Final Post in Honor of Black Women’s History Month. This One Recognizes Pauline Brown.

Pauline Stewart Brown was born in Austin’s Wheatville Freedman Community to Archie and Clara Carrington Stewart. The family moved to Clarksville in 1942. Pauline joined Sweet Home Missionary Baptist Church when she was 8 years old and was a mainstay of the church and a frequent choir soloist until her death in 2009. She was also a vocal advocate for her beloved Clarksville.

Pauline and her children lost their home when MoPac was being constructed, but she built a new home on Waterston Avenue for her family. Over the years, she fought tirelessly for Clarksville. For example, she and Mary Baylor helped lead the fight to oppose the construction of a proposed crosstown expressway, which would have destroyed the neighborhood and the two women, together with other Clarksville residents pressured the City of Austin to provide them with the public services they had long been denied because of racism – sewers, paved streets, sidewalks, drainage improvements, and street lights. Clarksville finally got those services in the late 1970s.

Pauline was one of the founders of the Clarksville Community Development Corporation and a long-time member of the organization’s board of directors. She was instrumental in obtaining the funding needed to start the organization’s affordable housing program, which continues to operate in Clarksville.

Pauline was an impassioned speaker and often attended meetings of Austin’s Historic Preservation Commission to speak against the demolition of old Clarksville homes. She was also Clarksville’s unofficial historian. In 2002, the Heritage Society of Austin, now Preservation Austin, honored Pauline with a Preservation Merit Award for Advocacy.