Freedman's Town, Deep Ellum's blues, Juanita Craft and the museum at Fair Park.
Freedman's Town
After emancipation, freed people from Texas and nearby states came to Dallas, and Freedman's Town and Deep Ellum together grew into one of the largest African American communities in the South. In 1869 the trustee Sam Eakins bought an acre of land for a Black cemetery there.
The Central Expressway later wiped out almost every trace of Freedman's Cemetery above ground. Before the highway was widened, the community worked with the city and the state to protect it, and from 1991 to 1994 archaeologists uncovered and carefully moved more than 1,000 graves. Today the Freedman's Cemetery Memorial, with sculptures by David Newton, honors the people buried there.
Deep Ellum
In the 1920s and 1930s Deep Ellum was a hotbed of early jazz and blues. The Boyd Hotel drew Black musicians including Lead Belly and Blind Lemon Jefferson, and the Knights of Pythias Temple, home to some of the city's first offices for Black doctors, dentists and lawyers, was the social and cultural center of Black Dallas until the late 1930s. After the Second World War the old Deep Ellum faded, and in 1969 a new elevation of Central Expressway cut into the neighborhood.
Juanita Craft
Juanita Craft joined the NAACP in 1935 and became membership chair of the Dallas branch in 1942. She organized a protest against the State Fair of Texas for admitting Black visitors only on a set day, helped lead pickets at segregated lunch counters and restaurants and, after Brown v. Board of Education, worked to integrate the University of Texas law school. She served two terms on the Dallas City Council, and the home she left to the city opened in 2023 as the Juanita Craft Civil Rights House and Museum.
The Museum At Fair Park
The African American Museum of Dallas, founded in 1974, stands at Fair Park on almost exactly the site of the Texas Centennial Exposition's Hall of Negro Life. It holds one of the largest collections of African American folk art in the country and is the only museum of its kind in the Southwest.
Black Dallas Today
From the memorial to Fair Park, the city's Black history is part of its map, and Black-owned restaurants, salons, shops and brands are part of everyday Dallas.
Shop Black-owned businesses in Dallas on CashBlack.
Photo Credits
Businesses on Elm Street in Deep Ellum. Photo: Joe Mabel, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons The Juanita J. Craft Civil Rights House in the Wheatley Place Historic District. Photo: Drewp4vp, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons The African American Museum at Fair Park. Photo: Michael Barera, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons