The area now commonly referred to as Uptown was once home to a thriving African American community known as Freedman’s Town and also North Dallas. Eminent domain, rising land prices, demolition of historic homes and other forms of place-based destruction has irreparably transformed the area. Where there were once Black-owned mom-and-pop stores, now stand four story apartment blocks. This story-map explores the history of this area from its founding to just after the Civil Rights Era.
1860's-1900
The cemetery was closed to new burials in 1907.
In 1889, the Dallas City Council redrew the city’s “wards”, similar to a council district, creating a new Ninth Ward, that encompasses North Dallas and Freedman’s Town, and the area was commonly known as North Dallas from then on.
Houston Texas and Central Railroad
Transport via railroad was becoming increasingly popular before the Civil War. By the beginning of the war, Houston had 5 rail lines running through it, including the Houston and Texas Central (H&TC) line. After much lobbying and negotiation, plans were made for the H&TC to come to Dallas. Though it provided an economic boost for the city, when it was built in 1872 Houston Texas and Central Railroad cut through Freedmen’s Cemetery. The rail brought more people, including formerly enslaved people, to Dallas and Freedman’s Town continued to grow.
Early Churches of Freedman’s Town
Numerous churches served early Freedman’s Town, and New Hope Baptist Church and St. Paul United Methodist Church were two of the earliest houses of worship in the area. Churches played an important role in the community, not only addressing spiritual needs of residents, but in providing other services that were not provided to Black residents of Dallas.
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St. Paul United Methodist Church originally began as a mission of the Wesley Church in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1865. Formerly enslaved people from Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas were the first members of the mission church. In 1873, the Rev. H. Boliver, organized St. Paul Methodist Episcopal at the current location 1816 Routh Street. Construction on the current building began in 1913 and was completed in 1923. The church was, and continues to be, a center for education, politics, and socializing. Classes were offered on morals, property ownership and finance. For more on St. Paul, listen to this oral history from current pastor, Pastor Weaver, and church member Mrs. Roberson.
According to its website, New Hope Baptist Church was the first church to serve Black parishioners and was started and owned by African-Americans. Congregants of New Hope Baptist Church first began meeting in the log cabin home of Mattie Rainey near what is now the corner of Fairmont and Munger. Reverend John Hay was recommended to the group as a potential leader, and officially formed New Hope Baptist Church in 1873. Soon after the church moved to Hall Street. Following Reverend Hay, Reverend A.R. Griggs, one of the original founders of Freedman’s Cemetery, led the church.
Schools for African-American Students: For years the City did not provide any educational services to Freedman’s Town. To serve the needs of the community, in 1875 Reverend Griggs started a grammar school out of New Hope Baptist Church, which was known as the New Hope Grammar School. In 1892 the Wright-Cuney School (Colored School No. 2) was established at the corner of Flora Street and Burford Street in North Dallas.
Good Street Baptist Church Kindergarten Class
Dallas Express
Formerly The Dallas Bee, Dallas Express was created in 1892 by William E. King. For 70 years the paper reported on issues concerning the black population in Dallas as well as throughout the South. It was an eight page weekly Saturday magazine and at its peak it circulated 10,000 copies. It was a newspaper that spotlighted lynchings, issues of voting and segregation, businesses and achievements, and mob violence. It reported on issues at a local and national level. It stopped circulating in the mid 1970’s as a result of a decline in circulation.
Pages from a 1919 issue of the Dallas Express
1900-1920’s
New businesses and institutions continue to open and thrive in the 1900’s- 20’s. As the infrastructure of the neighborhood improved, more churches were built or expanded existing facilities.
Community House at Griggs Park, courtesy of DeGoyler Collection at SMU
Parks and Open Space
The City of Dallas opens to parks in African American neighborhoods - the Hall Street Negro Park in North Dallas and the Oak Cliff Negro Park, now Eloise Lundy Park in the Bottom neighborhood. In 1924 Hall Street Park was dedicated to Rev. AR Griggs and renamed Griggs Park. More information on the history of Dallas’ segregated parks can be found here and here .
