(cheerful music) ♪ If you really want to play, these cats set aside a day ♪ ♪ Grab your duds and come with me, the Juneteenth Jamboree ♪ ♪ If you really want to spree, chicks galore I'll guarantee ♪ ♪ Grab your duds and come with me ♪ ♪ The Juneteenth Jamboree, yeah ♪ - [Narrator] In 1865, Emancipation freed Black people to work for wages in the fields where they were.

Or to raise crops on their own land.

And at times they found the freedom to practice unique talents.

After Juneteenth, many families joined communities like Kincheonville, founded in southwest Travis County by Thomas W. Kincheon.

Though it is known as a freed-men colony, of course, women and other families were welcome too.

By 1952 parts of the country community were sold off.

And what was Kincheonville is today a prospering commercial and residential landscape just beyond the Austin city limits.

All that remains from the past are a few dedicated street names.

A founding church continues to hold its ground.

And there's a nearby, active cemetery where monuments like this hearken back to Black patterns of settlement.

Several generations later, many people of color are leaving Austin.

Totally new landscapes appear in the old places we used to call home.

And the growing development pressure in southeast Travis County has placed a Black antebellum farm in the crosshairs of highway expansion.

Displacement is the name of this tune, a long-playing record in Austin, Texas.

And gentrification is the cause.

Ruth Glass was a 20th century sociologist who coined the word while studying some communities in London, England, where poor folks were supplanted by wealthier, gentry folks.

Glass observed that once gentrification begins, it's hard to stop.

Austin is among the fastest growing big cities in the country.

Founded in 1839, the population has doubled every 20-odd years.

The city and all of central Texas are booming with new residents, including nearby Bastrop, Texas.

Dock Jackson has been a civic leader for decades, an African American political pioneer.

He's seen the change from inside and out.

- Well, I grew up going to East Austin quite often when I was a child, because when, before we got our local grocery store chain in Bastrop, we'd go to, start off at Govalle.

And then we went further east.

Then we went into doing a lot of our shopping there.

6th Street when I was growing up was just a Mecca.

Of course, 6th Street has changed tremendously.

East Austin has changed and the gentrification of it all has, I mean...

It's just that people, I think, are being forced out of living in their neighborhoods.

- [Narrator] Jackson's family has lived in Bastrop for five generations, an embraceable heritage.

Alongside the family's teachers and preachers, his great-grandfather was a Black merchant on Main Street.

- It was kinda instilled in me early on to try to give back to the community.

And that's what I've tried to do.

We have this little motto a lot of times that we say: You're either at the table or you're on the menu.

And we have been on the menu for many years.

And I felt it was time for us to be at the table.

- [Narrator] Despite ample deviation, early African American experience routinely dwelled on bondage, perhaps working in the fields.

Or perhaps as a domestic servant.

But freedom did not come easy.

There was a Civil War.

And there was an Emancipation Proclamation.

And that got us Juneteenth in Texas.

General Order No.

3 laid the early ground rules for freedom.

And ostensibly, the Reconstruction Amendments gave license for a Black nation within a nation to work for wages, freely travel, and own property.

And, by dint of the franchise, Black voters elected prominent men to positions in government.

They participated in the Texas House, the Senate, and Constitutional Conventions in 1866, '68, and 1875.

- Slavery had just recently ended.

Very little education.

Where are we gonna go?

Where are we going to work?

What are we going to do in this newfound freedom that we have?

Caucasian men was not necessarily privy to having African Americans to be a part of their establishment.

Texas more or less was put together, if you will, for Whites, for White men.

And that's something that took a lot of courage, because there was probably a lot of animosity at the time.

But we want to be part of a new Texas.

- [Narrator] The lid on Black equality and suffrage that ultimately overwhelmed Reconstruction efforts has taken decades to overcome.

But freedmen and their families set out on the road that led many to join freedmen colonies, also called freedom colonies.

Like Kincheonville, they were self-sufficient communities.

And they usually built schools and churches.

Over time, knowledge of these essential sites has dwindled.

But now, Texas A&M University supports the Texas Freedom Colonies Project.

Professor Andrea Roberts guides this effort to preserve the heritage of the state's freedom colonies established from 1865 through 1920.

And this scholarship has produced an online mapping tool which can provide crowdsource input.

Texas became home to over 500 freedom colonies, located mostly in the prospering eastern regions of the state.

But toward the west was less arable land and the still hostile frontier.

Austin was as far west as deemed safe for non-native populations.

