St. John Orphan Home

Before there was an ACC Highland Campus, before there was a Highland Mall, there was the St. John Orphan Home and Industrial Institute. This article is based on the application for a historical marker scheduled for placement at today's ACC Highland Campus. Marker application narrative written by Dr. William Montgomery, ACC History Professor Emeritus.

Photo of the abandoned main building in 1945. UNT's Portal to Texas History, crediting Austin History Center.

I. CONTEXT

The backstory of the St. John Orphan Home and Industrial Institute^[1] began in June 1865 when Union Army commander Gen. Gordon Granger invoked President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation to liberate all enslaved people in Texas. One Freedman later recalled: “We was free. Just like that, we was free.”^[2] Sustaining freedom and achieving racial equality before the law, however, required hard work, courage, and a very long time. White Texans generally accepted the end of slavery but not racial equality or being subjugated by the federal government. Violence directed at formerly enslaved people was widespread in Texas between 1865 and 1868, when 468 blacks died violently, 90 percent of them at the hands of whites. Terrorist groups like the Ku Klux Klan systematically attacked blacks simply for being free.

Formerly enslaved people possessed scant resources for building new lives. Rumors that confiscated plantations would be divided and distributed to freedmen turned out to be only that—rumor. While some whites gave small parcels of land to the people they formerly enslaved, emancipation had not bestowed citizenship on anyone. That would take legislative action, and ultimately passage of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The work began shortly after the war ended. In 1866, Northern white Congressional Republicans, known as “Radicals,” collaborated with blacks and anti-secessionist whites in drafting a new Texas constitution that enfranchised blacks and provided public schools for them. Agents of the Bureau of Freedmen, Refugees, and Abandoned Lands tried to protect blacks and see that they received fair pay.^[3] While these efforts help, ultimately blacks were left largely to their own efforts.  

II. OVERVIEW

Formerly enslaved people in Texas tended to avoid whites as much as possible. They often organized separate “freedom communities” anchored by Baptist or Methodist churches. The new communities provided religious and secular education. While, some freedmen found whites willing to sell land to them; some simply “squatted” on vacant property. Following the Civil War, Texas offered pre-emption grants of 160 acres to anyone willing to farm the land for three years and make improvements.[4] It was Texas’ version of homesteading. Many of the formerly enslaved in Texas obtained these grants. By 1890, 26 percent of Texas freedmen in Texas owned their own farms.^[5] Although most blacks in Travis County resided in rural communities, some moved into Austin, usually working in menial jobs or becoming tradesmen. At that time, Austin was a small, mostly white city with black enclaves such as Wheatville (1869) and Clarksville (1871) on the northern and western edges of town.^[6] Enterprising Wheatville resident Jacob (Jake) Fontaine (1808-1898) plunged into journalism, evangelism, and Reconstruction politics to exercise his freedom. Fontaine published Austin’s first black newspaper, The Gold Dollar, and organized five independent black churches.^[7]

African American religious denominations worked to offset the scarcity of public schools for blacks. In 1867, four Baptist pastors, including Fontaine, met in Wheatville and agreed to divide the state into four denominational units, or “missionary associations.” A year later, Fontaine, John Henry Winn (who founded a church community in nearby Webberville and a second one called St. John Colony northeast of Lockhart), and other Baptist ministers representing eight churches with a membership totaling 300, founded the Travis County (Colored) Missionary Baptist Association. Fontaine became the Association’s first moderator. The Travis County Association grew quickly and soon changed its name to St. John Regular Missionary Baptist Association. By 1900, it represented several thousand congregants. Annual mid-summer meetings brought together hundreds of “messengers” from member churches to discuss how best to teach the Christian Gospel. Typically, the meetings lasted two weeks. Segregated Austin could not accommodate the large number of messengers and their families; consequently, many pitched tents and encamped on host-church grounds. While the pastors tended to church business, wives and children filled time with games, music, Bible study, and literacy classes.^[8]

The story of St John Orphan Home and Industrial Institute began in 1894, when the St. John Association elected Rev. Lee Lewis Campbell (ca. 1865-1927), pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Austin, to be its moderator. Campbell belonged to the “New Negro” generation of African Americans born at the end of or after slavery. New Negroes were committed to education and conventional middle-class values as pathways to full freedom. Campbell had attended Bishop College in Marshall, Texas, established and operated by white Northern Baptists for black students, and the University of Chicago.[9]

In 1900, with Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute in Alabama as a model, the St. John Association began the work to establish a home for orphaned black children and an industrial training school. The St. John Orphan Home and Industrial Institute would be private, with no state involvement.^[10] Under Rev. Campbell’s leadership, the St. John Association purchased 306 acres four miles north of Austin (about one-half-mile from today’s Austin Community College District Highland Campus).[11] They needed sufficient land on which to build the orphanage and institute and to hold their annual encampments.

