In April 2018, when the city government voted to rename the street that connects Barton Springs Road to Barton Hills Drive, many Austinites were not immediately familiar with its new namesake. But even though she might not be a household name for our city’s many newcomers, Azie Taylor Morton’s achievements as a teacher, politician, social equality advocate, and the only African-American to hold the position of Treasurer of the United States certainly earned her the posthumous honor.
Azie Taylor, who married James Homer Morton in 1965, was born in 1936 in the small community of Dale, Texas (located about 10 miles northeast of Lockhart) and was raised by her maternal grandparents on a small farm. Although she was not blind, deaf or an orphan, she attended the Texas Blind, Deaf, and Orphan School during her high school years because during that period of school segregation, there was no high school in the vicinity that African-Americans could legally attend.
She graduated at the top of her class at age 16, and in 1952, enrolled in Austin’s Huston-Tillotson University. Four years later, she graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Science degree in commercial education.
After being denied admission to a University of Texas’ graduate program due to racially-biased admission policies, Morton took a job as a teacher in a state-sponsored school for “delinquent” girls. Next, she worked at Huston-Tillotson as Assistant to the President until she was hired for a position at the AFL-CIO union’s Texas state chapter headquarters, also located in Austin.
In 1961, she was invited by President John F. Kennedy to move to Washington D.C. and work for the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, where she remained in varying positions over the next two decades. Then in 1977, Morton was nominated by President Jimmy Carter invitation to serve as the 36th Treasurer of the United States. She held the post from September of 1977 until Carter left office in January 1981.
After returning to Austin, she stayed active with Huston-Tillotson in a variety of capacities including mentoring students. She also served on the Austin Housing Authority Board of Commissioners (HACA) from 1999-2001. In honor of her service, the HACA created the Azie Morton Scholarship Fund for low-income students at Huston-Tillotson. Morton passed away in December of 2003.
Though she would have been honored by the naming of any number of Austin streets, the choice of the road that leads to the back parking lot of Barton Springs is especially appropriate because during her college years, Morton was known to have to have swum in Barton Springs in open defiance of the period’s segregationist policies that made the beloved pool “whites only.” These “swim-ins” were prominent actions in the local civil rights movement and led to the eventual removal of race restrictions at Barton Springs and other city pools.