![]() ![]() There was no dual school system for Black and white students because due to a history of deliberate segregation, there were no Black students. Like Hilseweck said, it wasn’t an issue yet. So, the Park Cities were left to their own devices on desegregation.īy law, they could no longer exclude Black students from their schools, but forcible integration like in DISD simply did not happen. ![]() This move ultimately failed in court because HPISD did not have a “significant segregative effect” on DISD, according to judge William M. Estes sought to desegregate Dallas schools and filed to include HPISD in the desegregation plan for DISD, claiming it was unfair to have a separate all-white school system in the middle of Dallas. The Black plaintiffs of the federal court case Tasby v. “It is not yet a problem in our district,” she said to the Dallas Morning News.Ī challenge to HPISD’s homogeneity came in 1971. One candidate, Helen Hilseweck, said it was an issue they could address later when it became necessary. In 1956, three out of five candidates for the Highland Park Board of Education were entirely opposed to integrating HPISD schools. That number became zero in 1969 when Highland Park residents started voluntarily following a city rule banning kitchens in quarters for live-in domestic servants, according to a 1971 Dallas Morning News article. In the year 1950, 50 Black students lived in Highland Park. Carrollton and Irving school districts followed the same practice. To avoid educating Black school-age children in the Park Cities, HPISD paid Dallas ISD to bus them to all-Black Booker T. The few Black people who did live in Highland Park were live-in maids. The use of such restrictions became illegal in 1948. These covenants forbade the sale of houses to minority populations. According to the companion online Sundown Towns database from Loewen at Tougaloo College, all homes in Highland Park had racially restrictive covenants applied to them in 1913. Loewen refers to Highland Park as a sundown town, a place in which it was historically unsafe to be Black. There were no Black homeowners in Highland Park at this time. ![]() In fact, what set Highland Park apart from Dallas was they didn’t need to set up separate institutions for Black and white residents to uphold segregation. In Dallas, implementation of this emphasized the separation part of that ruling. Ferguson Supreme Court decision that enshrined “separate but equal” into law. It was less than 20 years after the Plessy v. When Highland Park incorporated in 1915, Jim Crow was in full swing. It takes a dive into history to fully understand why Gaines’ threat would have caused ruckus. In 1973, the town bought the land for use as a park. He publicized his intention to move a Black family receiving welfare to the house in order to push the limits of the predominantly white Highland Park community. bought a house at that location from Mary Jo Vines, a white woman supporting his cause. Instead, it was a publicity stunt.Ī Black activist named Curtis Gaines Jr. There’s a tennis court and a shaded playground to save children from the hot Texas sun.īetter yet, the park has convenient access to the Katy Trail.īut in 1971, it wasn’t just a neighborhood park. But to an outsider, I just saw this map and realized the unbelievable segregation that exists within the system.” – Mike Koprowski, The Single Biggest Problem in Dallas, D Magazine, 2018Ībbott Park has all the amenities one could expect from a public park in Highland Park. People in Dallas are just used to this now. ![]() “I said, ‘So, it’s a separate school system, in the middle of this other school system?’ It was unreal to me. ![]()
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