By 1909, Rev. Campbell’s effort had come to fruition with the construction of the St. John Orphan Home and Industrial Institute campus. Initially, the campus featured a frame building for the orphanage that burned down as the first children were moving in. The Association hired prominent Austin architect John Andrewartha (1839-1916) to design a substantial new limestone and slate main building three stories tall with a capacity of 300-400 children.[12] Built at a cost of $65,000, the new orphanage building was opened by 1910.[13] The campus soon consisted of six buildings.^[14] The industrial institute was operating by 1915.[15] In 1916, the first reference to the institute appeared in the Austin city directory.[16]

Raising sufficient funds to pay for the land purchase and building costs was a constant challenge. In 1909, the Association had already spent $23,000 on construction costs. Rev. Campbell issued an appeal to raise funds to pay off the $2,000 balance for completed construction (with another $25,000 expected to be needed to complete construction of the campus), and while 200 acres of the 300-acre tract had been paid for, the remaining 100 acres had not. They were seeking a 4 percent loan to pay off their existing obligations and to pay for future construction but had not yet been successful. Because the orphanage and institute were owned privately, the St. John Association had to rely on “the charitably inclined” for the needed funds.[17] In 1910, leaders of the Association expressed the hope they could raise $10,000 at the annual session to pay off the balance owed.[18]

The St. John Association advertised its institute as a residence farm where boys and girls could learn by doing through a curriculum “adopted by the Texas State Board of Education.” It provided pupils with an opportunity to gain agricultural and industrial skills under the guidance of “able and experienced faculty.” The school offered practical industrial and domestic training to both male and female pupils in such fields as shoemaking, sewing, printing, modern food preparation and preservation, and general housekeeping. Instruction in these areas was also available through mini-courses offered during St. John annual summer encampments. A 1920 display advertisement in the Austin city directory for the “St. John’s Industrial Institute and Orphanage” touted the institute’s “intellectual and cultural development of young men and women of the Negro race; literary and commercial courses; also music, domestic science, agriculture and printing.” It described “an orphan’s home . . . for children without the means of support. Owned and controlled by the Negro race, support by the charitably inclined and endorsed by the leading white people of the State.”^[19]

During the first three decades of the twentieth century, the St. John Association summer encampments drew huge numbers of visitors to the campus. Attendance peaked at 15,000-20,000 between 1913 and 1917.[20] On September 29, 1911, Booker T. Washington had breakfast with Rev. Lee. L. Campbell at the St. John Orphan Home before addressing about 5,000 people in Wooldridge Park.^[21] One of the stated goals for the encampments was to bring whites and blacks closer together,^[22] and Austin Statesman reporting frequently noted the presence of whites during encampments.^[23] The St. John Orphan Home and Industrial Institute was definitely newsworthy.

By the late 1920s, however, the orphan’s home had begun to fall on hard times. In 1927, Rev. Lee Lewis Campbell died. Farmers continued to raise crops on the orphanage’s property to help meet mortgage payments and maintenance costs, but declining agricultural prices shrunk incomes. The orphan home and school steadily lost pupils and tuition. During the 1930s, the Great Depression crushed both agricultural and industrial markets, further reducing the Association’s revenue flow; consequently, many farmers and their families migrated into Austin looking for jobs. 

The St. John orphanage and school closed in 1942. Early in 1945, the U.S. Navy Department announced a plan to convert the mostly derelict orphan home and school to a naval hospital. The St. John Board accepted an offer of $85,000 from the city of Austin for the 300-acre tract.^[24] Those plans were dropped when World War II ended that August, and the sale never went through. As early as 1940, the city was urged to purchase the property to prevent a black subdivision from being created. Citizens feared “a negro subdivision . . . would retard growth of the city to the north, . . . cause ‘mushroom growth’ of shacks and shanties in the area, bring about a health menace and threaten racial troubles.”[25] In the late 1940s some of Austin’s white real estate developers expressed interest in acquiring the orphanage tract. They anticipated Austin’s growth toward the highlands north and northeast of downtown and wanted to clear away the remains of the St. John Orphan Home and Industrial Institute. City annexation of the tract could help accomplish both goals by making the land more desirable to potential buyers and enabling the city to levy taxes on the property that would force poor black residents to sell and move out.

