DALLAS (AP) - Decades ago in Dallas, black families held picnics, played baseball and pushed their children on the swings of public parks they called their own.
The parks were a central part of the lives of schoolchildren and neighborhoods. They welcomed Dallas’ black residents and offered them a place for recreation during the Jim Crow era. They hosted pool parties and civic meetings, beauty contests and Juneteenth celebrations.
But as much as these places brought people together, they kept them apart. Dallas was a segregated city, and so were its parks.
Now, a history project meant to honor seven of Dallas’ historically black parks has sparked a dispute about how the city should remember an ugly part of its past. Lauren Woods and Cynthia Mulcahy, two conceptual artists hired for the project, say they’re at odds with two local foundations that gave a grant for historical markers.
Woods and Mulcahy say the Dallas-based Boone Family Foundation and the Fort Worth-based Rainwater Charitable Foundation are pushing ahead with a sanitized history of the segregated parks.
“Dallas has a culture of courtesy,” Woods told The Dallas Morning News (https://bit.ly/1PRxQyK). “No one wants to make anyone uncomfortable.” But, she said, “a lot of people are ready for a more honest conversation.”
That includes references to bombings, white flight and segregation of neighborhoods.
Woods said the markers come down to an important question: Who gets to write Dallas’ history?
The artists say the city shouldn’t accept the markers if they don’t give a full account of history.
Cynthia Yung, executive director of Boone Family Foundation, did not return calls for comment.
Jeremy Smith, executive director of charitable services at the Rainwater Charitable Foundation, said he isn’t aware of a conflict over the historical markers’ content. He said Mulcahy and Woods missed deadlines and were cut from the project.
Starting in 1915, Dallas created parks specifically for use by black residents. No law made other parks off-limits, but social customs and fear of harassment kept black residents from going to the same parks as white residents.
One of the historic parks, Griggs Park, was redeveloped in 2013 and 2014 to include a grassy meadow, walkways and lighting. The park was originally named Hall Street Negro Park. It used to be in the historic black neighborhood of State-Thomas, which has been absorbed into Uptown, an area of high-rises and mostly white young professionals and empty-nesters.
A new monument honors the person the park was named for, the Rev. Allen Griggs, a former slave who became a prominent Baptist minister, an educator and a newspaper publisher.
The Griggs Park project inspired renewed interest in the history of Dallas’ segregated parks. In spring 2014, the Boone Family Foundation and Rainwater Charitable Foundation announced a $98,000 grant to fund historical markers for the segregated parks. They also planned a complementary website and school curriculum. Woods and Mulcahy were hired to help with the project.
Historical markers were planned for seven parks: Eloise Lundy Park (originally Oak Cliff Negro Park), Juanita Craft Park (Wahoo Park), Wheatley Park (South Dallas Negro Park), Exline Park, William E. Blair Park (Rochester Park), Moore Park (Eighth Street Negro Park) and Nash/Davis Park (North Hampton Park).
At the time, Yung said the project would be completed by the end of summer 2014.
Norma Adams-Wade, a longtime Dallas resident and freelance columnist for The Dallas Morning News, researched and wrote the first draft of text for the markers. She said the foundations bristled about touchy parts of Dallas history.
She said they deleted references to white flight and several racially-motivated bombings near Exline Park. The South Dallas park became segregated when black families moved into the neighborhood and white families fled.
Adams-Wade wanted to acknowledge the city’s neglect of black neighborhoods in the Trinity River bottoms that faced extreme poverty and frequent flooding. But the foundations objected, she said.
“It’s the wrong decision, but it’s kind of status quo again,” she said. “It’s nothing new for Dallas. … Again, money, power and wealth makes the decisions. Not the will of the people.”
Woods and Mulcahy dug through boxes of black-and-white photos, knocked on doors, visited black churches, collected memorabilia and recorded oral histories of older Dallas residents.
But when they started revising the draft, they said, they also clashed with the foundations.
In one case, Woods and Mulcahy discovered that the city sold back 3 acres of land purchased for Moore Park in Oak Cliff because a real estate developer wanted a buffer between the “negro park” and a new subdivision intended for white families.
The artists learned about early black activists who held civic club meetings and pushed the city to improve the parks, add lighting and build golf courses.
Woods said foundation staff told them their findings were “too much about race.”
Mulcahy and Woods said the foundations suspended the project in January 2015 and, through an intermediary, later demanded access to the artists’ research, photos and drafts for the historical markers. Mulcahy and Woods have hired an intellectual property attorney.
The two artists have worked before on projects about sensitive topics. Woods turned a segregation-era “Whites Only” water fountain at Dallas County’s Records Building into a public art installation. When the fountain sprays water, video clips of a civil rights protest play.
Mulcahy curated a photography exhibit about modern wars, including Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon.
Across the country, historians and park officials have been revising historical markers and adding context to Civil War memorials, lynching sites and ports used for slavery. In Dallas, students recently voted to rename John B. Hood Middle School, which was named after a Confederate general.
Mulcahy said she hopes Dallas officials push for the same approach with the parks. She said the markers should reflect the city’s complex, sometimes painful, history and honor the early activists in Dallas’ black community.
Woods envisions children and teens reading the historical markers when they go to their local park to play. Many of those parks are in struggling neighborhoods still segregated by race or income.
“It’s their legacy to know that people have been fighting for a very long time for equality,” she said.
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Information from: The Dallas Morning News, https://www.dallasnews.com
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