Remembering North Dallas/Freedman's Town:
First Steps Towards Public Archaeology within an African-American Community in Dallas, Texas.

James M. Davidson, Maria Frankiln and Jamie C. Brandon

Paper given to the 2004 meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology as a part of the "Can Archaeology Save the World" symposium, Jay Stottman organizer.

Draft Copy: Do Not Cite Without Permission from jmd, jcb & mf ©2004

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[SLIDE: OVERVIEW SHOT OF DOWNTOWN DALLAS] This paper is about remembering a place in Dallas, Texas, that has not yet been forgotten, although its existence is more and more often in the realm of memory than the present day, as its physicality is actively being destroyed, its name changed, and its history lost. I am speaking of the old North Dallas Freedman's Town, one of the earliest African American enclaves the city of Dallas ever knew.

[SLIDE: VIEW OF FREEDMAN'S PARK] While not the geographical center of the North Dallas Freedman's Town community, Freedman's Cemetery is certainly its metaphorical heart. Freedman's Cemetery served as the only burying ground for African Americans in Dallas between 1869 and 1907. Beginning in the late 1980s, Freedman's became the focal point of one of the largest archaeological investigations of a historic cemetery ever conducted in North America.

[SLIDE: BROKEN HEADSTONE] During the planned expansion of North Central Expressway, it was discovered that a quarter of the 4 acre cemetery had been paved over when the expressway was first built in the 1940s. Because of this past atrocity, between 1991 and 1994 the remains of 1,157 men, women, and children were exhumed archaeologically, the majority from beneath existing roadways.

[SLIDE: BRONZE FIGURES AND MEMORIAL GATE] Like New York's African Burial Ground, the desecration of Freedman's Cemetery, and the drive to set things right, to do the right thing, energized the black community to rally around the site as a symbol of the past, -- and present. Now, this sacred site is marked with a beautiful memorial of bronze figures. One set represents freedom in Africa,

[SLIDE: CLOSE UP OF FIGURE WITH CHAINS] While a second graphically symbolizes the horrors of enslavement in the Americas. A final set of bronzes, not yet cast, will depict Emancipation. The archaeology of Freedman's Cemetery breathed new life into the preservation of Dallas's African American heritage by bringing old memories -- some quite painful -- to the surface.

But Freedman's Cemetery is unlike the African Burial Ground in one major distinction, the community it once served has not been scattered and lost through the generations. Freedman's closed at the beginning of the 20th century, and there are descendants who can still trace their loved ones' final resting places there. In Dallas, the living community is still there, but it's suffered nearly as great an injury as the cemetery, - in the loss of population, loss of homes and businesses, and even the loss of its name, its very identity.

[SLIDE: OVERVIEW MAP OF DALLAS IN 1872] Although the city of Dallas was founded in 1841, Freedman's Town was created immediately after Emancipation as a separate settlement adjacent to the town of Dallas, but still well outside its limits so as to escape harsh vagrancy laws specifically targeting freedmen. This is a bird's eye view of Dallas from 1872, looking to the north. Although absent from this constructed gaze of white society, Freedman's Town would have been located in the upper right corner of this view. By the close of Reconstruction, when it was incorporated into Dallas proper -- Freedman's Town contained at least 500 citizens. By the late 19th century, the area was known as the North Dallas Freedman's Town.

[SLIDE: VIEW OF CENTRAL TRACK FROM 1920S] Blossoming in the 1920s and 1930s as the business and cultural Mecca for African Americans in North Texas, the community only began to falter in the 1940s under many devastating physical impacts. The first of these was the construction of Roseland Homes, one of the earliest federal housing projects in the country. Despite local protests, the all black Roseland Homes was completed in 1942, destroying the private homes of 100 African American families in the process.
Additional impacts to the Freedman's Town community came after the Second World War, when two highways were blasted through the area. In the late 1940s, North Central Expressway destroyed the homes of some 1500 people and paved over Freedman's Cemetery in the process. Woodall Rodgers Expressway, built in the 1960s through 1980s, further divided the community and destroyed dozens of private homes, as well as the Boll Street M. E. Church.

[SLIDE: VIEW OF CONSTRUCTION ON HALL STREET] Finally, beginning in the 1970s and extending to the present day, multiple "upscale" commercial and residential gentrification projects began to swallow up the remaining portions of the historically black North Dallas community, literally whole blocks at a time. Between 1990 and 2002, 16 developments containing some 2500 residential units were completed within the district, costing an impressive quarter of a billion dollars.

