In the Blackland community located in East Austin, decades of displacement and gentrification has created tensions between UT and the neighborhood. Today, as students begin to reach out to the community, both turn to the future in hopes of a stronger, reciprocal relationship.

In 1928, the city of Austin adopted a plan that displaced all Black residents to east of East Avenue, now present day Interstate 35, to eliminate the costs of segregated facilities in the city and effectively institutionalize racial segregation.

The plan established de jure racial segregation, or segregation imposed by law and intentional government action. It worked around unconstitutional, explicit racial zoning laws, forming a dividing line that effectively pushed Black residents into Blackland. The plan rezoned Black schools, libraries and other communal areas to the other side of East Avenue. Deed restrictions and city ordinances further forced Black Austinites into the neighborhood and city utilities were ignored in other Free Black Austin colonies, like West Campus’ Wheatsville and West Austin’s Clarksville, according to the 2012 UT Press book “Inequity in the Technopolis: Race, Class, Gender, and the Digital Divide in Austin.”

Simultaneously, the plan called for UT to grow eastward. While the city officially abandoned the plan in 1956 because it was deemed racist by city leaders, eastward annexation continued by UT until 1992, when the University reinforced the city’s segregation by acquiring property in East Austin that the plan had previously designated for Black communities.

Jake Wegmann, a faculty member in Community and Regional Planning, a top graduate program in UT’s School of Architecture, said the University used eminent domain power, the forcible seizure of privately owned property by governmental entities for some kind of public purpose, to legally force owners to sell their homes once they were granted the power in 1965. This led to the direct displacement of people in East Austin on both sides of I-35, he said. 

“They don’t get the chance to choose whether they sell their property or not,” Wegmann said. “It’s kind of done against their will so absolutely that directly led to the displacement of people in East Austin.”

In turn, this heavily impacted the Blackland community, an East Austin neighborhood that became vulnerable to predatory real estate acquisitions by UT. As UT’s eastern expansion amped up in the 1980s, the residents of the Blackland community were further displaced as nearly half of the neighborhood’s land was claimed by UT.

Wegmann said Americans became far more interested in living and working in downtowns after the year 2000. As people moved into East Austin, housing prices went up. Wegmann said the economic pressures created by this shift pushed out Black residents in the area. 

“Preferences shifted, and people were much more drawn to living in East Austin and were willing to pay a lot more,” Wegmann said. 

With developments like the Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium expansion, which began in 2019, and the Moody Center opening in 2022, the University has indirectly impacted rent and demographics in East Austin. As new developments are built, they often lead to higher property values as the area becomes more “desirable,” Wegmann said.

In 2018, the Uprooted Project, a joint initiative between UT School of Law and the Community and Regional Planning program funded through the city and co-led by Wegmann, found that East Austin saw a 442% increase of white residents between 2000 and 2010, while its Black population dropped by 66%.  

The median rent in East Austin was $1,966 in 2023, a sharp increase compared to $1,223 in 2019 and $893 in 2015. Between 2019 and 2023, East Austin’s Black population decreased from 15% to 12%, according to the Census Bureau. 

“Inequities have made it really hard for people to be able to maintain their homes with rising property values of homes that get torn down and condos get built in their place,” said Andrew Bucknall, the executive director of the Blackland Community Development Corporation. 

UT – Blackland Community Development Corporation Agreement and Relationship 

In 1983, the organized efforts of Bo McCarver, Katherine Pool and Charles Smith created the Blackland Community Development Corporation to combat UT’s advances into the Blackland community and help maintain affordable housing for low-income residents in their neighborhood.  

The Blackland CDC owns 51 affordable housing units on 26 different properties within the Blackland neighborhood, providing assistance for people who are low-income and of a 50% or lower median family income. 

Funded mostly by city-administered Housing and Urban Development funds, the Blackland corporation became a developer fit to challenge the rampant annexations made by UT. 

Their work led to a 1992 agreement with UT, where the University agreed to cease purchases east of Leona Street and divest its properties in that area to the neighborhood. This ultimately safeguarded the remaining Blackland community from more University encroachment. 

The nonprofit has used these divested properties to maintain its affordable housing and has continued its community-led resistance with the creation of an Austin Art Village in its own backyard. 

The Austin Art Village and Community Outlooks 

As Blackland’s newest affordable housing development, the Austin Art Village aims to create high-quality affordable housing for musicians and artists in East Austin through the installation of 10 small homes behind the CDC’s office. With one model house done, they have partnered with the Blackland Neighborhood Association to take input from residents in the community. 

“Young musicians are still moving here because they know that’s a big part of the culture here,” said Thor Harris, long-time resident musician and vice president of the Blackland CDC. “(That) doesn’t seem to have gone away with all these rich people moving to town.” 

The Blackland community expects to benefit from the vitality of art and music as the Art Village begins to come together.   

“When musicians have stable housing, they don’t just make music—they build community,” Bucknall said on their website. “Artists weave their thread of magic into the social fabric that holds us all together. That’s what we’re investing in.” 

Future Partnership 

With past struggles and conflict, a strong partnership with UT is exactly what the Blackland CDC seeks to cultivate moving forward, Bucknall said. While financial partnerships with UT would assist the organization, student partnerships together are the first step, he said. 

As the first building block between the Blackland and UT communities, the Blackland CDC has built a relationship with the Texas Taekwondo, who volunteer and assist with their community garden.

Rowan Li, a public health sophomore and community outreach coordinator of Texas Taekwondo, said they have learned the history and relationship between the Blackland community and UT through their time volunteering. 

“We like what they do,” Li said. “That’s kind of why we have this cornered outreach position, just to get involved with our community and give back.” 

The relationship between students and the Blackland community is visible in the neighborhood, said Carylan Lee, a longtime resident of the Blackland community. From park clean-ups to volunteering in the community garden, she said the students have helped bring the two communities together. 

“We’re gonna be in this thing together until the end,” Lee said. “That’s why we have to come together and live together. And we can’t look down on one another. We have to look up.”

The Blackland CDC’s desire to maintain the history of the Blackland community’s past while feeding its present and future is a crucial piece of their mission, but its future and possibilities are tied to the amount of support it receives from the University.  

Despite past tensions with UT, there is also progress and hope for future partnership with the University, reflected in the community’s relationship with students, Bucknall said. 

“Hopefully, we can grow more with that into the future,” Bucknall said. “Blackland and UT can be an example of how people can come together and create success out of what was once a lot of struggle and disagreement.”