Black Worker Unemployment Rate Increases To 14 Percent In December 2012

The official “seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for all Black workers in the United States jumped from 13.2 to 14 percent between November and December 2012; while the total number of unemployed Black workers increased by 155,000 (from 2,422,000 to 2,577,000) during the same period, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

The official “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Black male workers over 20 years-of-age jumped from 12.9 to 14 percent between November and December 2012; while the unemployment rate for Black female workers over 20 years-of-age increased from 11.5 to 12.2 percent during the same period. The number of unemployed Black male workers over 20 years-of-age increased by 104,000 (from 1,060,000 to 1,164,000) between November and December 2012; while the number of jobless Black female workers over 20 years-of-age increased by 64,000 (from 1,085,000 to 1,149,000) during the same period.. Although the number of unemployed Black youths between 16 and 19 years-of-age decreased by 13,000 (from 277,000 to 264,000) between November and December 2012, the official jobless rate for Black youths increased from 39.3 to 40.5 during the same period.

The official “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for white youths between 16 and 19 years-of-age also increased from 20.3 to 21.6 percent between November and December 2012; while the number of unemployed white youths increased by 65,000 (from 946,000 to 1,011,000) during the same period. In addition, the “not seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for white male workers over 20 years-of-age increased from 6 to 6.4 percent between November and December 2012; while the “not seasonally adjusted” number of jobless white male workers over 20 years-of-age increased by 254,000 (from 3,894,000 to 4,148,000) during the same period.

For white female workers over 20 years-of age, the official “seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate increased from 6.2 to 6.3 percent between November and December 2012; while the number of unemployed white female workers over 20 years-of-age increased by 79,000 (from 3,358,000 to 3,437,000) during the same period. In addition, the officiall “seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for all white workers in the United States (male, female and youth) increased from 6.8 to 6.9 percent between November and December 2012; while the total number of jobless white workers in the United States increased by 69,000 (from 8,416,000 to 8.485,000) during the same period.

According to the “not seasonally adjusted” data, the unemployment rate for Latino male workers over 20 years-of-age increased from 7.8 to 8.4 percent between November and December 2012; while the number of jobless Latino male workers over 20 years-of-age increased by 84,000 (from 1,050,000 to 1,134,000) during the same period. The “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for Latina female workers over 20 years-of-age was still 9.4 percent in December 2012; while the “not seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for Latino youth between 16 and 19 years-of-age was still 26.6 percent in that same month.

According to the “seasonally adjusted” data, the official jobless rate for all Latino workers in the United States (male, female and youth) was still 9.6 percent in November 2012; while the total number of unemployed Latino workers in the United States (male, female and youth) increased by 65,000 (from 946,000 to 1,011,000) between November and December 2012. In addition, between November and December 2012, the unemployment rate for all Asian-American workers increased from 6.4 to 6.6 percent, according to the “not seasonally adjusted” data; while the number of unemployed Asian-American workers increased by 31,000 (from 530,000 to 561,000) during the same period.

The official “seasonally adjusted” jobless rate for all female workers in the United States over 16 years-of-age increased from 7.6 to 7.8 percent between November and December 2012; while the total number of unemployed female workers over 16 years-of-age increased by 209,000 (from 5,512,000 to 5,721,000) during the same period. In addition, the unemployment rate for female workers over 20 years-of-age increased from 7 to 7.3 percent between November and December 2012; while the number of jobless female workers over 20 years-of-age increased by 187,000 (from 4,918,000 to 5,105,000) during the same period.

The official “seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for all youths between 16 and 19 years-of-age in the United States was still 23.5 percent in December 2012; while the “not seasonally adjusted” unemployment rate for all male workers in the United States over 16 years-of-age increased from 7.5 to 7.9 percent between November and December 2012.

Between November and December 2012, the total number of unemployed U.S. workers increased by 164,000 (from 12,042,000 to 12,206,000) according to the “seasonally adjusted” data, while the official jobless rate for all U.S. workers was still 7.8 percent in December 2012.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ January 4, 2013 press release:

“…Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult women (7.3 percent) and blacks (14.0 percent) edged up in December…

“In December, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was essentially unchanged at 4.8 million and accounted for 39.1 percent of the unemployed…The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers), at 7.9 million, changed little in December. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job.

