Black Flight in the Capital of Texas: Urban Stagnation, Unruly Nature and the Roots of Segregation in Austin
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
History
Date of Award
Spring 2025
Abstract
This paper investigates the interplay between environment and economics in the early development of Austin, Texas, focusing on how the city’s failures to mitigate the limits of environment resulted in economic challenges which were a major factor in the decline of the African American population in Austin. More specifically, this paper analyzes how city leaders from President Lamar through early twentieth century boosters failed to control and harness Austin’s watershed, thereby limiting the city’s ability to position itself as a seat of empire within the short-lived Republic or to attract manufacturing during the post-Civil War period of urbanization and industrialization across the South. These dual failures led to an Austin that lacked the economic opportunity sought by newly emancipated African Americans. Against this backdrop of a struggling economy, African Americans also had to contend with discriminatory racial policies aimed at minimizing the visibility of minority neighborhoods. Austin’s leaders consistently enacted laws and policies that pushed African American neighborhoods into the least desirable areas of the city. Early freedman communities had to settle into low lying, flood prone areas or locations so far from the city they were effectively rural communities. Infrastructure services, including sanitation, clean water and paved roads, were reserved for White neighborhoods. Constrained by lack of economic opportunity, lack of services and environmental hazard, African American residents left Austin behind in favor of other Texas cities with growing minority neighborhoods and economic opportunity. This thesis synthesizes original interpretations of primary sources with existing historiography of Austin and comparable cities to establish a narrative on how the history of the decline of Austin’s African American population was tightly linked to its early economic and environmental history.
Advisor
Andrew Baker
Subject Categories
Arts and Humanities | History
Recommended Citation
Bogan, Sean, "Black Flight in the Capital of Texas: Urban Stagnation, Unruly Nature and the Roots of Segregation in Austin" (2025). Electronic Theses & Dissertations. 1269.
https://digitalcommons.tamuc.edu/etd/1269
