But that has done nothing to alleviate the fear among residents of East Austin that they were being targeted. The House and Mason families are stalwarts of the African-American community with deep ties to the city’s civil rights movement. For them, this was distinguishing feature of gentrification: the families with children moved out and were being replaced by newcomers without children. They were known as the “servant girl killings,” in which a serial killer murdered eight people, six of them black. And Austin maintained its reputation as a city that was, compared to others in the south, racially tolerant.

Source: New York Times March 22, 2018 09:45 UTC