“In December, 2.6 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force…These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.

“Among the marginally attached, there were 1.1 million discouraged workers in December…Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them…

"Employment in clothing and accessories stores fell by 19,000…Employment in…mining and logging, transportation and warehousing, financial activities, professional and business services, and government, showed little change over the month…”

Justice vs. Foundations and Philanthropy

In a statement before the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations in 1915, a miner representing Colorado miners, John R. Lawson, indicated why acceptance of tax-exempt "philanthropic" grants, from institutionally racist foundations (like the MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, George Soros's Open Society Institute foundation, the Gates Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Knight Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Lannan Foundation, etc. and other liberal establishment foundations), by U.S. alternative media/left gatekeeper groups, left-liberal NGOs and left-liberal think-tanks is no substitute for creating a radically democratized society in the United States--which finally ends institutional racism and provides racial and economic justice for U.S. working-class people 2020:

"There is another cause of industrial discontent. This is the skillful attempt that is being made to substitute Philanthropy for Justice. There is not one of these foundations, now spreading their millions over the world in showy generosity, that does not draw these millions from some form of industrial injustice. It is not their money that these lords of commercialized virtue are spending, but the withheld wages of the American working-class."

Hidden History of Texas--1920-1930--Part 7

(This article was originally posted on The Rag Blog on Dec. 12, 2012)

Between 1920 and 1930, the number of people living in Texas increased from over 4.6 million to over 5.8 million; and the percentage of Texas residents who now lived in urban towns and cities with populations above 2,500 people increased from 34 to 41 percent. By 1930, for example, over 292,000 people lived in Houston, over 260,000 people lived in Dallas, over 231,000 people lived in San Antonio and over 163,000 people lived in Fort Worth—although the number of people living in Austin in 1930 was still less than 54,000.

But between 1920 and 1930 the percentage of farmers in Texas who were now just tenant farmers also increased to 61 percent. And in Texas during “The Roaring Twenties,” as Randolph Campbell’s Gone To Texas recalled:

“Thousands upon thousands of farmers continued to live in destructive poverty as tenants and sharecroppers. Giant corporations still wielded monopoly power because anti-trust and regulatory laws had always aimed more at `foreign’ businesses…Laws protecting children in industry…went unenforced…The doctrine of white supremacy ruled race relations, and in South Texas Anglo bosses exploited Texans of Mexican descent politically and economically…”

  Alwyn Barr’s Black Texans, for example, observed:

“…Mob violence increased in the early 1920s with the rise of the new Ku Klux Klan…Klansmen branded a black bellhop in Dallas with acid and castrated a light-skinned Negro accused of relations with a white woman. They raided the office of the Houston Informer and threatened the Dallas Express, both black papers. Hooded groups beat a black youth in Texarkana , removed two Negroes from the Denton jail to flog them, and forced black cotton pickers near Corsicana to end their strike for higher wages…”

  In addition, during the 1920s, “the new Klan, which claimed over 100,000 members in the state, proved powerful enough…to help elect Earle B. Mayfield, a Klansman, to the United States Senate from Texas,” the same book noted. According to Gone To Texas :

“The KKK arrived in Texas in September 1920 when a kleagle came to Houston and recruited 100 men into the state’s first local chapter. `The initial roster represented literally a glossary of Houston ’s Who’s Who,’ wrote one observer. The charter members were silk-stocking men from the banks, business houses, and professions…From its Houston beginning, the Klan spread rapidly across the state. In January 1922, when membership reached more than 75,000, Texas was organized as a realm of the `Invisible Empire’ under its own grand dragon, A.D. Ellis, an Episcopal priest from Beaumont . That same year women…obtained a Texas charter as the Women of the Invisible Empire of America. In June 1923, 1,500 masked and robed klanswomen held a parade through Fort Worth . Eventually male membership alone stood at approximately 150,000.”

