This episode of Alternative Views, a public access television program broadcast in Austin, profiles the Reverend Jacob Fontaine. Hosts Frank Morrow and Doug Kellner sit down with the Reverend Jacob Fontaine III—Fontaine’s grandson—and Dr. Gene Burd, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin. The guests discuss their 1983 biography as well as Fontaine’s legacy as a preacher, civic leader, and newspaper publisher in Austin. The hosts begin and end the program by commenting on current events and news stories. The episode was originally taped and broadcast around 1984. This footage derives from a 1996 rebroadcast.

The Reverend Jacob Fontaine (1808–1898) began preaching at the First Baptist Church in Austin while serving as the Reverend Edward Fontaine enslaved sexton. In 1867, following his emancipation, Jacob Fontaine founded the city’s first Black Baptist church. (The church site is now the location of the Austin History Center.) The same year, he helped establish the St. John Regular Missionary Baptist Association. Fontaine went on to found five other Black churches in Central Texas as well as a local chapter of the Colored Brothers of the Eastern Star. In addition to his calling as a minister, Fontaine became active in politics during Reconstruction. In 1876, he established The Gold Dollar, one of the first Black newspapers in the South and the first Black-owned newspaper in Austin. Fontaine also mobilized Black church congregations in supporting Austin as the location for the newly established University of Texas—some 70 years before the institution would admit Black students.

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