Pope Benedict (at the time, Cardinal Ratzinger) wrote;
I have often affirmed my conviction that the true apology of Christian faith, the most convincing demonstration of its truth…are the saints and the beauty that the faith has generated.
If the Pope emeritus will allow me, I will slightly alter this statement. I believe that beauty of one of the most effective apologia for conservation.
Here is an example. One of the greatest risks from climate change is the loss of biodiversity. On this we all agree, I suspect. But, to the general public, biodiversity is a bone dry, antiseptic word stripped of emotion. The soul of biodiversity, such as its beauty, is what we reveal in our interpretation.
For the past seven years, I have been photographing the wildflowers of Central Texas (the Texas Hill Country). As of yesterday, there are now over 2000 portraits in the gallery, Texas Botanicals.
One of my goals has been to use these portraits to show the beauty of this wildflower diversity that surrounds us, as well as its magnitude. I could write a narrative that explains the science behind this diversity (the geology, the geographical location, the evolution of this diversity, etc.), but my belief is that I should first capture the public’s imagination with the dramatic beauty of this aspect of biodiversity. To be blunt, an interpreter first needs an audience.
My plan is to develop a series of murals of these portraits that will frame the narrative. If the theme is about the wildflower diversity in the Texas Hill Country as a metaphor for biodiversity in general, I believe that we will best be served by framing that narrative within the breathtaking beauty of the flowers themselves.
Interpretation is an art as well as a science, and the beauty we interpret often opens doors that are otherwise shut to the science alone. Conservation needs those doors (those minds) to be open.
Flowers…are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty out values all the utilities of the world.”
What is it that attracts creative people? Jobs, for sure. But what is needed before the jobs appear? A creative environment is a good place to start.
Austin began its transformation into one of America’s great cities in an inauspicious way. The Austin of today began with the music of yesterday.
On September 29, 1968, local musicians held a benefit at Wooldridge Square. Jim Franklin, a local artist, designed a poster for that event. With the poster, Jim introduced what would become the new Austin’s symbol – the armadillo. With this event, the new Austin, the Austin of Keep Austin Weird, had a birthplace and a brand.
In 1970, Eddie Wilson, inspired by Franklin’s art, named his new music venue the Armadillo World Headquarters (AWH). On August 12, 1972, a newly arrived Willie Nelson first appeared at AWH, and he later invited his Nashville friends to join him. With the AWH, the new Austin found a home.
With this event, the new Austin, the Austin of Keep Austin Weird, had a birthplace and a brand.
Places that succeed in attracting and retaining creative class people prosper; those that fail don’t.”
— Richard Florida
In 1974, Austin City Limits began its lengthy run, and Eeyore’s Birthday moved to Pease Park from its quiet beginning on the University of Texas campus. Cliffton Antone opened Antone’s on East 6th in 1975, accelerating the transformation of Austin into the “Live Music Capital of the World.”
Civil rights progress marched through Austin, as well. On March 9, 1962, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came to the University of Texas and spoke in front of 1,200 people at the Texas Union Ballroom. “Old Man Segregation is on his deathbed,” King said to the crowd. “The only question is how expensive the South is going to make the funeral.”
In August 1963, nearly 4,000 civil rights activists marched from the Capitol to Wooldridge Square, led by Booker T. Bonner. Austin’s Lyndon Baines Johnson, who announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate in 1948 from Wooldridge Square’s bandstand, as president signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
The Economy Furniture factory strike in 1968 energized the Latino community. By the early 1970s, the creative forces of Austin’s Latino and African-American communities, previously balkanized by Jim Crow, swept into the mainstream.
Musicians, artists, and an eclectic collection of creatives began to relocate to our odd little community. In 1978, twenty-five-year-old college dropout John Mackey opened SaferWay, and two years later a merger led to the first Whole Foods Store. Whole Foods sold natural foods to our growing community of creatives.
Michael Dell began building and selling personal computers from his dorm room at the University of Texas in 1984 at the age of 19. Remember; in the early days computers were countercultural (Steve Jobs named his company after the Beatles’ label). South-by-Southwest started in 1987, and by 2000 we were concerned as to how we might Keep Austin Weird.
The more I study Austin, the more I am convinced that Austin is a textbook example of the creative community. Keep Austin Weird is just another way of saying Keep Austin Creative. Austin’s creative community, that which led us out of a white-rocks-and-cedar-trees, hardscrabble existence, can be traced to places such as Wooldridge Square and the improbable symbol of a pot-smoking armadillo.
Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Rev. Jacob Fontaine (1808 – 1898) lived his first 55 years as a slave. For a time, he and his wife lived on the Woodlawn Plantation, part of which is now Pease Park. With emancipation, the Rev. Fontaine became one of Austin’s most notable residents.