  Some opposition to the KKK’s growing influence in Texas electoral politics began to apparently develop within Texas white power structure and political establishment circles (who then backed state-wide candidates that were able to defeat some KKK members who ran against them) by 1924. But as Merline Pitre’s In Struggle Against Jim Crow noted:

“The Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s was a viable force in Houston and throughout the state. In Texas , this vigilante group occupied a position of power and influence unequaled in any other state, giving Texas the designation of Star Klan State . Houston was dubbed as the Star Klan City …In 1921, Houston Klansmen, led by Deputy Sheriff George E. Kimbro, attacked and castrated a black dentist and beat a white lawyer who represented him. Several years later, the Klan tarred and feathered a black physician. In 1928, a Houston mob dragged a black man, accused of killing a white police officer, from his bed in a local hospital and hanged him from a bridge—a murder for which no one was ever convicted. Additionally, a Klan newspaper, Colonel Mayfield’s Weekly, circulated throughout the city.

“[In Houston ] in 1920, backed by a city ordinance, the American Legion excluded blacks from the annual Armistice Day parade. Blacks also were prohibited from voting in the municipal elections of February 1921. In 1923 and 1924, respectively, blacks were banned from standing in the same lines as whites to purchase stamps at the post office and to pay property taxes at the Harris County Courthouse. In 1925, the Electric Company excluded blacks from riding its buses, while in 1926, the Majestic Theater refused to admit blacks on weekends.”

  In 1921, Houston ’s Democratic Party also passed “a resolution allowing only whites to vote in the upcoming Democratic primary;” and in 1923 the Texas state legislature passed a law stating that “only white Democrats and none other” could vote in primary elections, according to the same book.

Between 1920 and 1930, the KKK was also visibly active on the streets of Austin, Texas. In 1921, for example, “500 white-robed and hooded Ku Klux Klansmen from Austin and San Antonio marched single file in silence up and down Congress Avenue, while thousands of spectators looked on,” according to David Humphrey’s Austin: An Illustrated History. The same book also observed:

“ Capital City Klan No. 81 was organized in 1921 and a year later had 1,500 members including the sheriff of Travis County and apparently other highly placed city and county police officials. The Klan thrived in Austin in the early and mid-1920s…In the mid-1920s the Klan even purchased a sizable piece of property off South Congress Avenue and erected a hall or `Klan haven’…”

  So, not surprisingly, Austin’s “1928 city plan recommended that East Austin be designated a `Negro district’ and that municipal services for blacks, such as schools and parks, be confined to this district” and so “thirteen-acre Rosewood Park in East Austin provided recreational facilities for blacks, but other city parks were closed to them,” according to Austin: An Illustrated History.

Concert To Free Leonard Peltier Now! In NYC's Beacon Theatre

Democratic President Obama has still not yet either pardoned or signed a clemency order that would immediately release U.S. political prisoner Leonard Peltier from the Coleman federal prison cell in Florida where he is now locked up.

But a concert to demand that Leonard Peltier now be released by the Democratic Obama Administration is being held in Manhattan on December 14, 2012 in the Beacon Theatre. And the following video of a 1995 public domain protest folk song about the Leonard Peltier Case, "Free Leonard Peltier!", indicates why his release is long overdue:

Australian Anti-War Activist Joan Coxsedge's November 25, 2012 Letter

(The following letter from Australian anti-war and Latin American solidarity activist Joan Coxsedge—who is also a former member of the Victoria state parliament--originally appeared in an Australian-Cuban solidarity group’s newsletter).

“November 25, 2012
“Dear Comrades

“Merry Christmas anyone? It helps if you take happy pills and can block out the world in these barbarous times.

“As I write, a fraught ‘truce’ has been negotiated between Hamas and Israel, a hopelessly one-sided arrangement demanding Palestinians cease firing their rockets when Hamas has no control over those who launch them. But what did Israelis agree to? Did they agree to end their ruthless air, sea and land blockade that has turned Gaza into a living hell, the most environmentally devastated piece of land in the world? Did they agree to dismantle their illegal settlements and hand back Palestinian land and their right to water? To stop targeted assassinations?

“Of course they didn’t, because in our world the ‘righteous’ can kill with impunity. An extension of the infamous Plan D carried out in the 1940s just before Israel was created. A scheme to get rid of the people of Palestine when 369 villages were attacked and people were thrown out of their houses and fled in terror. The beginning of the genocide and longest military occupation in modern times, all of it on the historical record. And still happening. Before our eyes.

