Austin Mobility News For March 7

Press release from the City of Austin:

March 8, 2022

Austin Transportation is developing a project to improve safety and mobility at the intersection of Barton Springs Road and South First Street.

Proposed improvements at this intersection include:

This project is hosting a Virtual Open House and public comment period, open through Friday, March 25, 2022. If you live or work near the intersection of Barton Springs Road and South First Street, Austin Transportation urges you to share your thoughts on the proposed safety improvements.

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The Barton Springs Road and South First Street project is funded by the City of Austin Mobility Bond funds and Bikeway Programs. For more information or questions about the project, email MobilityBonds@AustinTexas.gov or call (512) 974-2300.

A street in the Clarksville neighborhood will change its name from Confederate Avenue to honor Maggie Mayes, a Black educator who lived in the neighborhood in the late 19th century.

The name change comes as part of an ongoing City of Austin process to remove or rename City-owned monuments and memorials to the Confederacy. Austin City Council approved the change Feb. 17, directing City Manager Spencer Cronk to come back with a recommendation on whether the renamed street type honoring Mayes will be a street, avenue or other category.

According to the Clarksville Community Development Corporation, the area was one of the first freedman’s towns established west of the Mississippi when Charles Clark, a former slave, purchased two acres of land in 1871, built his home and sold the rest to other freedmen.

Maggie Mayes, the wife of state legislator Elias Mayes of Bryan, founded the first school in Clarksville in the home the couple shared. The street that will be renamed for Mayes is a short, dead-end road that sits between two schools, Open Door Preschool to the west and Mathews Elementary School to the east.

Elias Mayes, who was born as a slave in Alabama, served in the Texas Legislature in 1879 and 1889. According to a 1996 article in the Austin American-Statesman, he was one of 51 Black legislators to serve between 1868 and 1900, when Texas instituted an all-white Democratic primary and a poll tax that disenfranchised Black voters. The Legislature had no Black members between 1898 and 1967.

In 2018, two streets that previously honored members of the Confederacy were renamed to Azie Morton Street and William Holland Avenue. Other streets the City of Austin Equity Office have identified for potential renaming are Dixie Drive and Plantation Road.

This press release was produced by the City of Austin. The views expressed here are the author’s own.