Expanding Educational Resources
Numerous professional learning opportunities opened in North Dallas at this time. In 1916, the Homemakers and Industrial Trade School opened at the corner of Washington and State. Founded by Josie Briggs Hall, an African American educator from Waxahachie, the school was for African American students, and was created so women could learn about cooking and keeping house, and men could learn about cars and other trades. In addition to starting the trade school, Hall wrote numerous books on the importance of education as well as a collection of poems and essays.
There are two recorded locations for the Madam CJ Walker Beauty School in Dallas, both in North Dallas. Records indicate the school had a long presence in the area, at least from the 1920s to 1960s. The chain of beauty schools was named after its founder, Madam CJ Walker, who was born Sarah Breedlove near Delta, Louisiana to Owen and Minerva, who had recently been emancipated from slavery when Sarah was born.
Madam CJ Walker invented and produced hair care products, eventually opening beauty schools for African American students across the country. Graduates, or Walker Agents, went on to become sales agents and business owners.
The Sanborn Map from 1921 shows “Colored High School” at the corner of Cochran and Hall. At the time it was the only high school for Black students in the city.
In 1922 bond funding was provided to build a new high school on the site of the Wright-Cuney School. The Booker T. Washington Technical High School was named after Black author, educator, and leader Booker T. Washington.
When it opened, the school on Cochran became B.F. Darrell elementary, and Booker T. Washington became the only high-school for African American students in the Dallas system. The building was designed by Land and Witchell, a Dallas based architecture firm that also designed the nearby Dallas High School and Dallas Power and Light Building.
John Leslie Patton, whose photos are shown here, served as principal of the school for 39 years. It is now an arts magnet high school that serves all of Dallas.
Business Development: In 1923 Dr. Walter R. McMillan opened the McMillan Sanitarium, a medical center that had surgical facilities, doctors offices, an insurance office, pharmacy, barbershop, and other businesses.
In an interview, Eva Partee and daughter Kathy McMillan spoke about Dr. McMillan and his practice. Click on the video to watch the full interview:
Kathy McMillan: My grandmother was his second wife and he had another set of children who lived in Quitman Mineola area. So he divorced their mother and went to, um, medical school and um, he came back and set up a clinic or a hospital, or practice in Dallas and his, um, he was a general practitioner, but he specialized in OB GYN because that's what I remember everybody saying. He delivered me, he delivered me. And oftentimes people couldn't afford, Black people couldn't afford a doctor, so they would trade, uh, different things for my grandfather's services. Sometimes they didn't have money. They would give him food or our land even trade-off, a plot of their property, uh, for his services. Um, his, he had a hospital, or clinic, that I believe was downtown initially, and mama would shed some light on that. But then he had the hospital that was there on, uh, McMillan Sanitarium that was on hall and Thomas, uh, Avenue, um, my grandmother Muriel Vain Thomas McMillan was, um, a type of pharmacist. She would work in the drug store. So they had a combination services established at the hospital. When I was growing up, he had gotten older and moved his practice to the home
Eva Partee McMillan: Oh, yes. He was. Grandpa grew up in Quitman, Texas and he came to Dallas whenhis father, rode him to Dallas and he witnessed the hospitals practicing the Blacks couldn't go to the white hospital. And, uh, if they would die and nothing happened. So he wanted to ASAP his race. So he went to McHaran school. His brother had finished the year before, a few years before, and his brother was a, uh, real, I've tried to take his position, chairman of the board or something that he was big, but Dr., my father-in-law wanted to do set for Dallas. His brother stayed there, his career was always in the errands, but Dr. McMillan came to Dallas, they came right in 1903 or something like that. And, um, he practiced his medicine and drove his buggy for house visits for years. And then when he started getting more powerful, he decided to be a loss pill. And 1923, he built the hospital and this was the largest Black hospital, some books say in Texas, some books say in Dallas and I don't know, but he, it was very nice and he kept it for many years till he retired.
