Country Boyz Fixins has been serving soul food in the East MLK neighborhood of East Austin since 2013 with roots in the neighborhood that go back even farther. The residents of this historically minority neighborhood have seen it change dramatically over the years. Photo By David Brendan Hall
Heading over to the restaurant at the corner of E.12th and Springdale, Austin’s explosive growth and continuing gentrification of the historic Black East Side is highly visible. The neighborhood is filled with the now familiar sight of mixed-use development construction, a mixture of old and new houses demarcating recent and established residents, and a hip new coffee shop across the business park with several cranes in the background.
The fight over San Antonio s Alazan-Apache Courts shows different visions for the West Side Posted By Gus Bova, The Texas Observer on Sun, Jan 17, 2021 at 10:34 AM click to enlarge Ben Olivo / SA Heron Alazán Courts resident Jacquline Caldwell speaks at a protest in front of SAHA headquarters late last year. On a Thursday in early November, nearly 70 San Antonians showed up via Zoom to address the board of the San Antonio Housing Authority (SAHA), a quasi-governmental agency that oversees the city’s public housing and Section 8 vouchers. Due to the unusual volume of people, the board chair cut individuals’ speaking time from 3 minutes to a minute and a half. In 90-second bursts, often interrupted by technical difficulties, a st
David Chapel s Pastor Joseph C. Parker Jr. (Photo by John Anderson)
David Chapel Missionary Baptist Church was born, phoenixlike, out of the darkness of Austin s racial history. The congregation originated in 1924, when members of a community then south of Austin, concerned about boys playing marbles on Sundays, established a church in a former blacksmith shop. They ve moved two times since: once in 1926 to the corner of 14th and Chestnut streets in East Austin, and again, as the church grew, to its current site at MLK and Chestnut in 1958.
With the second move, the church wanted to build a new sanctuary to accommodate its growing congregation, but white-owned banks refused to lend the money. Instead, David Chapel solicited funding from the St. John Regular Baptist Association (a coalition of churches in East Austin, still in existence) and hired John S. Chase – the first Black graduate of the UT-Austin School of Architecture – to design the sanctuary and Ol