“When Netanyahu decided to incinerate Ahmad Jabari with a hi-tech weapon and butcher the Palestinian women, men and children of Gaza and destroy what’s left of their dilapidated infrastructure, the White House, US Senate and House of Reps all promptly supported Netanyahu’s war crimes as an ‘exercise in self-defence’. And Obama went out of his way to congratulate Netanyahu for his ‘restraint’ and offered more money for his killing machines while his White House adviser trumpeted that ‘the White House wants the same things as Israel wants’, spelling out that superpower US is a puppet of Israel and as we’re a puppet of the US that makes us a puppet of a puppet. Netanyahu is a fascist, Washington’s fascist. Remember that, every time you hear the weasel words of successive Australian governments and from the mouths of our weasel foreign ministers.

“The sickness of America was clearly evident in its recent election, a revolting spectacle where the two presidential contenders engaged in a frantic and demeaning scramble for money. Campaign finances in the US have become so corrupted it’s not the ‘elected’ members now holding office but billionaires and their cronies. A strong warning that when big money controls the political agenda, a nominal democracy can so easily mutate into a plutocracy that can so easily mutate into fascism.

“The spectre of fascism is now creeping into parts of Europe, more immediately into Greece, buffeted by the brutal imposition of neo-liberal austerity measures, punishing working class Greeks for the sins of the criminal class that fleeced them, entrenching the wealthy and relegating the poor to subservience.

“Fascism thrives on shadows and dark places and feeds on insecurity and isn’t a word to be thrown around lightly against any person or idea we find morally repugnant. Fascism is a real word with real meaning and has horrendous consequences as we know only too well. It elevates hyper-macho posturing and the military with their martial uniforms, symbols and language and expropriates the language of the working class while deliberately obscuring the real causes of their misery, and is often supported by religious hierarchies, the capitalist class and financiers of industry.

“Back in the 1930s, minus an Internet and hi-tech paraphernalia, men and women from around the world knew these dark forces had to be stopped and en-masse they joined International Brigades and travelled to Spain without their government’s support. About 35,000 of them from 52 countries who saw what was happening in Spain and was about to happen in Italy and Germany. No conscription or apparatus of the state to tell them that democracy was threatened. Sadly they failed. Germany and Italy, given military and material support from capitalists everywhere – including from Britain and the US - gave aid to the Spanish Falangists and throttled a noble resistance, plunging Spain into a long darkness and the world into the nightmare of WW2. No-one can say whether Greece will be the ‘tipping point’ for a revival of fascism in Europe, but something should be done because the situation is getting worse with each EU demand for more austerity.

“Not great times for honest people. In 2008, Lehmann Brothers was allowed to collapse, its assets swallowed up by other giant banks while dodgy hedge funds continued to make billions. Obama and Romney’s obscenely funded election with almost identical foreign policies were in thrall to lobby groups ensuring any changes to corporate regulations remained toothless. With unemployment rising and civil unrest simmering, central banks fight for interest payments and government assets await further privatisation. Wars and economic restructuring are useful tools for their deadly games. Unless we stop them, the elites and their New World Order will survive and flourish, but we won’t, nor will our wonderful natural world.

“After all these years, the 1962 Cuban missile crisis is still debated. The standard US account blames the Russians (naturally) for an act of aggression when they began installing missile bases in Cuba, with Kennedy presented as an heroic statesman who takes us to the brink but manages to avert WW3 by sheer determination. The US version conveniently omits to mention the installation of US missile bases in Turkey and Italy the previous year, an act of aggression that destabilised the fragile balance of power. Seen in that context, it was the US not the Soviets which caused the crisis. Reason prevailed and we survived and so, thankfully, did Cuba. Viva!

"Joan Coxsedge"

`Mother Bloor (We Are Many)'

(chorus)
"We are many, they are few"
She told the working poor
And what she learned, she wrote all down
In "The Life of Mother Bloor."

(verses)
Ella Reeve was born
In 1862
And as a child met Walt Whitman
On the ferry.
Her mother died
When she was seventeen
And at nineteen, she married.
Her husband told her of
The Molly Maguires' Trial
And nineteen innocent miners hanged.
Then she had three kids
And when two of them died
Her own life filled with pain.