From this building on San Gabriel at West 24th, he operated a number of businesses, including The Gold Dollar, one of the state’s first black newspapers. Black newspapers such as The Gold Dollar served a number of purposes. Newspapers help freed slaves learn to read, keep up with current news that concerned them, and contact family members that were alienated by slavery.
For example, Rev. Fontaine place the following ad in the first edition of The Gold Dollar:
Aney one wishing to inquire for thir kinn send ten cents to the gold dollar…J. Fontaine.
This building is one of the few structures left from Wheatville, one of Austin’s freedom towns that arose after the Civil War. Wheatville corresponded to present-day West 24th Street to the south, West 26th Street to the north, Shoal Creek to the west, and Rio Grande Street to the east. In other words, Wheatville was wholly contained within the Shoal Creek watershed.
Rev. Fontaine and his family lived in the building from 1875 to 1898. Currently, the building is a bar and smokehouse, Freedmen’s Bar. The chandelier over its front bar was reportedly a part of the historic Pease Mansion, where Fontaine’s wife kept house during the 1870’s.
The University of Texas and its students have subsumed virtually all of Wheatville, an irony I assume would not be lost on the Rev. Fontaine. He tirelessly campaigned among African-Americans in Texas to support the establishment of a state university in Austin, a university that would not completely desegregate until after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Austin History Center (AHC) occupies the 1933 Austin public library building overlooking Wooldridge Square. The library moved next door to the John Henry Faulk building in 1979, and freed the space for the AHC. All of this I know. This is common knowledge.
But, what came before? What happened during that century between Austin’s founding and the construction of this building? What isn’t commonly known? What past hides behind the facade of the present?
Edwin Waller set aside this block for churches in the original 1839 plan for Austin. The AHC has a reference to three churches on this site but little else. The AHC website says that “the land on which our building now stands was originally designated for church use and three churches once stood on this lot.” But, which churches? What were their names? Who were the members?
My search started with Augustus Koch’s 1887 Bird’s-eye View Map of Austin. The map shows three churches in this block, and two are named in the legend: Metropolitan A. M. E. Church (#28), First Baptist (col’d) Church (#40).
Wooldridge Square 1887
The Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church was established in 1870 at the corner of San Antonio and West 9th, Lot 1, in Block 101. The first pastor of the church was Minister Frank Green. The church, still in existence, is now located at 1101 East 10th Street. Metropolitan is one of the oldest AME churches in Texas, and AME is the oldest independent Protestant denomination founded by black people in the world.
Paul Quinn College, currently in Dallas, was established at the same location by Metropolitan AME in 1872. The college would move to Waco, then to Dallas, from its origins in Austin. The college was called the Connectional High School and Institute at its founding. The school’s original purpose was to educate freedmen and their children. Paul Quinn College is the oldest historically black college west of the Mississippi River.
The second church, the First Baptist Church (col’d), was located at the corner of West 9th at Guadalupe (the other end of the block from Metropolitan). Austin deeded the land to First Baptist in 1869. The First Baptist Church still exists in East Austin and is located at 4805 Heflin Lane.
Rev. Jacob Fontaine
This church was organized by one of Austin’s earliest and most renowned African-Americans, Rev. Jacob Fontaine. According to The Handbook of Texas, “the Fontaine family lived on the Woodlawn plantation near the Austin home of ex-governor Elisha M. Pease. Jacob’s wife Melvina (Viney) was a housekeeper there and had cooked at the Governor’s Mansion….” The Woodlawn Plantation, is now, in part, Pease Park.
Rev. Fontaine established the first African-American newspaper in Austin, the Austin Gold Dollar, and helped organize the Sweet Home Missionary Baptist Church in Clarksville in 1877.
Wooldridge Square and the surrounding blocks attracted other religions, as well. One of the first synagogues in Austin began in September 1876 when a group of Austin Jews met in the mayor’s office to organize Congregation Beth Israel. Chartered by the State of Texas in 1879, the congregation built its first house of worship in 1884 on the corner of West 11th and San Jacinto. Henry Hirschfeld was elected its first president. The Hirshfield Home and Cottage, now the property of Texas A&M University, is directly southeast of Wooldridge Square on West 9th.
History that is unspoken is history that is forgotten. History is erased through acts of omission as well as commission. Inadvertent or purposeful, history that is lost is soon replaced with a new narrative, a new meaning, for our place on this planet.
Interpretation strives to resurrect these lost histories and return them to the public domain where they can bediscussedandexaminedfreelyby thegeneralpublic. Why? Freeman Tilden, quoting an anonymous U.S. National Park Service ranger a half century ago in Interpreting Our Heritage, offered one of the most compelling explanations:
Through interpretation, understanding; through understanding, appreciation; through appreciation, protection.
