The habit started during the pandemic, when everything closed and the streets emptied. There was time to kill, lots of it, so I’d walk, the ritual connecting me to the permanence of place — the ground we tread, the ghosts it holds close. CLARKSVILLE 1) Mary Freeman Baylor House, 1607 West 10th. 2) Sweet Home Missionary Baptist Church, 1725 W 11th. 3) Clarksville Colored School, 1807 West 11th. 4) Hezikiah Haskell House, 1703 Waterston Ave. 5) The shack where Townes Van Zandt lived for a minute, 12th & Charlotte. 6) Jeffrey’s, 1204 W Lynn. In 1871, Charles Clark, a formerly enslaved man from Mississippi who had been living in Travis County, purchased two acres of land from a former Confederate general. Clark built a home for himself on the north side of what is now the 1600 block of West 10th Street and sold the rest of his acreage to other freedmen. This area formed the nucleus of what came to be known as Clarksville, one of the early freedom colonies established west of the Mississippi. courtesy Clarksville Community Development Corporation. HASKELL HOUSE 1705 Waterston Ave. Let’s start at one of Clarksville’s oldest homes, where faithful gathered until they could afford to build the community’s first church, Sweet Home Missionary Baptist , on an adjacent lot. Note the double entry — the owners took in boarders to help cover the bills. Haskell House, 2022, Alan Berg. According to oral history, Mary Smith used to stand on her porch every morning and sing the Black spiritual Give Me Jesus and other Clarksville women would join her in song. Clarksville Community Development Corporation. Now fast forward. The Travis County Appraisal District currently values the house next door at close to 2,000,000 dollars, the one across the street on the corner at nearly a million more. Far removed from the appraisals when these homes were owned by black people, or as one resident put it, when officials “put a cloud over our place .” In the early twentieth century, in an attempt to force the black population of Austin to congregate on the east side of the city, public services were shut off in Clarksville. Either residents could choose to use such services in east Austin, or none at all. The community that remained, surrounded by woods, used kerosene lamps until 1930. City sewer lines ended just outside the neighborhood, dumping their contents into Clarksville’s ditches and creek beds. Retelling Central Texas History, 2024 “The community was an oasis for those escaping the hostility of segregated Austin. It spiritually and economically supported its residents and provided a haven from an intolerant world.” Mary Baylor, Austin American-Statesman, March 22, 1973. When segregation ended in the 1960s, the lines separating Clarksville from the rest of Austin began to blur demographically and geographically. The city closed the Clarksville Colored School and built Mathews Elementary. Counterculture types also found their way here, open-minded folks looking for cheap housing close to town.  One of those was Townes Van Zandt. TOWNES VAN ZANDT TEMPORARY RESIDENCE, Charlotte and 12th. Townes with guitar, photo by George Geier, courtesy Michael Corcoran’s Overserved. In the documentary Heartworn Highways,  Townes is shown living in a shack with his girlfriend Cindy, two chickens named Smith and Wesson, and several dogs. His neighbor and occasional drinking buddy was Clarksville’s blacksmith and unofficial mayor, Uncle Seymour Washington. The outsiders bonded. Unk is immortalized as the old Black man in the cult documentary with tears streaming down his face as he listens to Townes sing his first composition, “Waitin’ Around to Die.” Washington would be dead by bladder cancer within a year, at age 80. A benefit was held at Soap Creek to raise money to fix up Uncle Seymour’s house, which had running water only in the kitchen, so he could wait around to die at the domicile that defined him for over 40 years. Michael Corcoran’s Overserved, May 22, 2022. JEFFREY’S 1204 West Lynn. As we wrote last week , Jeffrey’s opened in 1974. A decade after the civil rights movement, the cross-culture connection embodied both the change and its tension — the restaurant hired from the community, and hosted neighborhood dinners. It also brought fine dining to Austin as one of the first truly chef-driven restaurants. Jeffrey’s menu, sometime in the 70s, courtesy Allan Weinberger. The white folks moving in were harbingers of the city’s growth, and the lack of political clout made the community an easy target for highway projects. During Mopac’s construction Clarksville lost roughly one-third of its homes. Owners were offered between three and five thousand dollars. “One of the men I know has planned to move his family to the other side, on Webberville Road. My understanding. But the others haven’t definitely decided where to go because they don’t have anywhere to