Businessman named Russell Lombard, owner of Crescent Industries, held an option to buy the property if the St. John Association ever sold it. He planned the construction of 400-500 homes, a sanatorium, a shopping center, a school site, and even a junior college. Despite neighbors of the tract urging the city to purchase the land for recreational use, Lombard insisted continuously that his intention was to sell housing to blacks.[26] He continued to pursue zoning changes and platted a subdivision of 253.5 acres lying south of St. John’s Avenue, north of Airport Blvd., and west of Middle Fiskville Road.[27] The City Plan Commission approved the Sam Clark Subdivision on July 20, 1950.[28] Lombard eventually gave up his plans, in part because the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) initiated new loan requirements, particularly larger down payments and less time to pay off the loans, thus precluding many black families from loan eligibility.[29]

Association moderator A. K. Black, a real estate professional himself, did not comment publicly on the position of the Association as to any sale of the property to the city.^[30] Despite that, Rev. Black received personal threats from angry whites determined to steal the property. Selling appealed to some members of the St. John Association, considering the organization’s dire financial straits. Indeed, entrepreneurial members of the black community, recognizing that World War II was bringing economic recovery from the Great Depression, saw a bright future.

Reflecting deepening racial tensions, Dr. Everett Givens, an Austin dentist and black community leader, urged the Association to abandon plans for a black subdivision and cautioned against opposing white development. He advised that the Association could take the money and invest in land elsewhere. Dr. Givens believed Rev. Black would be amenable to the sale.^[31]

In such a tense environment, St. John’s leaders could not find a local attorney willing to represent them in dealings with whites over the sale of the property. Ultimately, they drove to Dallas and found a lawyer there.[32] On August 1, 1956, Rev. Black announced the impending sale of the orphanage tract.^[33] The price tag was $600,000, enough to satisfy Rev. Black and some—if not all—members of the St. John Association and substantially more than the figure circulated in the 1940s. The buyer was a Houston land developer named Edmund Brown who planned to turn the orphanage property into a tract-home development for white residents.^[34] On August 12, 1956, eleven days after the sale was announced, the dilapidated St. John orphanage burned to the ground.[35] By the time of the fire, the old building was derelict and a favorite haunt for Austin teenagers. A letter to the editor of the Austin American from one of those teenagers recalled that “it was a paradise for practical jokers, complete with a three-story slide (excellent for pushing best friends out) and dark closets in which to hide.”^[36] No proof of arson ever emerged. The fire could have been nothing more than demolition, but hearsay kept the embers of mystery alive.

Typical of such suburban developments around the country, the Highland neighborhood comprised modest-size, affordable homes for mostly white families, many of whom were World War II veterans. Running north and south along the eastern perimeter of the St. John/Highland Mall tract, Interstate Highway 35 (formerly East Avenue) served as an effective division of Austin into eastern (black) and western (white) sections that had been anticipated by the Austin City Planning Commission in 1928.^[37] In 1970, on the west side of IH-35, developers opened Highland Mall. By the early twenty-first century, however, anchor retailers began to leave. In 2011, Austin Community College District began purchasing the mall piece-by-piece and began converting the property into the high-tech Highland Campus with commercial and residential developments surrounding it.

III. SIGNIFICANCE

The St. John Orphan Home and Industrial Institute illustrated the commitment to personal and community development and resourcefulness that African Americans possessed during their first century following enslavement. Offerings of the Industrial Institute reflected the combination of education and industrial training that Booker T. Washington had pioneered at Tuskegee. In addition, they foreshadowed the comprehensive curricula offered by modern community colleges, particularly Austin Community College District and its Highland Campus.^[38]

The St. John Industrial Institute and Orphan Home was formerly located near the grounds of Austin Community College District’s (ACC) Highland Campus at 6101 Highland Campus Dr., Austin, TX 78752 in Travis County. The proposed historic marker will be mounted prominently in the St. John Encampment Commons park, which is currently under construction on the northeastern side of the Highland Campus development. ACC’s objective is to pay tribute to an undertold area of historic and cultural significance to Austin’s African American community and to honor the men and women who dedicated their lives to educating African American adolescents in the Austin area during a time when educational opportunities were limited for black Americans.