She fought for the right
Of women to vote
And joined the Knights of Labor.
Then she divorced
And moved to New York
And heard Debs speak for workers in America.
She organized for
De Leon's group
But felt it ignored the daily fight.
So when she was forty
In 1901
She joined Debs' Socialists one night. (chorus)

When miners struck
In 1902
She raised money for their families.
And she organized the sale
Of "Appeal to Reason"
And spoke against child labor and lynching.
When brickmakers struck
She was there
And organized in Connecticut.
And when Upton Sinclair
Published "The Jungle"
Her research proved true his book.

She worked with Katharine
Hepburn's mother
A leader of suffragettes.
Then organized in Ohio
Where thirteen socialist mayors
Folks did elect.
She talked to miners
In West Virginia
And there met Mother Jones.
And when men attacked
The D.C. women's march
Ma Bloor marched and
Heard her sisters' moan. (chorus)

She was in Calumet,
Michigan
And saw goons kill seventy-three kids.
And when she helped
Ludlow miners
Saw Rockefeller's troops kill kids again.
She opposed World War I
And worked to free
All Wobblies who were jailed.
Then helped form
The Workers Party
After seeing why Socialists had failed.

She worked to free
Tom Mooney
And save Sacco and Vanzetti.
And on the night
Of their execution
Was arrested by Boston police.
With thousands she marched
At their funeral
And stood next to Sacco's widow
At the New York rally.
And in the Great Depression
Of the 1930s
She helped unionize industry. (chorus)

She fought against
Fascism's rise
And tried to stop a new world war.
All her life she fought
For all workers
And to free those who history books ignored.
So remember Mother Bloor
And learn from Mother Bloor
If still you are ruled by the few.
And organize like Ma Bloor
And fight like Ma Bloor
Until workers create a world that is new. (chorus)

Hidden History of Texas--1890-1920--Part 6

(This article was originally posted on The Rag Blog on May 29, 2012)

During the period between 1890 and 1920 there was much dissatisfaction among Texas workers and farmers with how capitalist society treated them. So it’s not surprising that political support for an anti-corporate electoral alternative third-party to the pro-corporate Democrats and Republicans -- the Socialist Party -- began to develop in Texas by the beginning of the 20th century. As F. Ray Marshall’s Labor in the South noted:

“The Texas Socialist Party... was a member of the radical wing of the national party. E.O. Meitzen of Hallettsville, a member of the Grange, who helped organize the Farmers’ Alliance in Fayette County, and edited a German Populist paper (Der Anzeiger) during the 1890’s, was an active Socialist, and was secretary of the Renters Union, formed by Texas Socialists around 1909. Meitzen’s activities were continued by Thomas Hickey, a lecturer for the Social-Democratic Party in the south during the early 1900’s. Hickey published a magazine, The Rebel, from Hallettsville for many years... In 1912, Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist candidate for President of the United States [got] about 9 percent of the Texas vote...”

  According to the labordallas.org website, the circulation of The Rebel “went over 20,000” before it “was suppressed by the United States government as World War I began and never was reborn.” The same Texas labor history website also recalled that Texas Socialist Party leader Meitzen “was elected County Judge in LaVaca County and... gained 11.7 percent of the votes in the governor’s race” in Texas in 1914, “was shot by a sheriff he had accused of `losing’ important records concerning county monies” that same year, and “survived the shooting and other physical assaults” before he “died in Houston in 1934.”

Dissatisfied feminist white women in Texas also began to organize during the 1890 to 1920 historical period. As Randolph Campbell’s Gone To Texas observed, in Texas the white feminist movement "stirred slightly in 1903 with formation of the Texas Equal Suffrage Association” and “suffragettes by 1916 formed 80 local chapters and claimed 9,500 members for their statewide organization.”

In Austin, the Austin Woman’s Suffrage Association was founded in 1908; and when the wife of Austin’s then-Superintendent of Schools, Jane McCallum, became the Austin Woman’s Suffrage Association’s president in 1915, this group had 80 members.

So, not surprisingly, the Texas state legislature soon passed an act in 1918 which allowed white women in Texas to also vote in Texas primary elections; and after a May 1919 referendum in Texas, white women also were given the right to vote in U.S. presidential elections, when Texas became the ninth state to ratify the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Ironically, “among those Austinites who supported the women’s voting rights movement was Adele Burleson, wife of Woodrow Wilson’s postmaster general [whose] husband urged the president to introduce racial segregation into the federal civil service,” according to David Humphrey’s Austin: An Illustrated History.

