Marvin Douglas, a distinguished community figure, reflects on his life’s journey, tracing his roots, challenges, and triumphs. Marvin’s story is a testament to resilience, dedication, and the power of community.
Marvin became one of the first black firefighters in his area, serving alongside pioneers like Ray Davis, Nathaniel Cambridge, and Rodney Green.This decision changed his life, leading him to be stationed on Lydia Street, marking the beginning of a significant chapter in his life. He recalls the rigorous training and the challenges of being one of the first Black firefighters, a role that required not just physical but also mental fortitude.
Marvin’s deep connection to his community, particularly the Holy Cross neighborhood, is evident. Moving multiple times, he finally settled in Holy Cross, a place known for its tight-knit community and professional residents. He reminisces about the sense of camaraderie, the shared struggles, and the collective growth of the neighborhood. Marvin notes the significant demographic shifts over the years, with younger, predominantly white families moving in, changing the neighborhood’s dynamics.
Reflecting on his personal life, Marvin speaks fondly of his two daughters, their education, and their involvement in school activities. His home was a hub of traditions, many of which he has passed down to his daughters and the next generation. Marvin’s stories paint a vivid picture of a community rich in culture and support, where neighbors knew each other well and shared a strong bond.
Marvin’s career as a firefighter was not without challenges. He faced racial discrimination and had to navigate a landscape where opportunities for black firefighters were limited. Despite these hurdles, he witnessed and contributed to significant progress in the workforce. He highlights the importance of education and training, noting the evolving requirements for firefighters and the increasing opportunities for minority groups.
Marvin’s contributions to his community were recognized when he was recognized as an honorary fire chief, a testament to his dedication and impact. His advice to younger generations is rooted in preparation, education, and work ethic. Marvin believes these values are crucial for overcoming challenges and achieving success.
Marvin Douglas’s story is a powerful narrative of perseverance, community, and progress. His reflections offer valuable insights into the past and present, highlighting the enduring spirit of a man who has significantly impacted his community. Marvin’s journey inspires and reminds us of the importance of resilience, community bonds, and the continuous pursuit of progress.
“This East Austin was wholesome. It was just well integrated with beautiful people.
The blacks and Hispanics had a loving environment. We were united. We had no racial problems between us. None whatsoever. Mothers would share recipes and beautiful foods, and we’d have little decorative parties together in the streets and stuff. And they were really united. The mothers united the neighborhood.”
“I was 13 and we had started going to white schools. When we moved over there [Rogers Washington Holy Cross], we moved in the summer, we had not started school yet, and there was a skating rink that opened up in our neighborhood down the street on Airport and Manor Road.
I don’t remember the name of it, but they had a big sign up there. We went to go skating and it said “no blacks allowed.” And the reason why I’m bringing up this issue, this is what catapulted our civil rights movement. This just started dominoing and one civil rights march led to another civil rights led.
We had the most peaceful marches. We never had any problems with the police, never. My mother led the marches, she and NAACP President Volma Overton and my dad. And our neighborhood, Rogers Washington Holy Cross, we were the first civil rights leaders in that whole area. That’s how mother and all of the mothers in that area, we all got together. We had unity. It was unbelievable.”
“We were family. Everybody knew how old each other was. Everybody knew whose birthday it was.
Everyone knew when somebody was sick, if somebody got sick, they all united. In the old days, when somebody passed away in your family, everybody, the women would cook and they would take food over to the bereaved family. They didn’t have to cook for at least a week or two, especially during the duration of the funeral preparation they would take food.
I’m talking about unity. I’m talking about unity in a family way. Create a family environment.”
“We had Mr. Poole in our neighborhood. Our Poole – school teacher. Also a cowboy. He had the prettiest, most beautiful white horse called Playboy. Mr. Poole rode Playboy down Congress Avenue and led in the 4th of July parade. First black cowboy.
Tuskegee airman, Mr. Norman came from our neighborhood. Mr. Poole came from our neighborhood. John King was one of the first black three star generals in the United States, Stewart King’s father.
We have a lot of historical people. Stella Banks that lived on the corner. She used to sing jazz in Hollywood and wrote music for Duke Ellington and Count Basie, best friends with Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan.”
