Austin – Fred L. McGhee

Austin’s Latest Example of Whitesplained and Elitesplained History — How the Omission of One Word Reveals Much About How They View the History of Segregation

Posted on October 26, 2025November 6, 2025 by Fred McGhee

It has come to my attention that certain City of Austin officials wish to strip the word “Negro” from official designations and commemorations of the Montopolis Negro School. They prefer to refer to the school as the “Montopolis School” despite the fact that one of the most important things that makes the school historic is […]

Montopolis Wants Its $8 Million Dollar Museum and Cultural Center

Posted on August 30, 2024August 30, 2024 by Fred McGhee

Seven years ago the Austin City Council passed a resolution directing the city manager to utilize hotel occupancy tax dollars to acquire the Montopolis Negro School with the intent of repurposing this “historic asset” into a cultural center and museum. This decision did not spring up out of the political ground from nowhere; it was […]

Pomp and Circumstance is Not Historic Preservation

Posted on December 17, 2019January 7, 2020 by Fred McGhee

In a sign of how backwards and behind the times historic preservation is in Austin, the newly installed (permanent) director of Austin’s Parks department issued this memo to the Assistant City Manager about the burials desecration “burgeoning scandal” at Oakwood Cemetery. Sadly and predictably, the memo does not address the concerns and questions I have […]

Austin Doesn’t Give a Shit About Dead Negroes Either

Posted on December 11, 2019December 15, 2019 by Fred McGhee

It is a burgeoning scandal that is as unfortunate as it was predicted. The City of Austin is facing fresh questions about the handling of renovations to the “Chapel” at Oakwood Cemetery, the city’s oldest official burial ground. Facts have arisen that appear to indicate that the city not only gave the go-ahead to excavate […]

Setting the Record Straight About the Austin People’s Plan

Posted on August 20, 2019August 21, 2019 by Fred McGhee

The Austin Monitor’s recent story about the City of Austin’s Plan to “mitigate” displacement correctly quoted me as not seeing much of the People’s Plan reflected in the city’s anti-displacement strategy. But there is more, of course, to the story. City staffers in the Neighborhood Housing department as well as members of the city’s Equity […]

We’ve Imagined an Austin Without the Poor

Posted on July 29, 2019October 5, 2019 by Fred McGhee

Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies released its 2019 State of the Nation’s Housing report, and it makes for interesting reading. Once you get past the standard neoliberal fare about how “there isn’t enough housing” or not enough “choice” or “opportunity,” you can unearth some nuggets. Two Austin findings stand out: 1.) Real home prices […]

Butthurt Jayme Mathias Doesn’t Like How Democracy Works

Posted on May 12, 2019June 3, 2019 by Fred McGhee

It is a noted axiom of political theory that elites prefer the type of democracy that benefits them and their cronies. The role of the electorate is to choose from a pre-screened and selected slate of issues and candidates whose role, if they do their job well, is to appear to be fighting the man, […]

How Austin Gentrification Operates in My Neighborhood

Posted on December 11, 2017December 12, 2017 by Fred McGhee

Conventional wisdom holds that gentrification is something that a lot of people “feel” but rarely take the time to actually document. Studies about gentrification are often too wonky to influence policymakers, who want a nice, clean definition of the term “gentrification” served to them on a silver platter. Accordingly, allow me to take you through […]

Austin Gentrification and Human Rights

Posted on November 12, 2017November 12, 2017 by Fred McGhee

The word “gentrification” does not appear in Imagine Austin or in CodeNEXT. This seems odd, given that Austin has had multiple commissions over the past seventeen years meant to study and address the issue. The policy analyses and recommendations made by these task forces and commissions have been sitting on the shelf gathering dust. So […]

An Austin Uppity Negro Speaks

Posted on October 6, 2017August 22, 2024 by Fred McGhee

Certain members of Austin’s black bourgeoisie are perturbed. They are perturbed because the recent political fight over the future of the Montopolis Negro School has exposed some of their ruling class privileges and has also unveiled some of their neoliberal elitism. More to the point, the 2015-2017 fight to preserve the Montopolis Negro School–much of […]