Location: Railroad Street at Whitfield Street in Enfield
County: Halifax
Original Date Cast: 2018
Louis Austin, native of Halifax County and resident of Durham after 1920, was an outspoken editor and a mover and shaker with the consequences of his work for civil rights extending beyond the Bull City. At his newspaper, the Carolina Times, the motto was “The Truth Unbridled,” referencing his use of the press to publicize racial injustice and to fight for equality. His paper continues under his grandson, Kenneth Edmonds.
Austin’s birthplace in Enfield could not be identified but is believed to be near the center of town. He attended a private academy, the Brick School and graduated from the National Training School in Durham (present-day North Carolina Central University) in 1922, soon thereafter going to work for North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company.
From the outset Austin staked out positions on civil rights that countered those of the middle-class black leadership of Durham, including those of C.C. Spaulding and the managers of North Carolina Mutual. Austin identified with the philosophy of W.E.B. DuBois (and Frederick Douglass), advocates of protest. Spaulding and others in Durham were accommodationists, attuned to the philosophy of Booker T. Washington.
While still in school, he began contributing to the Standard Advertiser, founded by Charles Arrant in Durham in 1921. In 1927, with a loan from Mechanics and Farmers Bank, Austin bought the paper and changed its name to the Carolina Times. In 1935 Austin joined with C.C. Spaulding and James E. Shepard to organize the Durham Committee on Negro Affairs, G-138]. Their effects were considerable, with an increase in registered black voters from fifty in 1929 to 3000 in 1939.
Austin joined others in 1933 who challenged the admissions policies at the University of North Carolina. During World War II he endorsed the “Double V” initiative whereby African Americans who fought for the Allies were encouraged to fight white supremacy upon their return home. In 1957 the Royal Ice Cream sit-in took place one week after Austin’s call for direct action. Austin was a model for subsequent civil rights leaders, such as Howard Fuller, but broke with those who advocated black nationalism.
Austin died in 1971 and is buried in Durham. Jerry Gershenhorn has published three articles and a biography of Austin. Other assessments of his place in history situate him at the forefront of civil rights leaders. Freddie Parker has written that, prior to Austin, Durham was “a diverse community that needed one more black leader.” Jean Anderson, in her history of Durham County, described Austin as an “indefatigable crusader for justice and civil rights.” Osha Gray Davidson wrote, “If the civil rights movement of the 1960s was a second American Revolution, then Louis Austin, especially in the crucible of North Carolina, was its Thomas Paine, his stirring rhetoric pointing the way toward freedom.”
References:
Carolina Times, available digitally through www.digitalnc.com
Jerry Gershenhorn, Louis Austin and the Carolina Times: A Life in the Long Black Freedom Struggle (2018)
Osha Gray Davidson, The Best of Enemies: Race and Redemption in the New South (2007)
Jean Anderson, Durham County: A History of Durham County, North Carolina (1990)