“[Rogers Washington Holy Cross] is like a giant door that stays open. It stays open for young people like yourself, who need to go in there and reap the benefits of the knowledge and the beautiful work that the leaders, the old leaders, left behind.
It’s still there. Anything you want to learn is still there. They made sure that they left behind all of the trails of their work in the library, through the memories of people like Jan and her sweet family and her friends, and Brenda Malik and her family.
And they’re still people there. Ida Dawne Thompson, who lived next door to our family, her father – Oscar Thompson – was the first black biology instructor at University of Texas. But there’s so many of us, children, some of the grandchildren, and even it doesn’t necessarily have to be carried on by the grandchildren. It just needs to be there in memory of the old leaders and what they stood for.
Take that and run. You need to live on their courage. You need to understand that they weren’t afraid when they marched, when they took on a great battle of racial discrimination and segregation, they weren’t afraid. They moved in faith.”
Lindsey Derrington is the Executive Director of Preservation Austin, the only citywide nonprofit dedicated to celebrating and protecting historic Austin places. In this interview, Derrington describes how she helped the residents of East Austin’s Rogers Washington Holy Cross, a neighborhood built by and for black professionals after World War Two, obtain a historic district designation from the city.
“I started Preservation Austin almost ten years ago. I started as a programs coordinator. I’ve been working in historic preservation since 2007, when I first graduated from undergrad. I became interested in this field because I’m from Saint Louis, which is a very different city than Austin.
When I grew up in the suburbs, got my driver’s license, was driving around, the city that so many people had turned their backs on – it’s like the textbook example of white flight and urban renewal and segregation.
And it’s got this beautiful history and culture and all these buildings that need so much investment and care. And so I became inspired to do this work in high school before I even knew what the work was like, I knew I wanted to do something with historic places.”
“Local historic districts are really basic tools that have been used in cities and smaller communities since the ‘70s, really to protect historic places by taking groups of buildings that are significant and actually zoning them historic to protect them from demolition.
Fundamentally, it’s a planning tool. You get to say, hey, here’s a group of significant homes, and how do we want development to look within this area?”
“The neighborhood pursued their historic district because they saw all the changes happening around them. If you drive a few blocks in either direction from this really small community, Rogers Washington Holy Cross is not a big one – so much history, but relatively few homes compared to some historic districts, which might be like hundreds of homes – it’s changed.
Blackland neighborhoods changed. Chestnut has changed. These are really desirable homes for people with a lot of money and sometimes you drive down blocks and half of the houses or more were built only a few years ago, and they’re much bigger and much more expensive than the housing that was there before. And of course, you’ve lost all that history with those demolitions.
So I think the critical thing for neighbors in this community was to figure out how to implement a local historic district. This achieves two things for us: we get to celebrate our history and we get to protect it, because we’re not going to see that kind of development in Rogers Washington Holy Cross because literally we’re able to say, here’s the map. Here are the houses that are contributing.”
“After World War Two, it wasn’t easy to do anything, whereas the federal government made it really easy for white families to do a lot of things, but not so much for black families. So setting this neighborhood in that context, but then just running with all the incredible stories and even day to day experiences that are incorporated into that history that make Rogers Washington Holy Cross so special.
I’m not sure with any of the other home tours we’ve done that we’ve had so many original families. That’s rare, I think, having so many children of the original people who built the houses – or Mr. Poole, he built that house and he’s still here. I think that’s unique, no matter what the city is, Austin or anywhere else in the country.”
“So Preservation Austin, it’s important to us that we are building a more inclusive preservation movement for this century. It seems weird to keep emphasizing we’re in the 21st century because we’re like 24 years into it. But preservation as a movement needs to grow.
Everyone needs to see themselves reflected in this work, which they haven’t always. The work that we do is, like anything else in the US, has been very focused on white wealth, and many men who have made money, and really looking at like just only a very narrow section of our history and using historic places to kind of to interpret that history.
And so for us, we’re citywide. We take very seriously that commitment to representing the whole city and then also expanding what people think of preservation.”
