City of Dallas Reopens Juanita J Craft House as Civil Rights Museum postnewsgroup.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from postnewsgroup.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Texans You Should Know is a series highlighting overlooked figures and events from Texas history.
When Juanita Craft bought her little white bungalow on Warren Avenue between Atlanta and Myrtle streets, South Dallas was in turmoil. It was 1950, and the city was changing. The blocks around her house, now known as the Wheatley Place Historic District, had been a Black settlement since the nineteenth century; the community was a freedman’s farming colony before the streetcar turned it into a bona fide suburb. But in the years after World War II, the city’s African American population was expanding beyond Wheatley’s borders. Black families were moving into white neighborhoods just to the south, prompting a familiarly violent backlash. There were eleven bombings in South Dallas between 1949 and 1951, and six “mysterious fires.” No one was killed, but roofs were blown off homes and at least four businesses were destroyed. One victim later said the blast was so strong it knocked