in her obituary, she was "Loud and Proud".  I remember her and how she was very comfortable at Austin High and had the respect of many.  Her funeral was in Clarksville at the Sweet Home Missionary Baptist Church.

Integration didn't come any easier in Austin than anywhere else.  In the 1970s, since the first round didn't work, Austin ISD  was under a court order to desegregate.  The solution was forced bussing and the initial act was to create 6th grade centers for students from different areas to get used to the bussing required.  Our area went to Baker Middle School, then to 7th and 8th grade at O. Henry.   But that only went so far.

When the enrollment stats were published for the high schools in 1979, Austin High was 60% white, 25% Hispanic and 15% black, which was probably representative of the whole city at the time.  The Austin school board chose to bus only 2 schools, Anderson HS (all white) and Johnston HS ( all minority).

It wasn't all fun and games at Austin High.  At the students assemblies in the gym, the white students all sat on the west side, the black students all on the east side.  Again, more symbolism.  The cheer squad was integrated as a result of block voting.  But everyone seems to mix OK during the breaks and in class and on the fields of friendly strife.

I guess we were all products of our time and doing the best we could. It's not like it was any easier or better anywhere else.  You can't go home again.