William Barton settled near a springs west of the mouth of Shoal Creek in the 1830’s. He left a canoe on the north bank of the Colorado River so that people in the new settlement of Austin could visit his namesake. Barton’s canoe remained the only transportation across the river until the establishment of ferries in the late 1840s.
John J. Grumbles set up a regular ferry at Shoal Creek, at the western edge of the city, where William Barton kept his canoe. Shoal Creek remained one of the most important river crossings until the construction of permanent bridges.
Narrative is the way in which we understand our world and our place in it. Yet, the stories that comprise narrative are mutable and dynamic. We build our narratives with bricks that are still wet and easily shaped.
Over time and space, stories evolve. Eventually, an evolved story will become a new species, a social construct bearing little resemblance to the actual event or action it purportedly describes.
Narratives typically contain a rich and varied array of stories and ideas; however, at any given time, a certain set of stories (and memories) tends to dominate. In other words, there is a dominant narrative that society, in general, follows.
The interpreter’s responsibility is to offer a narrative that extends outside the bounds of that which is in vogue. In other words, the interpreter’s task is to challenge the public to consider interpretations that extend beyond those in current use. The interpreter’s job is to reveal what is hidden under the veneer of convention.
The interpreter’s job is to reveal what is hidden under the veneer of convention.
Stories convey something about what we believe to be stable in the world. Yet, contrast the image above to what we know of Billy Barton’s Austin in the 1830’s. In dynamic cities such as Austin, nothing could be less stable than the community. The median age of an Austin resident is 31. Half of Austin’s citizens were born outside of Texas; 20% were born outside of the United States.
Austin City Plan 1928
Austin as a society is as unstable as its landscape. In this unstable and rapidly evolving environment, history unspoken or unrecognized is history quickly forgotten. The prevailing narrative becomes increasingly incomplete.
Here is one example. Austin is a city divided. Most of the minority community (African-American, Latino) lives east of Interstate 35. The reason is rooted in forgotten history. The 1928 Austin City Plan recommended the creation of a “negro district” east of East Avenue (now I-35). According to the engineers (Koch and Fowler) who developed this city plan;
In our studies in Austin we have found that the negroes are present in small numbers, in practically all sections of the city, excepting the area just east of East Avenue and south of the City Cemetery. This area seems to be all negro population. It is our recommendation that the nearest approach to the solution of the race segregation problem will be the recommendation of this district as a negro district, and that all the facilities and conveniences be provided the negroes in this district, as an incentive to draw the negro population to this area.
And, it worked. Most of Austin’s Latino and African-American population settled in East Austin, and has remained there ever since. With the city’s explosive growth, however, developers have discovered that East Austin is ripe for gentrification. East Austin is being redeveloped at breakneck speed, and many long-time residents are fighting a wave of gentrification that is crashing over their neighborhoods. Many see this as another instance of displacement at the hands of the descendants of those who displaced them in the 1920s.
What if no one is aware of the 1928 City Plan, or the decades of battles that were fought by Latino and African-American communities to gain their civil rights? What if no one has heard of Sweatt v Painter, or the battle over the Crosstown Expressway, or the conflict over renaming West 19th after Martin Luther King? All of this happened before most Austinites were born.
Unless this history is shared by the community, for the community, how will anyone know? The inevitable result of this gentrification is a community that feels under attack, developers that are increasingly impatient with the city, and a city government that is perplexed and ill-equipped to offer solutions.
The inevitable result of gentrification is a community that feels under attack, developers that are increasingly impatient with the city, and a city government that is perplexed and ill-equipped to offer solutions.
History that is unspoken is history that is forgotten. When history is untold, a fiction moves in to fill the void. And, this “new” history, as expressed through stories and memories, shapes actions. History informs the future, even when its incorrect or misshapen.
One solution to this problem is to have interpreted history, in all of its permutations, accessible to the people. The cloistering of history within a museum or university warehouse isn’t enough. History cannot be the exclusive domain of academicians and the local historical society.
Civic spaces such as historical squares are ideal places for introducing the public to the history that shapes the present and influences the future. Civic spaces are common grounds, places where the community can come together to better understand, appreciate, and celebrate a shared heritage. Travelers learn about the soul of the community when visiting these spaces.
Fermata is working with the Downtown Austin Alliance, in partnership with the Austin Parks and Recreation Department, to develop interpretive strategies for the three remaining public squares: Brush, Republic, and Wooldridge. These squares, part of Edwin Waller’s 1839 plan for Austin, are Austin’s original civic spaces.
We believe that history must be part of our everyday lives. History is as much about now as it is about then. Historical narrative is a way in which we understand our world and our place in it. Without that narrative, we are lost.
