What was built
- Established or development period
- 1870s–1920s
- Peak period
- 1930s–1950s
- Who built the community
- Freedmen's-town descendants and Black families across North Dallas, South Dallas and the Fair Park area.
- Black population
- Tens of thousands of Black Dallasites.
- Businesses
- Black-owned businesses along Hall Street, Thomas Avenue and Forest Avenue.
- Financial institutions
- Not yet documented
- Churches
- St. Paul United Methodist and New Hope Baptist.
- Schools
- Booker T. Washington High School.
- Hospitals
- Not yet documented
- Newspapers
- Not yet documented
- Entertainment & cultural institutions
- Not yet documented
- Other community institutions
- Not yet documented
- Black land & property ownership
- Black home ownership in neighborhoods later targeted for clearance and park expansion.
- Economic significance
- The residential and commercial base of Black Dallas.
What happened
- What happened?
- Highway construction including Central Expressway and I-45, urban renewal, and the City of Dallas's decades-long acquisition and demolition of Black homes around Fair Park for parking removed thousands of homes. The Fair Park land acquisitions alone demolished hundreds of houses in a predominantly Black neighborhood.
- Trigger or precipitating event
- Expressway routing and municipal land acquisition for Fair Park expansion and parking.
- Underlying historical context
- Segregation ordinances, bombings of Black homes in white areas during the 1950s, and municipal clearance policy.
- Method of destruction / displacement
- Highway · Eminent Domain · Urban Renewal · Government Acquisition
- Date or period of destruction
- 1940s–1980s
- Confirmed / documented deaths
- Not yet documented
- Estimated deaths
- Not yet documented
- People displaced
- Thousands of residents across successive projects.
- Homes destroyed
- Hundreds of homes demolished around Fair Park alone; thousands more in highway right-of-way.
- Businesses destroyed
- Not yet documented
- Acres or property lost
- Not yet documented
Afterward
- What happened to the land?
- Expressway right-of-way and surface parking lots around Fair Park.
- Was compensation paid?
- Condemnation payments; the City of Dallas later acknowledged the harm of the Fair Park acquisitions.
- Was the community rebuilt?
- No
- What was rebuilt?
- Not yet documented
- Destroyed or displaced again?
- Not yet documented
- Second displacement date
- Not yet documented
- Second displacement cause
- Not yet documented
- What exists there today?
- Surface parking around Fair Park, ongoing park-reform planning and remaining historic Black neighborhoods under pressure.
- Descendant, reparation & restoration efforts
- Fair Park community coalitions, Dallas's racial-equity planning and neighborhood preservation groups.
- Historical significance
- Demonstrates municipal parking and park expansion as a mechanism of Black residential displacement.
Connected records
Sources
- Primary recordFind
Dallas Public Library, Texas/Dallas History and Archives Division
- Source lookupFind
Jim Schutze, The Accommodation (1986; reissued Deep Vellum, 2021)
- Source lookupFind
City of Dallas Fair Park land acquisition records
- Source lookupFind
Texas Department of Transportation project records
"Find" opens a focused search for legacy references that do not have a stable link; "Open" goes directly to the source.
Last verified: 2026-09-20. This is a living historical collection. Additional communities and documentation will be added as research and verification continue.