Downs Field
Austin, Travis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1954, the city of Austin relocated Downs Field here from its original location at 12th Street and Springdale Road where it was constructed in 1949 as a “separate but equal” alternative to Disch Field. Downs Field has been used by the Austin Black Pioneers, Greyhounds, and Indians, and remains the home field of Huston-Tillotson University. It was named for Rev. Karl Downs (1912-1948), influential president of Samuel Huston College from 1943 until his untimely death in 1948. The baseball field and wooden grandstands were built at this site which had been home to African American athletics for decades prior. The site was donated to Samuel Huston College, a college for African Americans, in 1914, and used for its baseball stadium beginning in the late 1920s. It was also home to the Austin Black Senators, a semi-professional baseball team. The Austin Black Senators played other Texas Negro League teams as well as African American college, barnstorming, and out-of-state teams here and on the road. In December 1938, the site was sold to Austin public schools and converted into a football field and stadium for L.C. Anderson High School, the only high school for African Americans during segregation. It is here that L.C. Anderson High School won the 1942 Prairie View Interscholastic League state championship and future Pro Football Hall of Famer Dick “Night Train” Lane played. For more than a century, the site has been a significant part of the cultural and sporting history of Austin, and a field of memorable games and moments by athletes of local, state and national renown. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2015
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This ground has been a home for African American athletics for more than a century—donated to Samuel Huston College in 1914 and used for baseball by the late 1920s, including the semi-pro Austin Black Senators of the Negro Leagues. As L.C. Anderson High's football field, it saw a 1942 state championship and the play of future Pro Football Hall of Famer Dick Night Train Lane. Relocated here in 1954, Downs Field was named for Rev. Karl Downs and remains the home field of Huston-Tillotson University.
Why it matters
Built as a segregation-era "separate but equal" venue, it stands as a monument to Black baseball, football and college athletics in Austin during the long decades of Jim Crow.
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Related people
- · Karl Downs
- · Dick "Night Train" Lane
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
L. C. Anderson High School and Integration of Austin's Public Schools
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Founded in 1909 to serve Austin's growing African American community, L.C. Anderson High School became the heart of segregated East Austin—a place that, despite unequal resources, produced excellence in academics, athletics, and music. After Brown v. Board of Education, the district's "freedom of choice" plan left the school effectively segregated, and by 1971 a federal court's remedy meant closing Anderson and busing its Black students to white schools across the city. The shuttering of Austin's only Black public high school tore out a community's anchor even as it advanced integration.
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Site of Old Anderson High School, Kealing Junior High School
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Austin's first high school for Black students opened in 1884 as Robertson Hill School and, through several moves and renamings, became L. C. Anderson High School, honoring a longtime principal. Kealing Junior High, the city's first junior high for Black students, opened on this site in 1930, named for educator Hightower Theodore Kealing, and later merged with the Anderson buildings. The schools here closed in 1971 under court-ordered desegregation, and the old buildings were later razed or lost to fire.
James L. Farmer, Jr.
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