Freedman's Cemetery
Dallas, Dallas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This area of Dallas County was settled by former African American slaves shortly after the conclusion of the American Civil War. Freedman's Cemetery, a graveyard for African Americans, was established in 1869 on one acre of land purchased by trustee Sam Eakins. Another 3 acres was acquired for cemetery purposes in 1879 by trustees A. Wilhite, Frank Read, A. Boyd, T. Watson, George English, Silas Pitman, and the Rev. A. R. Griggs, a former slave who later became a prominent local church leader and champion of early public education for the African American community. The community of churches, commercial enterprises, and residences that had developed in this area by the turn of the 20th century was by 1912 a part of the City of Dallas. Construction of the Central Expressway through here in the 1930s virtually eliminated all physical above-ground reminders of the cemetery. Descendants of persons buried here and the City of Dallas agreed in 1965 to establish the Freedman's Memorial Park and Cemetery at this site. Beginning in 1989 representatives of the community worked with the City of Dallas and the Texas Department of Transportation to preserve the historic Freedman's Cemetery site prior to highway expansion. (1993)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Settled by formerly enslaved African Americans after the Civil War, this part of Dallas County became home to a thriving Black community of churches, businesses, and homes. Freedman's Cemetery was established in 1869 and expanded in 1879 by trustees including the Rev. A. R. Griggs, a former slave who became a leading church figure and champion of public education. Construction of the Central Expressway in the 1930s erased its aboveground markers, but descendants and the city later worked to preserve and memorialize the site.
Why it matters
It stands as a powerful record of Reconstruction-era Black community-building and of the twentieth-century highway projects that too often bulldozed African American history.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · A. R. Griggs
- · Sam Eakins
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church
Dallas, TX
In 1884, Rev. A.R. Griggs and Jane Johnson Calloway Endsley organized Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church to serve Dallas's African American Baptist community. After a series of relocations in the early twentieth century, the congregation settled at its present site in 1950 under the leadership of Rev. L.J. Taylor and his wife, Portia, who became strong advocates for education in the community. Anchored by its long legacy and active membership, Macedonia has expanded its property and remained a cornerstone of Black community life in Dallas.
St. Paul United Methodist Church
Dallas, TX
In 1873, recently freed people in Dallas's Freedman's Town gathered under a brush arbor with Methodist ministers to organize the area's first African American Methodist Episcopal church, with a sanctuary that doubled as a school for Black children. The congregation helped train ministers and even hosted the first classes of the college that became Huston-Tillotson University. Its brick sanctuary, designed after a plan by pioneering Black architect William Sidney Pittman, took 26 years to build—reportedly in five shades of brick brought by parishioners as offerings—and the church endured as a spiritual and political anchor even as highways demolished the surrounding neighborhoods.
Martin Luther King Jr. at SMU
Dallas, TX
In the charged spring of the civil rights era, dozens of Southern Methodist University students joined the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery marches, and the following year the Student Senate invited Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to campus. On March 17, 1966, he addressed a crowd of 2,700 in McFarlin Auditorium, arguing that beyond every practical case for ending segregation lay a plain moral truth. It was his first Texas appearance at a predominantly white university, and it drew a standing ovation.
Lincoln High School
Dallas, TX
In the depths of the Jim Crow era, Dallas needed a modern high school for its Black students, whose only option had been the overcrowded Booker T. Washington campus miles away. Backed partly by a New Deal Public Works Administration grant, Lincoln High School opened in January 1939 with 1,255 students and a striking Moderne building whose glass-brick tower became a neighborhood landmark. Under founding principal Tueria Dell Marshall, enrollment surged past 3,000, and the school produced more than 200 educators among its distinguished alumni.