All of this development is progress, no doubt, but to what end? Working class African Americans are being forced out of historically black neighborhoods due to upscale development, resulting in skyrocketing property values and a continually shrinking base of affordable housing. What is also lost is a critical cultural identity for the African American community, with the wholesale destruction of the material remnants of the old Freedman's Town itself.
Finally, even an erasure from history and public memory is being attempted. The name of the community has been changed. Originally known as Freedman's Town, by the early twentieth century it was more commonly known to its own inhabitants as North Dallas and later still the "State-Thomas" Neighborhood. Stripped of its historical precedence, the current name given to this same area is "Uptown" or the "Citiplace Neighborhood," the latter named for the adjacent Citiplace Tower, which is the headquarters for the Southland Corporation.

The historical archaeology that should have been occurring hand in hand with this redevelopment process hasn't been, due in large part to an almost complete lack of enforcement of state and federal antiquities laws. In fact, the Texas Historical Commission has recently stated in print that as a general rule, late 19th and 20th century sites would not be considered for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places, and therefore would not receive any archaeological investigation.

Since its beginnings in the early 1990s, it seemed of paramount importance to create a linkage between the Freedman's Cemetery Project -- and the insights created through it -- to both the historical community it once served -- as well as the living community who look to it as a symbol of both its past and its present. To fulfill this need, and fill this gap, we broached an urban archaeological study in downtown Dallas, for the first time.

[SLIDE: MODERN VIEW OF JULIETTE STREET ] Within what remains of the old North Dallas Freedman's Town, the most intact portion available for excavation is a single block of Juliette Street, a street that no longer really exists, save as a grassy field. Juliette Street had always been exclusively African-American, and was one of the earliest sections of the old Freedman's Town, incorporated into the city of Dallas at the close of Reconstruction in 1874. The first home constructed on Juliette was built at this time, and by the 1890s, this little block held 16 homes, two businesses, and two churches. By the early 1960s, however, virtually all of these elements were gone, torn down for the construction of Woodall Rodgers Expressway, the last multilane highway to decimate the community. After its destruction, nothing was ever built on the block, with most of the now vacant lot used as green-space adjacent to the highway's frontage road system.

[SLIDE: ST. PAUL'S CHURCH] Of all the structures that once lined this block, St. Paul's United Methodist Church is the only survivor, and its congregation and ministry are still very active. Saint Paul's was founded at its present location in the summer of 1873, with services first held in a simple brush arbor. The present day Gothic style brick structure, was begun in 1901, and finally completed in 1925. Originally, we requested access to this block of Juliette Street from Trammel Crow, the current landowner and real estate giant, but their representatives turned us down. Failing to gain access to Juliette Street, the senior author conducted a week long survey of the former North Dallas neighborhood, in search of an area suitable for archaeological investigation. This effort garnered a list of over 20 vacant lots with potential, though none of the property owners could be sufficiently persuaded to grant us access.

[SLIDE: SANBORN MAP OF JULIETTE ST.] Finally, while re-examining copies of period insurance maps and modern Dallas County plat maps, I noticed that St. Paul's Methodist Church - located at the left of this figure -- owned not only the property upon which the church sat, but also an adjacent lot, where a house had once stood. We had returned to the beginning, to the very area we had originally wanted to investigate. Since we were also seeking community input and involvement, the church met both criteria beautifully.

After conferring with Reverend Sharon Patterson and church elders by phone, we were invited to present our ideas for the field school. On May 9, 2002, we drove from Austin to Dallas to meet with Reverend Paterson and key members of the St. Paul's congregation, to explain what we had in mind, and also to solicit their input regarding what they would like to see accomplished during the course of the summer and beyond. The Church elders had several excellent ideas, many of which revolved around engaging their young people in the church and community's history. St. Paul's was celebrating its 129th anniversary on Juliette Street, and was eager to incorporate our search for the past with their own. Additionally, it was decided to merge elements of the Church's summer youth program, Camp Succeed, into the field school, so that in the weeks to come the field school students, having been taught basic excavation techniques, would in turn teach several children from the community.

[SLIDE: VIEW OF SITE] Beginning with this fruitful meeting, the 2002 UT Archaeological Field School entered into an ongoing community partnership with the staff and congregation of Saint Paul's. Between June 5 and July 15 of 2002, we focused our efforts on a former house lot adjacent to, and owned by, the church. A series of working class African American families resided on this property from its initial purchase in 1880 -- to 1962, when the structure was razed and the lot purchased by the church.

