Black Church In South Austin

Some of the most important historical events in states like Texas are the creation of Jim Crow segregation in cities and towns throughout the South. Yet the stories we hear in classrooms, in documentaries, and from experts often makes it seem a simple process. Before the Civil War, blacks were oppressed by slavery and put in a different status than whites in American culture. Though the war ended slavery, whites quickly replaced that institution with segregation which continued until the modern Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Actually the process of creating Jim Crow practices and policies was complicated, difficult to implement, and took many decades. It was a process that never really ended. Social conditions changed with economic development of the city and who was allowed to live in a place kept changing. Segregation didn't just happen. It kept happening, and still does. The pics here show an old African American church that disappeared after World War II. The building stayed but the community, the real church, left. When you see a black church, what you can know is that at one time black people lived there. None of those homes remain, and the people are gone. But for many years black people did live in that neighborhood and they were pushed out.