Joy Diaz, KUT News

To celebrate Juneteenth, KUT News is bringing you voices from Austin's black community. 

Nneka Waturoucha is a 19-year-old University of Texas student. Her father is American and her mother is Nigerian. While she grew up around minority communities in Houston, she’s still assimilating into the predominately white West Campus area.

To celebrate Juneteenth, KUT News is bringing you voices from Austin's black community on their past, present and future.

Carlos Wilson is a young Austinite whose heritage is rooted in Central America. 

"I imagine that people aren't going to care about what your heritage is and they're just going to think that we're all the same in the future."

A series of Juneteenth celebrations kicked off this weekend, celebrating the day in 1865 when slaves in Texas learned they were free. To honor these celebrations, KUT News is telling a series of stories about the history of the African-American community in Austin. 

The City of Austin has established its new Citizen’s Redistricting Commission, a group of 14 citizens who will draw the city's first boundaries for city council districts.

In selecting candidates, city officials drew at random from a pool of qualified volunteers. Thursday night, the commissioners met to select candidates who would join them in the task of redistricting. 

Update: Cesar Chavez Street is now open to eastbound traffic, but one westbound lane is still closed as crews finish work on a sinkhole found this morning.

The cement used to fill the hole has very little water and dries quickly, but is not expected to be fully dry until after rush hour.

Original post (12:17 p.m.): Westbound Cesar Chavez Street is closed from I-35 to Red River after a sinkhole formed near Sabine Street.

Austin’s new Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission is expected to be fully in place tonight. That’s the group of Austin residents who will draw the city’s first geographic council districts.

Last November when voters approved the charter that changed the city’s form of government from at-large to geographic, they also approved the establishment of the commission in two steps.

The city of Austin has a long-running dispute with the various ride-sharing groups -- people who say they are in their cars anyway, so through mobile apps they offer to “share” their ride in exchange for some money. The city has said that’s an illegal taxi, but today it made a truce with Sidecar.

San Francisco-based Sidecar says it’ll disable its mobile app until the Austin City Council meets again in August. Conversations and negotiations will take place in the meantime, because ride-sharing services found loopholes that they say allow them to operate legally in the city.

This is Martha Coleman Day in Austin. Mayor Lee Leffingwell made that proclamation in honor of one of Austin’s oldest living residents.

Coleman is a tiny woman. At a quilting party celebrating her 108th birthday she wore a pink dress that was a little too big for her. Coleman’s 93-year-old niece had been stitching while she waited for her aunt’s arrival. One of Coleman’s great-grandnieces put a Happy Birthday rhinestone tiara on her head. Coleman’s slim fingers grabbed a needle and start putting the shapes together.

Last month, there were two officer-involved shootings in the Austin area. But the community reacted differently than it had in a not-so-distant past. After the shootings, there were no marches, no press conferences from civil rights organizations, and no riots. 

It’s almost like one can mark the history of the Austin Police Department in the community as “Before Art Acevedo” and “After Art Acevedo.”

Before Art Acevedo became APD chief, there was Stan Knee. His tenure was very different.

The co-founder of one of the oldest restaurants in Austin died over the weekend. Janie Martinez helped her husband open Matt’s El Rancho in 1952.

Martinez died Saturday at the age of 90. Her death comes almost a year after the Tex-Mex restaurant celebrated its 60th anniversary. Matt himself died in 2003.

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a case that could help people already convicted of crimes appeal their convictions in federal court.

The federal government is mulling a possible entry fee to cross the border into the U.S.

The Department of Homeland Security wants to study if, and how much, it could charge people on the millions of trains, buses, personal vehicles and even pedestrians crossing the U.S. border every year.

The idea would be to use the money for infrastructure repairs and maintenance at the ports of entry.

Every Memorial Day we remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the name of duty.

But Rick Smith doesn’t wait on any specific day of the year. He has made it his mission in life to honor the U.S. flag every morning and night – and plans on doing so for the rest of his life.

The city of Austin is one step closer to drawing new geographic district maps for the city council. Eight names were drawn yesterday at City Hall to serve on the city’s new redistricting commission, and they have already received their first assignment.