Video: Diane Ragsdale CityLab High School honors South Dallas leader
Longtime South Dallas civic leader Diane Ragsdale will have a school named after her. Just blocks away from Dallas City Hall, the new Diane Ragsdale CityLab High School is under construction.
Dallas Free Press joined Ragsdale on a stroll to visit the site. Looking at the construction crew building the school directly in front of the Dallas skyline, Ragsdale remembers her journey as an activist.
At 11 years old, her mother encouraged her and her sister to join the NAACP Youth Council led by Juanita J. Craft. She then served as the Dallas City Council member for District 7 from 1984 to 1991.
To this day, Ragsdale still lives in Wheatley Place, the neighborhood where she grew up, and continues to advocate for her community through zoning reforms and historic preservation.
“It’s more of an honor to have the school with a goal consistent with my life,” she says.
The Diane Ragsdale CityLab High School will specialize in teaching students about architecture, urban planning and civic affairs.
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Prior to joining the Dallas Free Press as a visual journalist, Camilo Diaz Jr. was a video intern at KERA, the NPR and PBS member station for North Texas, where he developed a deep appreciation for video production, making his inner child smile by working at a station he watched growing up. He also worked as a multimedia fellow at the Fort Worth Report, covering local news in his hometown. As a teenager, he began documenting his community and identity through photography, leading him to the world of photojournalism. He went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in journalism with a concentration in photojournalism from the University of North Texas.
Beat:Â Visual and multimedia approach to capturing community and civic life
The images of our communities that appear in local news media are mostly of crime and blight, which doesn’t at all reflect their beauty and assets. This visual journalist sees neighbors and captures community and civic life in all of its facets. The journalist is a multimedia reporter with a photographic eye, who has the skills to meld images, video and audio for storytelling, and the desire to reach under-covered audiences.