In addition to founding the Sanitarium, Dr. McMillan was instrumental in fundraising for the construction of the Moorland YMCA and was an active participant in St. Paul UMC. Other Black doctors who worked at the McMillan Sanitarium included Dr. William Green, who initially commuted to the sanitarium from Kauffman, TX before making his home in North Dallas, and Lee Gresham Pinkston, for whom the LG Pinkston High School in West Dallas is named. In the late 1920s Dr. Pinkston opened up his own clinic at 3305 Thomas Ave. In 1954, Dr. Pinkston was one of five Black doctors that were admitted to practice at St. Paul hospital, the first white hospital to have Black doctors on staff.
Pinkston Clinic image courtesy Dallas Historical Society
Image courtesy of the Dallas Historical Society
Branching from Booker T. Washington's National Negro Business League, the Dallas Negro Chamber of Commerce led by W.E. Clark opened its office in 2315 Hall St. in 1926 with aims to serve the local economic needs.The majority of the organizations aided by the chamber were small grocery stores, retail shops, taverns, and funeral homes. They targeted businesses that were underfunded and not projected to last long. The chamber encouraged the black community to patron these establishments to not only keep them alive, but to also keep money in their community. They worked not only on business issues, but addressed job, school, and housing issues as well. They partnered with the NAACP on voting issues and encouraged the black population to pay their poll taxes. The chamber had a hand in the development of Hamilton Park as well as the desegregation of Fair Park. They were involved in urban renewal projects for black neighborhoods in the 50’s and 60’s.
1930-1940
Life in North Dallas
North Dallas continued to be a thriving African American community with new community amenities and local job opportunities. At the same time, development pressures - like highway and housing construction - began to threaten the stability of existing residents.
New Community Facilities:
YWCA Maria Morgan image courtesy DeGoyler Library, SMU
In 1927 the Homemakers Industrial and Trade School deeded their property to the YWCA for a new branch to serve African American women. A group of African American women raised the money for the construction of the new Maria Morgan YWCA, which eventually opened in 1940.
Planning began in 1928 for 3 new YMCA facilities, including the Moorland YMCA which would be for Black patrons. Black Dallasites, local by local leaders like Dr. LG Pinkston and Leslie Patton, raised $75,000 for the construction of the building, which opened in 1933. It was named after Dr. Reverend Jesse Edward Moorland, the second secretary of the Colored Men’s Department of the YMCA in Washington D.C., who raised money for the construction of YMCA’s across the country, including Dallas’. In 1970 the Moorland YMCA branch made plans to move to South Oak Cliff, where it stayed until it merged with the Oak Cliff Family YMCA in 2020. The original North Dallas Moorland YMCA building is now home to the Dallas Black Dance Theater and the South Oak Cliff Moorland YMCA is now home to nonprofit For Oak Cliff .
Moorland YMCA image courtesy DeGoyler Library, SMU
Thriving Economy
The Thomas Ave-Hall Street Business District had many small businesses owned by African Americans that served African Americans. While they weren’t allowed to shop in stores just down the street in Downtown, in North Dallas, Black patrons could find practically anything they might want or need, from gas stations to restaurants to clothing stores.
images courtesy Dallas Historical Society
In an interview with Leena Sanders, who still lives in her family home in State-Thomas, she spoke of the diversity of backgrounds and skills you could find in the neighborhood.
People liked being over here. It was, uh, an area where the economic strata was mixed. You had low income people, you might've had laborers, and then you had people that were doctors or teachers. So there was a very much, very much a mixed group of economic levels.
Development and Destruction in North Dallas
The Housing Act of 1937 paved the way for the creation of the Dallas Housing Authority (DHA) in 1938, leading to many development changes in the area. From 1940-1942, DHA bought 142 separate pieces of property in North Dallas to be developed into Roseland Homes, which was the first public housing complex in Dallas for Black residents. 650 units were opened in 1942 with 650 units. Several black and white homeowners protested the demolition of their homes for the project, and 53 homeowners filed an injunction against the Dallas Housing Association to stop the project.
