The details
City Council passed council member Paige Ellis’ resolution to rename the street during a June 5 council meeting. The street which sits in a region known as Kincheonville, located in the Southwest Austin area.
Kincheonville, previously a freedmen community, was established in 1865 by Thomas Kincheon, a formerly enslaved man.
Kincheon developed the community to offer economic opportunity, community and a safe space for formerly enslaved African Americans following emancipation, according to agenda documents. The settlement also included a 300-acre farm and welcomed Hispanic and white people that worked in the fields alongside Kincheonville community members.
Ellis’ draft resolution states that the street named “Plantation Road,” which was built in the 1970s and crossed Kincheonville, “conjures images of the Antebellum South and a longing for an agricultural economy dependent on the forced labor of enslaved African Americans.”
In 2018, the city’s Equity Office released a memo listing Plantation Road as a high priority for renaming as part of a resolution to rename various city assets that had names with ties to the Confederacy. The city later passed a resolution in 2020 to continue the initiative to rename streets with ties to the Confederacy and white supremacy.
The latest resolution directs the city manager to begin the process of identifying potential names through collaborating with council offices, community members and the Zion Rest Missionary Baptist Church, where the Rev. Elijah Kincheon, a descendent of Kincheon, served as one of the early church leaders.
“I look forward to partnering with the office of council member [Ryan] Alter, city staff and working with community members to choose a new name that appropriately honors the unique heritage of the community,” she said at the council meeting.
More history
The Kincheonville community is bordered by what is now Paisano Trail, Davis and Brodie lanes, and Longview Road. The settlement grew to over 100 residents, with a schoolhouse and the Zion Rest Missionary Baptist Church, which has been active in the area since 1903.
Kincheon’s son, Thomas Wesley, and grandson Thomas Kincheon III, helped develop the area in the 1950s to create two subdivisions and named a number of streets after family and community members.
Kincheonville also provided milk and butter for Tillotson College, which merged with Samuel Huston College to form Huston-Tillotson University.
Though less developed in 1954, the area surrounding Kincheonville grew with residential construction by 1985, a report for the Travis County Historical Commission states.
Currently, the Kincheonville subdivision has been developed with modern builds and a majority of the structures are non-historic-age homes, according to the 2016 report.
A city ordinance to rename Plantation Road must be submitted to council for a public hearing and possible action by Oct. 9.
