Because federal troops had been stationed in Austin after the Civil War, many formerly enslaved Black Americans found a safe place to raise their families in Austin.
AUSTIN, Texas — Austin’s Black population grew steadily after the end of the American Civil War in the 1860s, and most lived in small communities called “Freedmen’s towns” that were located outside the central part of the city.
Before there was a University of Texas West Campus neighborhood, the Black community of Wheatville had its own school and businesses. The first Black newspaper to be published west of the Mississippi River following the Civil War was edited and printed in a building that still stands and is now surrounded by a high-rise student condo building.
Others lived in Clarksville, which was a thriving Black community back then but is a pricey, gentrified neighborhood now.
The opening of the Evergreen Cemetery in 1926 would parallel Austin City Hall’s efforts to force Black Austinites to leave Clarksville, Wheatville and other small communities to settle in one place: East Austin. They were promised paved roads and city utilities if they moved to the city’s east side, and most Black families did.
The cemetery, located at East 12th Street and Airport Boulevard, is the final resting place for many East Austin families, a number of whom had played a vital role in the Civil Rights Movement and who built a thriving Black business community during the 20th century.
Willie Mae Kirk is buried here there. She is an icon of Civil Rights activism, both locally and nationally. Dr. J.J. Seabrook, a renowned educator who played a vital role in the development and growth of Huston-Tillotson University, was laid to rest here, as was Pro Football Hall of Famer Dick “Night Train” Lane. So many more of the known and the well-known are buried in Evergreen Cemetery, as are the unknown who were once known as paupers.