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[1] The institution created by the St. John Regular Missionary Baptist Association was referred to by various names throughout its history, including St. John(’s) Orphan Home, St. John(’s) Orphanage, St. John’s Orphan’s Home for Negro Children, St. John’s Orphanage for Negro Children, St. John Orphan Home and Industrial Institute, St. John(’s) Orphanage and Industrial Institute, St. John’s Orphans’ Home An Industrial Institute, St. John(’s) Industrial Institute and Orphanage, and St. John Industrial Institute and Orphan Home. Because the earliest reference was to the “Orphan Home,” the name St. John Orphan Home and Industrial Institute will be used, unless quoting from a specific reference.

^[2] Alwyn Barr, Black Texans: A History of Negroes in Texas, 1528-1971 (Austin: Jenkins Publishing Company, 1973), 40.

^[3] Barry Crouch, The Freedmen’s Bureau and Black Texans (Austin, University of Texas Press, 1992), 41-57.

[4] Texas General Land Office, “Categories of Land Grants in Texas,” (https://www.glo.texas.gov/history/archives/forms/files/categories-of-land-grants.pdf : accessed 3 June 2020). “Preemption grants of 160 acres were reinstituted in 1866 and continued until 1898. To qualify for a preemption grant settlers were required to live on the land for three years and make improvements.”

^[5] Barr, Black Texans, 54-58; Thad Sitton and James H. Conrad, Freedom Colonies: Independent Black Texans in the Time of Jim Crow (Austin: The University of Texas Press, 2005), 3, 5, 29.

^[6] Michelle M. Mears, And Grace Will Lead Me Home: African American Freedmen Communities of Austin, Texas, 1865-1928 (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2009), 25-83.

^[7] Gene A. Burd, “Fontaine, Jacob,” Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/ffo30 : accessed September 11, 2019); Barr, Black Texans, 101; Lawrence Rice, The Negro in Texas, 1874-1900 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971), 234-235.

^[8] William E. Montgomery, Under Their Own Vine and Fig Tree: The African-American Church in the South, 1865-1900 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993), 177; G. V. Clark, Souvenir Journal (Austin: St. John Regular Baptist District Association, 2017), 3-7; Interview with Rev. G. V. Clark, St. John Association Moderator, located in the Austin Community College Digital Image Archive; “History of St. John,” St. John Regular Baptist District Association (https://www.stjohnbaptistassociation.org/history-of-st-john/ : accessed 3 June 2020).

[9] Kharen Monsho, “Campbell, Lee Lewis,” Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fcadz : accessed September 20, 2019); for origins of “New Negro” see Booker T. Washington, A new Negro for a new century: an accurate and up-to-date record of the upward struggles of the Negro race (Chicago: American Publishing House, 1900).

^[10] Laurie Breihan, “St. John’s: A Community’s Struggle for Survival,” an entry in the Travis County Collection’s Historical Essay Contest, 2.

[11] Travis County Clerk’s Office, Deed Record Book 171:191, Geo. Walling and P.C. Wells to L. L. Campbell, et al, Directors, in trust for Orphan Home of the St. John Regular Baptist Association, 22 August 1900, deed, 200 acres; Travis County Clerk’s Office, Deed Record Book 176:31, Geo. Walling and P.C. Wells to L. L. Campbell, 22 August 1900, deed, 106.8 acres.

[12] “Encampment of St. John Ass’n Unique Event,” Austin [Texas] Statesman, 23 July 1916, p. 8, col. 2.

[13] Ibid.; Morrison & Fourmy, compilers, Directory of the City of Austin, 1910-11 (Houston: Morrison & Fourmy Directory Co., Inc., 1910), entry for “St. John’s Orphanage, for colored children,” 255; digital image, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/interactive/2469/4940389 : accessed 3 June 2020), image 155; crediting Austin History Center, Austin Public Library.

^[14] Breihan, “St. John’s: A Community’s Struggle for Survival,” 3.