The city attracted government officials, businesses, and essential workers.

During Reconstruction, the Black population hovered over 30% of the total.

Michelle Mears wrote the bible about early Austin freedom colonies.

- There were no trains then in that part of Texas.

And most of them didn't have horses and wagons.

So there was, they walked to the nearest big town.

But also, the Freedmen Bureau was located in Austin for the region, the regional Freedmen's Bureau, which provided some financial aid and assistance to establishing schools for black children after the Civil War.

There were Union troops in Austin to protect people.

Another reason the free people wanted to come to Austin was to try to find their family, locate their missing family members.

And the ones that still had family, of course, established their communities with all their friends and family around them if they could possibly do it.

And if they didn't have any blood relatives, there was a feeling of family community in all of the communities.

Everybody helped everybody else.

Mutual support, a lot of mutual support went on all over, whether it was a rural freedman community or an urban freedman community.

- [Narrator] Looking for more opportunity, some ambitious African Americans joined large population movements, such as the Exodus of 1879, and the Great Migrations of the 20th century.

Around the turn of the century, the Greenwood community was born in the "Oil Capital of the World," Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Over time, the place attracted just the right stuff to create abundance and wealth, with the help of several enterprising men.

A former presidential appointee, Ottowa Gurley migrated from Arkansas to establish multiple businesses in Greenwood.

J.B. Stradford came from Kentucky to buy and sell land to Black folks.

And with his wealth, he built one of the finest African American-owned hotels in the nation.

Charles Greene was the first agricultural educator at Tuskegee Institute, and worked alongside George Washington Carver.

Greene's boss, Booker T. Washington, instructed him to buy land for a model Black community, which all fell neatly into place.

In a 1905 visit, Washington approved of what he saw and dubbed the community "Negro Wall Street."

But its success proved to be unsustainable.

The Tulsa Race Riot erupted in 1921.

Agitated mobs of armed white citizens crossed the rail tracks, murdered hundreds, and destroyed a vast number of properties.

10 thousand people were left homeless.

In 1871 freedman James Clark bought land on the western Austin city limits, formerly part of the Woodlawn Plantation.

He sold lots to other freedmen.

But as Austin grew larger, White neighborhoods began to surround the smaller community.

And over time, the city refused common services from Clarksville, things like sewer service, electricity, and blacktop streets with gutters.

For decades Clarksville felt threatened.

- When I moved here, there were lots of Black people who lived here.

And then there were, White people and some Hispanic people.

The houses weren't nearly as well fixed up as they are now.

And there were not the new, expensive houses that there are now.

But there was always, and this is one of the things I love about Clarksville, there was always a strong sense of place.

You knew when you were in Clarksville.

And people who lived in Clarksville felt really happy about living in Clarksville.

And even back then we took care of one another, which is something that goes deep back into Clarksville's history.

People looking out for one and other.

And that continues to this day.

- [Narrator] Wary of growing threats, neighbors and helpful friends campaigned to protect the small community from ruin, if developers had their way.

And those efforts were rewarded with an historic district designation in 1975 from the Texas Historical Commission.

In '76, the district was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

And in 1979, the Austin City Council dedicated hundreds of thousands of dollars to rehabilitate old homes and create long-denied infrastructure improvements.

And this historic, old house was preserved.

Stuart Hersh is a former City of Austin building inspector and no stranger to Clarksville.

At this time when housing costs have reached all-time highs, Hersh consults with nonprofit providers to build low-cost urban housing.

- In Clarksville, there was no curb and gutter.

There were no paved streets.

A lot of the old shotgun houses were still there and being marginally repaired.

And since I was involved in weatherization and repair, I would often be called to give advice about whether a house could be torn down or not.

By the early '80s, developers figured out that they could build condominiums where there were currently duplexes or 4-plexes just west of the university.

And make a lot more money by selling those condominiums to families who had students attending the university, then by just having kind of lower rent older housing stock.

- And they started dangling money in front of people, more money than a lot of people had ever imagined they would see in their entire lives.

So some people sold.

Some of them were turned into rental property.

And again, no Clarksville person could afford the rental property because they couldn't afford the rents.

Meanwhile, property taxes are going up.

And so then other people are pushed out because they can't afford the property taxes anymore.

And so, little by little by little, Clarksville changes.

They've transformed Clarksville from a neighborhood that initially was 100% Black, when I moved here in the late '80s, was probably about 80% Black, to a neighborhood now that is pretty much, I would say, it's about 99% White.

