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Desegregation in Austin

Five Decades of Social Change: An Overview

It can be said that blacks in Austin, Texas traversed the menacing waters of a segregated society with the relative skill of Magellan, circumnavigating laws and customs that were meant to subjugate and demean them. Eventually their heroic struggles fastened them firmly on the shores of a new land where Jim Crow no longer ruled.

The Austin History Center, the local history archives, houses numerous primary and secondary materials documenting the story of desegregation in Austin in its many collections. While a comprehensive history has yet to be written, a timeline of events has been created. The Timeline highlights some of the major events that challenged societal norms during this complicated era in Austin’s history, an era that spanned five decades.

overview | 1940s | 1950s | 1960s | 1970s | 1980s | all