blackaustintours

blackaustintours Come disrupt public space and engage with the histories, experiences and contributions of Black people in Austin and beyond.

09/05/2026

With well over 500 guests so far in 2026 and over 10,000 since 2019, here are few things we wish our guests knew BEFORE coming on any experience with us

Since 2019, we have hosted hundreds of walking tours, bus tours, virtual experiences, kayaking tours powered by Rowing Dock - Austin and more. We have only ONE goal, which has been to share the histories, experiences and contributions of Black people in Austin and beyond!

We have ONLY been able to do this with your support y’all trust us and we learn so much from you!

We have created something very unique within Austin’s heritage tourism infrastructure and we are proud! We want to see it grow and stand as model for other places to share Black history.

Black Austin Tours started in 2019 by Dr. Javier Wallace | Race + Sport and now we have a team of guides, operations managers, content creators, and historical research assistants. Shoutout 𝑗𝑢𝑙𝑖𝑎 Dono and Mason Thompson (now the founder of Soul of Fort Worth: Black History Tours ) for sharing our histories with the public!

We hope to see yall soon with this new pre-tour knowledge!

Thank yall! It’s hot and you still come out to learn with us!! We welcome to come and engage with the histories, experie...
09/04/2026

Thank yall! It’s hot and you still come out to learn with us!!

We welcome to come and engage with the histories, experiences and contributions of Black folks in Austin and beyond!!!

See dates in the bio!

ANNOUNCING:2026 East Austin Heritage CelebrationOctober 23-24, 2026📍Ideal Barbershop, 1914 East 12th StreetJoin us for a...
09/04/2026

ANNOUNCING:

2026 East Austin Heritage Celebration
October 23-24, 2026
📍Ideal Barbershop, 1914 East 12th Street

Join us for a weekend of culture, community, and connection in our Heritage Celebration, honoring the legacy of Ideal Barbershop and East Austin.

Events will feature:
- Music and Activation from Where y’all At Though?!
- Heritage Lounge and Digital History Installation by E4 Youth
- History Presentation and Panel Discussion with Sixth Square and Souls of Fort Worth
- NEW Art Installation by Stephen Hayes
- Social and Community Engagement by the Carver Genealogy Center and Austin African American Cultural and Heritage Facility

This preservation project is supported in part by the Heritage Tourism Division of the City of Austin Office of Arts, Culture, Music, and Entertainment.

Victory East is more than a historic music venue. Its history reflects the ways Black Austinites created spaces for comm...
09/04/2026

Victory East is more than a historic music venue. Its history reflects the ways Black Austinites created spaces for community, business, and cultural expression during segregation.

Opened by Johnny Holmes in 1945, the Victory Grill provided a place for Black servicemen returning from World War II to gather, eat, and enjoy entertainment.

The venue later became part of the Chitlin’ Circuit, a network of venues that gave Black musicians opportunities to perform when segregation restricted access to many other entertainment spaces.

Artists such as B.B. King, Bobby Bland, and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown performed at the Victory Grill, connecting East Austin to a broader tradition of Black music and entrepreneurship.

The story of Victory Grill is therefore also a story about how Black Austinites shaped the city’s cultural landscape by creating and sustaining institutions within a segregated city.

How much of Austin’s Black history can you recognize?

Explore more of these stories with Black Austin Tours.

Comment “HISTORY” and we’ll send you the tour information.

When we talk about the Texas cowboy, we often hear a story about the meeting of Anglo-American and Mexican vaquero tradi...
09/03/2026

When we talk about the Texas cowboy, we often hear a story about the meeting of Anglo-American and Mexican vaquero traditions.
But that history is more complicated.

The cattle traditions of Texas and the Americas were also shaped by enslaved Africans and their descendants.

Enslaved Africans, particularly those with knowledge of herding, were forcibly brought into Spanish colonies as the cattle industry expanded.

Historian Andrew Sluyter documents one example in the 1570s, when about 200 enslaved Black people worked the cattle herds of Hernán Ruiz de Córdoba in New Spain.

This history is important because Black contributions to cattle ranching were not limited to forced labor.
Sluyter's research shows that Black ranchers in New Spain also contributed knowledge and practices to cattle ranching.

His work specifically discusses the development of horseback lassoing among Black vaqueros, challenging the assumption that these traditions can be attributed only to Mexican vaqueros.

The history continued in Texas after emancipation. Black cowboys worked cattle drives and ranches as drovers, horsebreakers, and ranch hands. Some became ranchers, landowners, peace officers, and rodeo performers.

This gives us another way to understand the Chisholm Trail and the cattle traditions connected to Texas.

When you see a Chisholm Trail sign in Austin, remember that the story behind those cattle drives includes generations of Black labor, knowledge, and ingenuity.

The Texas cowboy was shaped by more than the two traditions we are often taught to associate with him.
Black history is part of that story.

For further reading, see Andrew Sluyter's Black Ranching Frontiers: African Cattle Herders of the Atlantic World, 1500–1900.

What part of Black cowboy history should we tell next?

09/02/2026

PSA: We won’t be stopped! Thanks Dono for the message

At Black Austin Tours, we center the histories, experiences and contributions of Black folks everyday. All day. Not when it’s convenient. Not when it’s profitable. All day.