[15] “1053 Negroes at Sunday School Set New Record,” Austin [Texas] Daily Statesman, 31 May 1915, p. 2, col. 7, reference to “the St. John Orphan Home and Industrial Institute.”

[16] R. L. Polk & Co., compilers, Polk’s Morrison & Fourmy Directory of the City of Austin, 1916 (Houston: Morrison & Fourmy Directory Co., Inc., 1916), entry for “St. John’s Orphan’s Home, an Industrial Institute for Colored Children,” 373; digital image, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/interactive/2469/4940389 : accessed 3 June 2020), image 192; crediting Austin History Center, Austin Public Library.

[17] “Building Debt to be Raised: St. John Orphanage Board Appeals for Aid,” Austin [Texas] Daily Statesman, 25 January 1909, p. 8, column 3.

[18] “St. Johns Association: Upwards of Twenty-Five Colored Ministers Taking Part in Fifth Sunday Meeting this Week,” Austin [Texas] Daily Statesman, 29 January 1910, p. 2, col. 1.

^[19] The [Baptist] Herald, 9 November 1918. R. L. Polk & Co., compilers, Polk’s Morrison and Fourmy Austin City Directory 1920 (Houston: Morrison & Fourmy Directory Co., Inc., 1920), advertisement for “St. John’s Industrial Institute and Orphanage,” 76; digital image, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/interactive/2469/4940389 : accessed 3 June 2020), image 43; crediting Austin History Center, Austin Public Library.

[20] “15,000 Negroes to Gather Here: St. John’s Encampment Opens Fifteenth Session Tuesday,” Austin [Texas] Statesman, 15 July 1917, p. 8, cols. 4-5.

^[21] Michael Barnes, “In 1911, Booker T. Washington drew 5,000 to Austin park,” Austin [Texas] American-Statesman, 26 September 2018; consulted at https://www.statesman.com/news/20180911/in-1911-booker-t-washington-drew-5000-to-austin-park : accessed 3 June 2020).

[22] “15,000 Negroes to Gather Here.”

^[23] “Negroes provide for Agriculture Exhibit,” The Austin [Texas] Daily Statesman, 27 July 1913, p. 6, col. 4.

[24] See “St. John’s Board Eyes Site Offer: $85,000 Proposed for Land for Hospital,” Austin [Texas] American, 17 June 1945, p. 1, col. 1.

[25] “City Asked to Purchase Negro Tract,” The Austin [Texas] Statesman, 13 November 1940, p. 9, col. 5.

[26] “St. John Orphanage Tract for Sale to Negroes Only: Lombard Bares Curb; Council Pressed to Act,” Austin [Texas] Statesman, 3 November 1949, p. 1, cols. 4-8. “Lombard to Fight Land Sale,” Austin [Texas] Statesman, 8 November 1949, p. 1, col. 5.

[27] “City Planners to Consider Negro Subdivision Tonight,” Austin [Texas] American-Statesman, 12 January 1950, p. 27, cols. 1-3.

[28] “City Planners Okeh 9 New Subdivisions,” Austin [Texas] Statesman, 21 July 1950, p. 13, cols. 1-2.

[29] “US Controls May Slow Up Negro Homes,” Austin [Texas] Statesman, 30 October 1950, p. 11, col. 5.

^[30] “St. John Orphanage Tract for Sale to Negroes Only,” Austin [Texas] Statesman, 8 November 1949.

^[31] “Givens Raps Negro Plans,” Austin [Texas] Statesman, 5 November 1949, p. 1, col. 7.

[32] Interview with Rev. G. V. Clark, retired pastor and former moderator of St. John Baptist Association, April 29, 2020.

[33] “Baptist Area Sale Looms,” Austin [Texas] Statesman, 2 August 1956, p. 1, col. 2-3.

^[34] Breihan, “St. John’s: A Community’s Struggle for Survival,” 6.

[35] “Fire Routs Ghosts at Orphanage,” Austin [Texas] Statesman, 13 August 1956, p. 1, cols. 3-6.

[36] Sharon Smith, “Burned Away,” Austin [Texas] American, 19 August 1950, p. 32, col. 5.

^[37] Katherine Gregor, “Austin Comp Planning: A Brief History,” The Austin [Texas] Chronicle, 5 February 2010 (https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2010-02-05/953471/ : accessed 3 June 2020).

^[38] The [Baptist] Herald, 9 November 1918.