And, fairly affluent White.

- Definitely, Clarksville is a special place for me for many reasons.

I definitely have lots of connections there.

How deep they run is something that I'm kind of still processing.

- [Narrator] Stephanie Lang is a sixth-generation Austinite who prides in her family heritage rooted in Clarksville's past.

In 2018 Lang curated a public showing of photography called "Seen and Unseen."

- So Clarksville, I feel like, was the kind of the beginning of this for me and exploring these different, you know, freedmen towns or freedmen colonies.

I know that part of the work I do is trying to be, to listen and give space and voice to these stories.

And I felt a spiritual connection to this land.

You know, express the relationship that Pease and, you know, Woodlawn and all that had to, you know, enslavement and Clarksville.

These people were enslaved, no matter how you want to dice it, or explain it.

And it was important to acknowledge them and what they went through.

- [Narrator] There were other freedom colonies beyond Clarksville, one of which was established in Montopolis.

- Montopolis is the most historic neighborhood in Austin that nobody knows.

Nobody knows it's older than Austin.

Austin was settled from east to west, not west to east.

Why is old Enfield?

Why is Pemberton Heights?

Why are these communities considered to be the historic parts of our city?

- [Narrator] Dr. McGhee first landed in Austin on a connection stopover during his United States Navy career.

And like so many people do, he ended up living here.

McGhee is president of the Montopolis Community Development Corporation, and vice-president of the Burditt Prairie Preservation Association, devoted to maintaining an historic Black cemetery, and promoting the intrinsic heritage of the southeast Austin African American community.

Like Clarksville, Burditt Prairie lies near a former plantation.

- I mean, we're talking a handful of buildings that can give you an impression of what Clarksville once was, when it was a black neighborhood.

That's what we are trying to prevent and preserve in neighborhoods like Montopolis, and our freedmen's community, Burditt's Prairie.

It doesn't have to be destroyed.

- [Narrator] If there was ever a moment in time when Austin declared that racism matters, one was in 1928.

The city fathers adopted the Koch and Fowler Plan, the low-bid proposal by two engineering consultants from Dallas.

Their recommendations guided the city's 20th century urban development, resulting in controversial and massive segregation for Austin's people of color.

- We're not unique, and segregation already existed before.

But it was segregation on steroids after the '28 plan.

We don't want to have a separate high school in Kincheonville and in Clarksville and in what.

And it was all in the name of fiscal restraint and planning, and good planning.

It's what constituted good planning in those days.

- But of course, it caused the demise of many of the little enclaves of Blacks living around in Austin, which is sad.

- [Narrator] But Central Texas African Americans were attracted to the idea of a Black mecca in East Austin.

They came for the segregated schools, for the abundant public recreational facilities, and to enjoy a variety of entertainment venues.

Places of worship proliferated.

And folks established businesses and bought property.

But those who didn't have the means to own, they could perhaps live in a new, federally-sponsored housing project.

As a freshman United States Representative, Lyndon Baines Johnson co-sponsored the Housing Act of 1937.

The immediate result brought New Deal housing projects to Austin, Texas.

There was one for Whites.

There was another one for Hispanics.

Santa Rita Courts was the very first housing development in the nation completed with New Deal money.

And segregated for Jim Crow times, one was for African Americans.

Ironically, it displaced a former Emancipation Park.

Dr. McGhee has long been an advocate for public housing.

- Lyndon Johnson is the most important housing president in American history.

I mean, nobody in 20th century America embodies an understanding of the role of real estate in the political economy of the United States like the way that Lyndon Johnson does.

He was a supporter of public housing early in his career in 1937.

And in 1969, he was still talking about it, when the 1968 Housing and Urban Development Act passed.

- [Narrator] The Fair Housing Act banned discrimination in housing and outlawed redlining and restrictive covenants in the commerce of real estate.

This followed Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, the Supreme Court's order to desegregate public schools with all deliberate speed.

President Eisenhower's Federal Highway Act was penned into law around that time, in 1956.

And by 1962, Interstate 35 opened in Downtown Austin, providing defense and public safety transport options, as well as making local segregation as hard as concrete.

Quite visibly, it split Black and Brown East Austin from the rest of town.

Then came what many called "urban removal."

So many, so-called blighted East Austin residences were eradicated.

And the promised residential renewal did not happen fast enough, leading many families to simply leave town.

Next, fair and open housing exposed under-valued East Austin to the broader marketplace.

And there goes the neighborhood.