go.” Seymour Washington, Clarksville, 1970. City leaders then attempted to push through a second crosstown expressway, this one running east to west. Residents formed the Clarksville Community Development Corporation in 1974, successfully fighting off the proposal by joining forces with surrounding white neighborhoods. The CCDC noted all this in a 1979 newsletter, which updated residents on the long process of paving the roads. Followed by this prophetic paragraph. excerpted from The Clarksville Gold Dollar, July 6, 1979. In 1976, the city approved the use of federal Housing and Community Development funds to pave and gutter Clarksville’s streets, build a neighborhood park, and make emergency housing improvements. The funds would also pay for the installation of sewerage and drainage works, eliminating Clarksville’s environmental hazards. Almost immediately, real estate developers took new interest in the bottomland. By 2000, only 2.1% of people living within the boundaries of historic Clarksville identified as Black. Retelling Central Texas History, 2024 WHAT DO WE OWE? Clarksville today. What do we owe a community that thrived even as the surrounding city literally poured shit into its streets? Our own central Austin home, bought in 1994, has appreciated more than 1000%. We used that equity to finance our business when the banks wouldn’t, which changed the fortunes of our family. That’s the opportunity stripped away when folks are handed 5,000 bucks and pushed out.   Remember the house with two doors?  One of the boarders was Hezikiah Haskell, a free black man who fought as a Union soldier. Haskell moved to Texas after the war, married into the family that owned the home, and continued serving in an all-black cavalry unit posted on the western frontier. He risked his life for our country, and he helped build a community. Yet Hezikiah Haskell lived in a time where it all could be diminished with the stroke of a pen. Following the death of Haskell’s son at age 79 in 1976, the city acquired the house. It now is home to the Clarksville Community Development Corporation, or CCDC. The CCDC has three key missions: Maintain the diversity of Clarksville through its affordable housing program. The CCDC’s homes and duplexes are scattered throughout the neighborhood and provide 17 low-income families with housing. In 2020, the Austin chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) awarded the CCDC a Community Vision Award for the organization’s affordable housing program. More information about this program can be found at Affordable Housing . Build community in Clarksville. An important part of Clarksville’s legacy is its strong sense of community. The CCDC builds on that legacy by organizing events for the neighborhood that bring people together and provide them with volunteer opportunities , and by sponsoring the Clarksville Community Garden (located behind the Haskell House). Preserve Clarksville’s history. Under a use agreement with the City of Austin, the CCDC maintains the historic Hezikiah Haskell House and operates it as a museum about Clarksville’s history. The CCDC also works against the demolition of homes that contribute to the Clarksville National Register Historic District. Mission Statement, Clarksville Community Development Corporation. Retelling Texas , the fascinating UT-led research effort which heavily informs this piece, articulates a new way to view the ground on which we stand. Land acknowledgment serves to recall the ways that Central Texas spaces are home to many histories and living memories.  They are not singularly the product, in the case of Austin, of Stephen H. Austin and the Anglo founding of Texas, but of thousands of years of lives lived by varied peoples. Through encouraging spatial literacy, the racial geography tour linked to this web site works in the spirit of land acknowledgements to read and relate to the land and what sits upon it and has sprung from it as alive with the expressions of peoples past and present.    All to say the conversation about past and present isn’t over, at least not here. Clarksville’s history mirrors that of our country, the stain on our soil, the unresolved questions around race, the ones that still tilt elections. How do we move forward?  Nothing like a good walk to contemplate. On we go. Alan Berg, Publisher. *quotes and interviews occasionally edited for clarity. How are we doing? We want to hear from you. Take this quick survey and help us make Happy Heat better. Go see something, tell us about it, we’ll share more stories next week. Let’s build something together. We’d be forever grateful for your help, and an easy way to do so is by subscribing to the Happy Heat Substack. What comes in goes right back out in artist commissions and live shows. To which you’ll get to come! For the first 100 subscribers, we are offering 20% off forever. Get 20% off forever