HBCU students in East Austin are protesting outside the home of a white couple after the wife was caught on video telling a Huston-Tillotson University student, “We paid $1.5 million for our house, y’all’s graduation rates are 25%,” during an argument over street parking.
Video:
The video was posted last week by a Huston-Tillotson student named Bri, who confronted the couple outside their home on East 9th Street, just feet from the university’s gates. In her Instagram post, Bri accused the couple of harassing Black students and professors who park on the street. She said they had been leaving notes on cars telling drivers to move, and claimed they once blocked a Black professor’s car in with their trash can and recycling bin.
In the video, Bri asks the couple whether they know it is legal to park there. That is when the woman brings up the price of her home and the school’s graduation rate. When Bri points out that the couple moved into a historically Black neighborhood, the woman fires back, “This is our neighborhood,” and threatens to call the police.
The City of Austin has backed the students up. A spokesperson for the city’s Transportation and Public Works department told FOX 7 Austin that parking is allowed on those blocks of East 9th Street, except at corners, intersections, and in front of driveways, and that the rest of the curb is open to the public.
Bri’s video has passed one million views on Instagram, and the HBCU students answered it in person. Over the weekend of October 10 and 11, students and community members set up a protest cookout in the public walkway next to the couple’s house. They brought coolers, folding tables, camp chairs, dominoes, and bullhorns, and the party spilled into the street out front, where a group broke into a line dance. Protesters waved signs and chanted, “You bought a house, not our history. East Austin is ours.”
Neighbors told FOX 7 that police were called to the area at several points during the weekend, but the protest stayed peaceful. Sybill Bradley, who has lived on East 9th Street for 16 years, said parking has never been a problem on the block. “We haven’t had any issues with parking at all,” Bradley said. “I don’t know why she felt the need to say it’s her neighborhood.”
FOX 7 knocked on the couple’s door for comment and got no answer. The woman has not been publicly identified.
Huston-Tillotson is a private HBCU of about 1,000 students in East Austin’s Chicon neighborhood, an area that has been one of the city’s historically Black communities for generations. That history is exactly what the protesters’ signs were about. As home prices in East Austin have climbed, longtime Black residents have been pushed out by rising property taxes and rents, and a newcomer telling an HBCU student “this is our neighborhood” landed on a nerve that was already raw.
Austin activist Claren Williams, who posted video of the cookout on October 12, is now trying to turn the moment into something permanent. He launched a fundraiser with a $1 million goal to buy a lot and develop it into a community gathering place. The campaign had raised about $1,700 as of Wednesday. Williams said the effort is about ownership, dignity, and Black history.
The story has also spread to conservative outlets like Townhall, which focused on a yard sign at the home supporting Texas Democrat James Talarico.