The same book also observed that former Austin Mayor A.P. Wooldridge “similarly sought to expand the rights of women while he limited those of blacks” and that “he advised a group of Austin blacks in 1919 [to] `keep out of politics’" and told them not to forget "that whites `will tolerate no idea of social equality.’”

After the Democratic Wilson Administration decided to involve the U.S. military in the European war between UK imperialism and German imperialism in 1917 -- over 197,000 people from Texas were either drafted into the military or volunteered during World War I. And according to Alwyn Barr’s Black Texans, “Negroes provided about 25 percent -- 31,000 men -- of the troops called up from Texas, though they formed only 16 percent of the state’s population” at that time.

Most draftees and volunteers from Texas served in the U.S. Army during World War I and “more than 5,000 men and 1 nurse” from Texas “died while in the service, most losing their lives in the great influenza epidemic of 1918,” according to Gone To Texas.

And the free speech rights and civil liberties of anti-war activists and dissidents in Texas who opposed U.S. military intervention in Europe during World War I were curtailed after the U.S. Congress passed its Declaration of War in 1917. According to the same book, “a special session of the... state legislature... passed espionage and sedition laws that made it a crime to criticize the U.S. government, its officials, the flag, or soldiers;” and the University of Texas regents "fired a well-known anti-war professor."

African-American soldiers who were stationed in Texas after the U.S. military entered World War I also apparently challenged the racism of the Houston police department and white supremacy in Texas in a militant way in August 1917. As Gone To Texas recalled:

“On Aug. 23, 1917, Houston police arrested a black soldier and then fired at and arrested a black military policeman who went to inquire about the first serviceman…The men still in camp... decided to march on the police station to secure the MP’s release... Gathering rifles, the soldiers... moved toward downtown Houston... killing 15 whites and wounding 12 others. Four of the soldiers also died...”

  But the U.S. Army subsequently found 110 of the African-American soldiers involved in this apparently anti-racist protest “guilty of mutiny and riot” and “19 were hanged and 63 received life sentences,” according to the same book.

The police had also “roughed up [a] black woman" on Aug. 23, 1917, according to Black Texans, and the incident “stimulated a retaliatory raid by about 150” African-American troops. So, not surprisingly, after World War I ended, African-Americans in Texas “organized an Equal Rights Association to promote democratic government and equal justice” in Texas in 1919 -- the same year that there were also anti-black race riots by some white Texans in Port Arthur and Longview (where homes of African-Americans were burned), according to the same book.

And according to Merline Pitre’s In Struggle Against Jim Crow: Lulu B. White and the NAACP, 1900-1957:

“The Houston Riot of 1917 served as a catalyst for the establishment of the Houston chapter of the NAACP. Investigating the 1917 riot, NAACP field worker Martha Gruening found the time ripe for organizing a Houston chapter... Shortly after Gruening’s trip to Houston, M.B. Patten, a postal worker... called a meeting of the city’s leading black professionals, clergymen, and business people... Subsequently the Houston chapter of the NAACP was established on May 31, 1918... By the end of 1918, membership in the Houston branch had reached 414...”

  By 1919, according to Black Texans, 31 chapters of the NAACP existed in Texas “with 7,000 members -- over 1,000 in both Dallas and San Antonio.” Yet in Austin -- which at the time was still just the 10th-largest city in Texas -- the following incident happened in August of 1919, according to Austin: An Illustrated History:

“John Shilladay, the white executive secretary of the NAACP... journeyed to Austin in 1919 to assist with legal difficulties encountered by the NAACP’s Austin branch... At mid-morning just outside the Driskill Hotel, John Shilladay was assaulted by County Judge David Pickle, a county constable, and several other Austinites...

  And that same month Democratic Texas Governor Hobby also warned NAACP national officers that “your organization can contribute more to the advancement of both races by keeping your representatives and their propaganda out of this state than in any other way.”

Yet as late as 1910, Austin still “had virtually no public parks or playgrounds, only two paved streets, and few sidewalks, ...refuse accumulated in alleys and was dumped on the banks of the Colorado, [and] the majority of residents still relied on backyard privies in the absence of sewer lines,” according to Austin: An Illustrated History.