- I appreciate that you call it urban removal 'cause that's what my mother calls it.

You know, the actual process is "urban renewal."

- [Narrator] Last election, Natasha Harper-Madison won the city council seat that represents historic East Austin.

- You know, they're for so many folks, they definitely don't feel like their neighborhoods were renewed for the purposes of them having a better neighborhood.

Their neighborhoods were renewed for the purposes of other people being able to enjoy the spoils.

- Because of long-standing prejudice, it's been harder for people to hold on to their land.

- [Narrator] Jennifer Steverson is an artist and a student of public policy and Black history.

- I know from my planning background that those homeowners probably would have had difficulty getting funding from a bank to make repairs to their property.

That was part of what happened during redlining.

And so, recently, there was an urban planner whose name I can't remember.

But they did an overlay, of mapping, where they looked at the areas that were redlined by the federal government and by the banking administrators.

They did an overlay of redlined areas and areas that are undergoing rapid gentrification and it was almost an exact match.

- [Narrator] New development is burgeoning all over Central Texas for thousands upon thousands of new residents.

Some will take up quarters in the central city.

But they won't all fit.

So, many will move to the suburbs, claiming more affordability and better schools.

Meanwhile, today's urban planners are turning over raw earth to provide residential solutions for tomorrow.

Perhaps the latest area affected by gentrification is southeast Travis County, where highway expansion plans have put pressure on the Alexander Family Farm.

They've been holding their ground near Pilot Knob for over 150 years.

- From Day One, Dad said, "If you keep your land, you will always have a place to grow your food.

If you keep your land, you will always have a place to shelter yourself.

If you keep your land, you will always have a place to grow."

So, Dad absolutely, his entire 97 years he lived on that piece of land.

He never lived anywhere else.

So he came up on it.

He grew up on it.

He stayed on it.

He farmed it.

He raised us on it.

He insisted, every day that we never, ever sell it.

- [Narrator] In the 1820s, Thomas McKinney arrived in Texas with Stephen F. Austin's Old 300.

After lending copious financial support to Texas independence, he moved to Travis County and built a large ranch alongside an attractive bend of Onion Creek.

Part of the original property survives today as McKinney Falls State Park.

Thoroughbred horses were a family side business, so McKinney created breeding and training facilities.

Along with his mother Ceny, Daniel Alexander was acquired from a Kentucky horse breeder at a young age.

Historian Ada DeBlanc Simond referred to him as a "slave companion" to McKinney's youngest brother.

A unique bond developed over time.

And Daniel's prowess with horses led to being partnered with an Irish indentured woman, and gifted 30 hectares of land for a family homestead and horse track alongside McKinney's.

Generations of Alexanders have farmed, raised cattle, and held on to that very ground despite every effort to displace them.

- My parents, we have a cemetery, the Alexander Cemetery.

It contains all of our ancestors that we know of, plus some that we don't know.

And I always go to place flowers.

My mother was a big flower person.

I placed roses on our graves, on dad's as well.

They died five days apart in 2014.

But that is where we are grounded.

That's where our blood is.

Everybody's buried there.

I mean, that's why we have a cemetery with, you know, 50 or 60 people in it.

Because that's where everybody is.

- [Narrator] Another monument to history, the cabin of Henry Green Madison.

In 1860, he left Arkansas for Austin.

Here, a lengthy record was born: shoemaker; Texas State Guard; Austin city alderman; and among all else, the first-ever Black policeman.

Against such precedence, the Alexander clan claims that their forefather Daniel was the very first Black property owner in the Austin area, more than a decade before the Madison cabin was built in 1863.

So, there is this history.

But in this time of increasing displacement, does it still matter?

Where will things, and people, go from here?

♪ If you really want to play, these cats set aside a day ♪ ♪ Grab your duds and come with me, the Juneteenth Jamboree ♪ ♪ Man, they really pitch a ball ♪ ♪ Load of wigs, the jive and all ♪ ♪ Everything is strictly free, the Juneteenth Jamboree ♪ ♪ There's no shirking, no-one's working ♪ ♪ Everybody's stopped ♪ ♪ Gums are chomping, corks are popping ♪ ♪ Doing the Texas hop ♪ ♪ Dressed to kill from head to feet ♪ ♪ Baskets full of food to eat ♪ ♪ You can't get this on your TV, the Juneteenth Jamboree ♪ ♪ The Juneteenth Jamboree ♪ ♪ The Juneteenth Jamboree ♪ (bright music)