Stuart King is a resident of Rogers Washington Holy Cross, a historic East Austin neighborhood built for and by black professionals after World War Two. In this interview, he describes the sense of community in the neighborhood, what life was like during segregation, and the changes Rogers Washington has faced in recent years.
“Our parents didn’t have the whole neighborhood over at the house. Like kids from other neighborhoods – they’d come over and play football against us. Baseball, whatever you have it. But as far as it was, it was a close knit neighborhood, Washington Rogers, where everybody knew everybody.
Of course, the kids were all play with each other. We all grew up together. Some of the kids that we grew up with are no longer here, a lot of them moved away. But some of my closest friends that we grew up with, it’s only one, that stayed next door to Ms. Mims – Brenda Mallik.”
“Of course, as kids, we play softball, baseball, and break somebody’s window. That was a thing. We raided people’s pear trees and plum trees, jumping over somebody’s fence. Ms. Tolliver, she had a pear tree, and we’d go and jump over and go grab some pears and run and get out.”
“My dad just talked about going to the Ritz Theater, which is on Sixth Street, then the state and the Paramount theaters. We had to sit upstairs in the balcony. We couldn’t sit down where the regular people sat, I say regular – well where the white people sat. We’d have to sit in the balcony.
I remember certain restaurants we couldn’t go to, like the Piccadilly. I think it was on the corner of Congress and ninth.
And during segregation we picketed this ice rink that was on Airport, where we couldn’t go. So I have a picture in my phone of all of the Kirk’s, my brother, my sister, where we’re holding signs, picketing the skating rink, which is on airport – now it’s some kind of warehouse.”
“So that’s the changes that I seen that’s happened in East Austin is the education that we got was top notch because teachers could use the board of education on you when you did something wrong in class. It was just totally different times than it is now. And those are the changes that are devastating to a community and to a city because they’re not getting a quality education like we got, growing up.”
“I want Rogers Washington Holy Cross to be remembered as a neighborhood that cared about the neighbors, a neighborhood that would speak to their neighbors. Because now we have neighbors that don’t speak. I make them speak.”
Yvette Crawford grew up in Rogers Washington Holy Cross, a historic neighborhood in East Austin that was built by and for black professionals after World War Two. In this interview, Crawford discusses her memories of the neighborhood, her father and his work as the assistant attorney general for Texas, gentrification, and the significance of Rogers Washington.
“I grew up on 2103 Stafford which is on the corner of Rogers and Stafford and across the street from Campbell Elementary School. I knew almost everyone knew almost everyone in the community because that’s just the way it was at the time.
It was close knit. We knew everyone. There were functions. We’d always seen them at different functions in the city on this side of town, so it was a nice community.”
“There were a lot of African-Americans who lived in this community that were accomplished. They had made stepping stones in our community. Which means they opened doors for us, for my generation and then for your generation and my children’s generation, to the point that sky’s the limit.”
“And the president of the college basically wrote her back and told her, based on the bylaws of the school, we cannot admit any Negroes to this college. So Mrs. Smith’s father hired my father to take the case, and my father in Texas State University. And I believe in 1963, 1964, the judge decided that she had every right to be admitted to Texas State University.
So basically that opened doors for people of color to enter their school. And I believe there were three other students who went ahead and signed up to enroll at Texas State that afternoon. So, I mean, I’m proud of my father, for his accomplishments, for what he did because that’s how I was able to go to college.”
“Driving here today to do this interview, it was very hard for me to come back to this neighborhood because it’s just totally not the same. Entire East Austin has changed tremendously, and it hurts. It really hurts.
More white businesses popping up. More anglos living here who are truly now the residents of East Austin, there’s hardly any African Americans living in East Austin anymore because of affordability.”
“I’d like for [Rogers Washington] to be remembered as a vibrant community which had families who were well educated, who had accomplishments and goals, which helped to open a lot of doors for people of color. Regardless if you’re African-American or Hispanic, Latino. The neighborhood that was well kept, well established and was part of the community of East Austin.
Even though it has changed through the years, it needs to be remembered as a very remarkable and outstanding community in Austin, and let it not be forgotten that it did once exist.”