Page 6 - Microsoft PowerPoint - Hidden History - DFW v2.pptx

Freedman’s Town to Uptown
This weekend’s tour began at 9 a.m. at the J.B. Jackson DART Center, named after the local community
leader who helped negotiate better prices for black homeowners in Fair Park whose homes were
being seized through eminent domain.

“We’ve got to travel back in time,” Don said into a megaphone, “but we have to tell the story.”

He pointed the nondescript white van toward the Freedman’s Memorial Cemetery, located in what is

now Uptown. Originally a Freedman’s Town, it was settled by former slaves after the Civil War. From
the founding of Dallas in 1841 to the 1960s, this was a large, vibrant, and self‐sufficient African
American community. It was one of the largest in the south. Back then, this was “State Thomas” or
“Short North Dallas.” Some called it the “Harlem of the Southwest.” In the 1800s, “Uptown” was
considered the outskirts of North Dallas, which is a big reason why black people were allowed to
settle there.

Former slaves raised what little money they had to purchase land for their dead, their first financial

transaction in Dallas. But as the city began to expand and spread north, business interests overtook
the area and started pushing out the black residents. In 1947, construction of the estimated $10
million Central Expressway cut right through State Thomas and uprooted the cemetery.

A large portion was dug up and paved over with no respect for the dead. Gravestones were used to fill
ditches and low spots. We don’t know exactly what happened to the remains, but it’s likely that many
of them are still buried underneath our cars as we are stuck in traffic on 75.

Later, Woodall Rodgers further split the neighborhood. The black population was dispersed and
gradually replaced by white settlement. By the late 1970s, most of the black residents had moved,
mostly to South Dallas and Oak Cliff.

When the city expanded the highway in the 1980s, Mamie McKnight, founder of Black Dallas
Remembered, didn’t want history repeated. After discovering that graves were being dug up under
Lemmon Avenue, she intervened to stop the expansion of the freeway for two years while the city
excavated and exhumed the bodies for a dignified reburial of the remains. It was one of the country’s
largest cemetery excavation projects. Remnants of the graves can be viewed at the African American
Museum’s “Facing the Rising Sun” exhibit, which we visited at the end of the tour.

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