This site, named the Cole site for one of the first families to reside there, is extremely small, measuring only 23 feet by 87 feet in extent. By every measure, the Cole House appears to have been a classic shotgun house, likely with three rooms and no hall to connect them.

[SLIDE: VIEW OF SHOTGUN HOUSE AT OLD CITY PARK] Based on Sanborn Insurance maps, and comparisons to this shotgun house currently preserved at Dallas's Old City Park, the Cole House stood approximately 43 feet in length, and only 12 feet in width. This example was built in 1906. Its three rooms were occupied by several Black families throughout the first half of the twentieth century.

[SLIDE: VIEW OF EXCAVATIONS 1X1'S ] During the field school, 19 excavation units were opened; for a total of 32 square meters. For the first half of the session, excavations were within that portion of the lot that once contained the house. [SLIDE: VIEW OF 2X2 METER UNITS] For the last three weeks of the field school, excavations were concentrated in the backyard, where 4 2-by-2 meter units were dug, exposing intact features in the form of post holes, brick piers for former outbuildings, and finally, two trash pits.

As the name of the site might suggest, the longest occupation was by the Cole Family --from 1886 to 1910, or for some 25 years. Within this tiny shot gun house resided Thomas Cole and his wife Nora, and it was here that their four daughters were born and raised -- Henrietta, Della, Sallie, and Viola. Both Thomas and Nora were born into slavery in Texas during the Civil War, -- while children were all born in the 1880s. Thomas Cole was, depending upon the year, a day laborer, a carpenter, and later, owner of a horse feed and fuel business. According to the 1900 census and later city directories, Nora did not work outside the home. Fittingly, the entire family attended St Paul's, and Thomas Cole served as a trustee for the church. Their descendents, Reggie Smith and his mother, Ava Cox, are still members of St. Paul's. They shared vital genealogical information on Thomas and Nora and their four daughters, and in turn we were able to reciprocate with information that they lacked. For example, no one in the family remembered that the Coles' ever lived in this house, since the family had moved to a larger home a few blocks up Juliette Street by 1910.

Some insight into the choices made by the Cole family and others who lived there after them are observable in the artifacts recovered during the field school's excavation. Artifacts include household ceramics [SLIDE: TEA LEAF PATTERN] such as this sprig tea leaf pattern. Additional artifacts include food refuse, bottle and table glass, [SLIDE: MARBLES] and Toys, such as the many different kinds of marbles pictured here. More personal objects include clothing elements in the form of buttons, buckles, and the like. [SLIDE: BEADS] And finally such personal items as these beads and other elements of jewelry.

Paul Mullins, who has written extensively in regard to African American consumerism during the Victorian age, views the purchase of decorative objects such as bric a brac, as especially telling. Mullins argues that during this period, consumerism was perceived as a key means by which Blacks might attempt to cast off their white imposed mantle of inferiority, in the hopes of achieving some small measure of equality through judicious consumption. [SLIDE: DUTCH GIRL FRAGMENT] During excavations, we did find fragments of ceramic figurines that would have been at home on a mantle or within a curio cabinet. After we partially reconstructed this example, [SLIDE: DUTCH GIRL FIGURINE] it became evident that it was a type of Dutch Girl figurine. A modern version of this is shown on the right. Out of a seemingly endless variety of mass-produced goods available for purchase, what did a formerly enslaved family choose to own? Conceivably, each individual purchase of food, clothing, plate, and cup, was charged with import and involved multiple meanings, all contested and virtually invisible without the aid of archaeology.

On a fundamental level, what we discovered was that despite alterations to the site over the years, through periodic sweepings and yard cleanings, the demolition of the house in 1962, and later alterations to the landscape by the church, -- many 19th and early 20th century artifacts still remained. Although some were just tiny fragments, even the smallest of these have a story worth telling, though there's only time here to speak of a few.

[SLIDE: HUTCHINSON BOTTLE] Little in the way of bottles once containing alcohol were recovered, and instead several soda bottle fragments were found. One intact example was this Hutchinson stoppered Dallas Bottling Works soda, recovered from the backyard. From the known date range of Hutchinson bottles in Dallas, it is evident that this example was purchased and consumed when the Coles resided in the home.

