Tag: DFW
Diane Ragsdale: A lifetime of community organizing in South Dallas
The Hon. Diane Ragsdale, who will turn 70 this year, has spent her entire life in South Dallas. Her story has been shaped by the neighborhood and, likewise, she has shaped her neighborhood in significant ways. She’s still fighting some of the same issues that led her to run for Council, and as a registered nurse, she approaches the systems as she would her patients — a belief in preventative medicine that will treat the underlying causes, not just the symptoms.
Cornerstone Baptist’s profitable nonprofit grocery store ‘creates dignity’ in South Dallas
Southpoint is proving to be a miracle in this sparsely populated South Dallas neighborhood between Al Lipscomb and Martin Luther King Jr. boulevards. Access to healthy, affordable food has been among the top concerns for residents here.
Singleton United/Unidos: The new neighborhood on the block
Janie Cisneros credits her neighborhood-based activism to serendipity. She is the leader of Singleton United/Unidos, a newly established neighborhood association in West Dallas, fighting for clean air and the removal of the long-standing roofing shingles plant, GAF, from her residential neighborhood.
A parking lot symbolizes the State Fair of Texas’ racist history
Historians and journalists have documented — and today’s staffers recognize — the State Fair of Texas’ racist history. In the early 1900s the fair hosted one “Colored People Day” per year. It was discontinued in 1910. On a Wednesday in fall 1923, Ku Klux Klan Day drew some 160,000 Klansmen to the fairgrounds for the initiation of the “largest class in the history of Klandom,” according to the flier, which included an application for membership on the back. Negro Achievement Day launched in 1936. Each year on Oct. 14, Black fairgoers were admitted inside the gates.
Local newsrooms, universities and nonprofits join forces to focus on affordable housing in Dallas
The key partners on the project say affordable housing is a topic none of them has been able to consistently address on their own — but it’s a vital, systemic issue demanding greater response.
The State Fair of Texas is trying to remedy past injustices to South Dallas via its urban farm
It’s a tragic irony that the largest agriculture promoter in the state, the State Fair of Texas, is surrounded by a food desert, the neighborhood of South Dallas.
Los Gallos: A gym from West Dallas where boxing teaches life lessons
The Los Gallos Boxing Club wants to teach their students that with discipline and hard work, any obstacle that life brings can be overcome.
A South Dallas artist residency aims to ‘capture the now before the future’
John Spriggins, manager of the South Dallas Cultural Center, launched the Juanita J. Craft House Artist in Residency to provide artists with studio space to create work that “capture[s] the immediacy of the moment where historical neighborhoods are rapidly changing due to socio-economic shifts."
