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Michael Hall

Mike Hall writes about criminals, musicians, the law, and barbecue. Mike graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1979 with a degree in government. He wrote for various publications, including Trouser Press, Third Coast Magazine, the Austin American-Statesman, and the Austin Chronicle. In 1997 he joined Texas Monthly, where he has won two Texas Gavel Awards from the State Bar of Texas and four Stephen Philbin Awards from the Dallas Bar Association. He was named Writer of the Year at the City and Regional Magazine Awards in 2015. His stories have appeared in The Best American Magazine Writing, The Best American Sports Writing, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, Da Capo Best Music Writing, the New York Times, and Men’s Journal. Mike is also a musician and has played in Austin bands the Wild Seeds, the Setters, the Lollygaggers, and the Savage Trip. He pitches for the Burkas, the Texas Monthly softball team. ....

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Memories of the Lake Mexia Juneteenth Drownings Still Haunt Texas – Texas Monthly


The Ghosts of Comanche Crossing
In 1981 three Black teenagers drowned while in law enforcement custody during a Juneteenth gathering at Lake Mexia. Four decades later, Texas’s proudest Emancipation Day celebration still hasn’t recovered.
Lake Mexia, seen from Booker T. Washington Park, known locally as Comanche Crossing, on April 21, 2021.
Photograph by Michael Starghill
Every Juneteenth, as soon as Pamela Baker got to Booker T. Washington Park, she’d race to the merry-go-round, squeeze through the swarm of shrieking kids, grab one of the shiny rails, and hold on tight. After a few minutes, she would jump off and dart up the steps of the nearby dance hall to survey the throngs below. She and her brother Carl would weave through the crowd, looking for cousins from Dallas and Houston they hadn’t seen since the previous year. Eventually, her whole family would congregate under an oak tree their ancestors had claimed as a gathering place a century before, in t ....

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Annette Gordon-Reed Explores the Tangled Meaning of Juneteenth


Illustration by Jamiel Law
In the historic Black neighborhood where I grew up in Dallas, a parade would roll off the lot of New Mount Zion Baptist Church on June 19, or the Saturday closest to it, and wend its way through a community where many of the streets were named for institutions and people central to Black history: Oberlin and Ebony. Bellafonte and Dandridge. Bunche and Campanella. Neighborhood celebrities entrepreneurs, student body presidents, and original homeowners, or “pioneers,” as we called them would ride like homecoming kings and queens atop convertibles.
When the Juneteenth parade made it to Willowdell Park, we’d have dinner on the grounds, featuring barbecue, sometimes a fish fry, and Big Red “soda water.” There would be three-on-three basketball tournaments under the pavilion and, in recent years, performances of African drumming and Indigenous dance in the field near the creek. Homegrown success stories, such as former Cowboys cornerback Eve ....

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