map of austin
1900s
1906    Council passes a Jim Crowe ordinance requiring separate compartments for blacks in streetcars. The black community boycotts, but it is called off and the ordinance goes into effect as scheduled.

1910   Austin suffers its first fatal automobile accident when a Manor resident loses his control of his car while speeding down a hill on East 16th Street.

1911   The first airplane lands in Austin.

1919   John Shillady, Secretary for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, is severely beaten near the Driskill Hotel and forced to leave town.

1921   More than 500 Klansmen march up and down Congress Avenue in Austin’s first Ku Klux Klan parade.

1939   Santa Rita, a housing project for Mexican-Americans becomes the first program in the country completed and occupied under the U.S. Housing Authority Program established in 1937.

1946    Heman Marion Sweatt applies for admission to the UT Law School and is turned down because he is black. He sues and wins a faborable decision from the U.S. Supreme Court. UT admits its first black citizens. Voters approve $940,000 in bonds to purchase the right-of-way through town for the planned interregional highway Interstate 35.
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