We’ve been around since 2019, but we stand on the shoulders of the Black folks that have always centered our histories. We honor those who never wavered in their commitment to telling our stories.

We will keep on pushing. And we invite y’all to learn with us. We thank everyone who has bought tours, liked posts, commissioned us to research and create, have shared your stories with us.

James Jackson’s family was caught in the forced migration of slavery from Louisiana into Texas.James Jackson was born on...
09/01/2026

James Jackson’s family was caught in the forced migration of slavery from Louisiana into Texas.
James Jackson was born on December 18, 1850, according to what his mother told him, on the Doc Alexander plantation in Caddo Parish, Louisiana.

The Federal Writers’ Project later recorded that Jackson was enslaved by the Alexander family and that, when he was about two years old, his enslaver moved his enslaved people to Travis County, Texas.
Jackson was too young to remember the journey himself. His account of it came through his mother, who told him about the family’s forced move.

Not long after their arrival in Travis County, Jackson recalled that a man came at night, took him and his two brothers, and carried them to Bastrop County, where they were sold to Dr. Duvall. Duvall sold one of the brothers shortly after purchasing them. Jackson and his brother John remained enslaved by Duvall until emancipation.
This distinction matters.

Doc Alexander was the enslaver who brought James and his family from Louisiana to Texas. Dr. Duvall was the enslaver who purchased James and his brothers after they were stolen from the Alexander property.

Their story therefore shows how several mechanisms of slavery could intersect in one family’s life: forced migration, kidnapping, sale, and the separation of siblings.

After emancipation, James and John walked to Austin, where they found their mother working for Judge Paschal. Jackson eventually built a life in Texas, working around Austin before moving to Taylor, Kaufman, and, in 1929, Fort Worth. In 1937, at age 87, he was interviewed by the Federal Writers’ Project.

His testimony gives us a rare first-person account of how slavery shaped the movement and separation of Black families in Central Texas.

It also reminds us that when we study the migration of enslavers into Texas, we must also follow the people they forcibly brought with them.
James Jackson was one of those people.

His testimony is preserved in the Library of Congress’s Federal Writers’ Project slave narratives, and his 1937 photograph is preserved by the Fort Worth Public Library Digital Archives.

08/31/2026

What’s actually going on in your tour guide’s head while you’re enjoying the tour? 😂

“Let me get ahead of everybody.”

“Wait, I need a picture of the group.”

“Okay, everybody’s good.”

“This hat is NOT giving…but mentally, I need it.”

“OMG, A TURTLE! 🐢”

All while kayaking, keeping the group together, telling stories, taking pictures, navigating the river and making sure everybody is having a good time. 😂

Just another day at Black Austin Tours.

And yes — you can bring your whole crew.

This was a private Roll Colorado Roll Tour Kayaking Tour powered by Rowing Dock - Austin and private experiences are one of our favorite ways to explore Austin. Bring your friends, family, organization, alumni group, team, girls’ trip or whoever you travel with, and we’ll take it from there.

Our Roll Colorado Roll Black History Kayaking Tour combines Austin’s outdoors with the Black history connected to the Colorado River and the city that grew around it.

Come see Austin differently — from the water. 🛶

Private group experiences available through Black Austin Tours.

08/29/2026

We invite you to experience our love letter to Austin’s Black people and history through our tours!

We thank everyone who trusts us! We hope to see you soon!

Also, we appreciate all of the community collaborators that welcome our guests into their spaces. They are also very with their history.

Thanks 𝑗𝑢𝑙𝑖𝑎 Dono for your work!

Check our next tour dates in the bio. See you soon!

Evergreen Cemetery tells a story that begins before Evergreen itself.For decades, Black Austinites faced segregation eve...
08/28/2026

Evergreen Cemetery tells a story that begins before Evergreen itself.
For decades, Black Austinites faced segregation even in death.
Oakwood Cemetery, established in 1839, contained a segregated section for African Americans, but that space eventually became insufficient. Black communities also created their own burial grounds, including Bethany Cemetery in East Austin. (ArcGIS StoryMaps)

When Evergreen opened in the 1920s, it offered something families desperately wanted: perpetual care. That promise changed where some families chose to bury their loved ones. Some even exhumed relatives from Bethany and moved them to Evergreen. The decision was not simply about preference.

It reflected a difficult reality: maintaining a cemetery depended heavily on families who could eventually become too old, too few, or unable to continue the work. (Bethany Cemetery Association)
That history makes Evergreen more complicated than a story of preservation.

Its growth was connected to the decline of another Black cemetery.
Evergreen also contains remnants of an even earlier burial landscape. Part of the cemetery's later expansion incorporated land associated with Highland Park Cemetery, which operated from 1891 into the early twentieth century. Many of its records have disappeared, and only a small number of its original markers remain. (SAVE AUSTIN'S CEMETERIES)

Then there are the markers themselves.
Some graves at Evergreen are distinguished by handmade concrete markers and found objects rather than professionally manufactured monuments. These materials are easy to overlook, but they reveal something important: remembrance does not require wealth to be meaningful. A handmade marker can still represent a family's decision that someone deserved to be remembered.

That is why preserving Evergreen matters.
A cemetery is not only a collection of graves.

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