[SLIDE: BERRY BROTHERS FRAGMENT] One artifact that might be directly associated with Thomas Cole's profession as carpenter and builder is this small and battered piece of pot metal. Difficult to decipher when first uncovered, its embossed lettering was soon identified sufficiently to make an exact match [SLIDE: LETTER OPENER]…it was once the handle to a letter opener. An intact example is seen here. It was given away as an advertising premium promoting the Berry Brothers Varnish Company of Detroit, Michigan. Varnish was one commodity Thomas Cole would have used in abundance, and this example dates to the turn of the century period.

[SLIDE: ROLLER SKATE] Artifacts that could be associated with children were commonplace. One in particular is this remnant of a strap-on roller skate. Mrs. Dolores Hoover Love, an elderly member of the church who once lived on Juliette Street in the 1930s and 1940s, related that since there were no sidewalks or paved roads when they were children, -- the only place to skate was in the basement of St. Paul's, which was opened to the children every Saturday evening for this purpose.

[SLIDE: HIGH BROWN COMPACT] One artifact evokes the presence of women. It's a brass cosmetic compact, embossed on its lid with a cameo portrait of an African American woman, framed by the words "High Brown/Overton/Chicago." The compact was a product of the Overton Hygienic Manufacturing Company, a firm founded by Black entrepreneur Anthony Overton in 1898. It was recovered from a pit feature in the backyard and likely contained High Brown Face Powder. In late nineteenth and early twentieth century America, several cosmetic companies marketed products exclusively to African American women, though most were hair straighteners and skin "lightening" agents. Period examples in Dallas's black newspaper include Scott's Magic Hair Straightener and Scott's Face Bleach and Beautifier. Such products have been interpreted by some as signifying attempts made by African Americans to emulate white conceptions of beauty and acceptability. Significantly, the compact recovered from the backyard of the Cole House did not contain a preparation designed to make one more "white" in appearance, but rather, was specifically formulated to enhance the natural beauty of women of color.

[SLIDE: CAMP SUCCEED] A field school, at its best, is an attempt to do several things simultaneously. Its primary goal is to teach, even as it creates a valuable archaeological data set. With our Dallas field school, our hopes were greater. We hoped to instigate an activist archaeology, to use this 6 week inquiry into the past to inform the present, but to also influence the present for the future. The concept that the act of archaeology is a political act was not forgotten here.

[SLIDE: SIDE OF CHURCH] When we contacted the church in the Spring of 2002, Reverend Patterson and others were attempting to secure external sources of funding for much needed repairs to the venerable structure. But simultaneously, Dallas's powers-that-be have been subtly pressuring the church into selling out and moving, as the property it occupies lies right in the middle of the Dallas Arts District, and is being eyed by some for possible future expansion projects. As a result, they have had difficulty in securing this much needed funding. Through our field school excavations, we brought attention to the church's long and distinguished history, as the last "living" link to the Freedman's Town that has all but vanished, as well as calling attention to its current plight. As a result, Saint Paul's received wonderful press with multiple stories in the Dallas Morning News on the local TV news. Through this added publicity, the church received over 1000 dollars in badly needed funds.

[SLIDE: PERIOD PHOTO OF HOUSE] On September 2, 1900, the Reverend A. S. Jackson addressed a large crowd in attendance at the "Colored Fair" in Dallas. He said that "... if he were asked to name, in a word, the greatest need of the negroes, he would say that that need was 'homes'." The homes that Reverend Jackson spoke of in 1900 were built by the hundreds in North Dallas, lived in for decades, and are now all but gone. Even the memory of their former presence is fast fading beneath the fresh concrete of the luxury condos and the coffee bars in the newly rechristened "Uptown district".

[SLIDE: OVERVIEW OF ST. PAUL'S, JULIETTE ST.] But by directing the efforts of the University of Texas Archaeological Field School -- at a site that even the Texas Historical Commission has deemed unworthy of notice, the Cole House excavations have reaped many benefits. Certainly the archaeological materials are of value to us, representing as a whole, the economic levels and consumer choice of African American families in nineteenth and early twentieth century Dallas. But these same few tangible objects, combined with the site's history, have an even greater value to the members of Saint Paul's United Methodist Church, where these artifacts and all the accompanying records will eventually be retained. We did not give them their history, but instead these good people allowed us the opportunity to explore that history together, all of us armed with the knowledge that neither could have accomplished it without the other.