Enabled by the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944, the 1949 construction of the Central Expressway bisected North Dallas. The project resulted in the removal of North Dallas residents and business owners, and was a blow to all the financial and social capital that had been built up to this point. It made shopping, working, going to church, and going to school difficult as there was now a highway that needed to be surpassed.
image courtesy Dallas Public Library
1950s-1960s
Civil Rights Leaders of North Dallas
There were a number of civil rights leaders who lived in North Dallas in the 1960’s. Among them was Eva Partee McMillan, who had been married to the son of Dr. Walter McMillan of the McMillan Sanatorium, and her children Ernest, Jackie, and Kathy McMillan. Ernest was active in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and other civil rights groups. Below is an excerpt from an interview with Ernest in which he described some of his organizing work in the 1960’s. Click on the video to watch the whole interview.
But when I got on the campus, it shocked me to see a rebel flag flying over the campus, you know, and then the dormitories were segregated and where people sat and ate in the student lounge was segregated informally. It wasn't a science, like Latinos and Blacks kind of, we kind of huddled together against this more dominant force that didn't say that they were too pleased to see any of us there. And so out of this commuting back and forth and running into not only the social barriers that exist there and a culture of a racist, Confederate loving folks there was also in the classroom itself was stifling because, they were teaching, strictly European version history. And from a very narrow perspective, like Columbus of the savior or Robert E. Lee was a site, you know, it wasn't. I wrote a paper on Black Power and I got an F for that, you know, so I thought, come on now, this is documented.
Later in the interview Ernest shares a picture of him with family and friends and shared a little about their work together
Ernest McMillan
We're a group of people standing in front of - I believe this is the Martin Luther King Center building. I may be wrong, but I know it's in Dallas and it's circa 1969. And standing with friends and family, people from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee chapter as well as strong supporters. So this is me on the very end, left. Next to me is Jackie Harris. She's putting the arm on me and also the woman next to her is Ruth Jefferson. They both were co-leaders of the national welfare rights organization, Dallas chapter, and also strong supporters of SNCC. We met them about a year before this picture was taken when they were in the welfare office, trying to get support for their children. And we ended up sitting in there for three days to get justice. She emerged as a strong leader, not in just that struggle, but in the community throughout the city.
A Maceo Smith was a resident of North Dallas who played a role in many local Black organizations, including publisher of the Dallas Express, Executive Secretary of the Negro Chamber of Commerce, and Deputy Directory of the Hall of Negro Life. In the 1940’s Smith took a job with the Federal Housing Authority and became a leader of the local chapter of the NAACP. He fought for civil rights in Dallas and beyond, and led efforts to desegregate schools as the leader of the Triracial Committee for the City of Dallas.
A reception for Thurgood Marshall hosted at the home of A Maceo Smith. Image courtesy of the Dallas Public Library Marion Butts Collection
He has been working for five straight years to bridge Dallas to the national civil rights movement, and this could be the culmination. He led some of the first wide-scale and organized civil rights protests downtown; he helped spur the integration of Dallas schools. He writes the most hard-charging column in the city, in the leading black newspaper; he leads a church founded by slaves; he serves as head of the NAACP; he is in regular communication with Lyndon Baines Johnson; and now, almost as a capstone, he has finally gotten King to come to Dallas.
1970's-now
The 1980s brought further demolition to the area with the widening of 10 miles of the North Central Expressway. When the process began, builders began to find bodies underneath the highway. Archaeologists were hired to determine the extent of graves that had been buried. It was determined that 1,157 graves from the Freedman’s Cemetery had been built over. The remains that were found were excavated and reburied. The process was completed in 1999 with the opening of a memorial to the formerly enslaved people buried in Freedman’s Cemetery.
North Dallas/Freedman's Town area in 1982 (left) and 1987 (right)
In 1984, State Thomas was designated as a historical district, but many homes in the area had already been demolished or slated for demolition. A few original homes remain in the area, but it is more known for its multistory apartment buildings than as a historic African American neighborhood.
While much of North Dallas/Freedman’s Town has been lost, there still remains important history to preserve and people that continue to champion its value.
North Dallas Map
In order to better understand the landscape of North Dallas/Freedman's Town, we've attempted to map all of the businesses, organizations, and residences of significant area figures that we could find. Any available documentation of that location - photos, advertisements, etc. - are provided as well.
