Joppee Community
Dallas, Dallas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Located on the banks of the Trinity River, near the Great Trinity Forest, the community of Joppee is one of the few remaining freedman towns in Texas. Following emancipation, freed slaves from the nearby Miller Plantation established their own community here in 1872. The owner of the plantation, William B. Miller, hired former slave Henry Critz Hines to oversee his business, The Honey Springs Ferry Company. It was an important service to carry goods and passengers over the river. This also provided a lucrative entrepreneurial opportunity for Hines. He used his resources to take a major role in the establishment of Joppee. Over time, many freed slaves from East Texas settled in the community. They worked and lived alongside the rest of Dallas society as it developed into a larger commercial area. The 1870s saw the introduction of railroads into Dallas, and by 1890 the ferry service closed. Joppee continued to be an important place for African Americans following the civil war and reconstruction. The community offered refuge in times when Ku Klux Klan activities tried to push African Americans out of the area. Joppee had school and church structures, such as the New Zion Baptist church which still exists today. Joppee resident Laurabelle Foster chartered the South Central Civic League in 1948, under the auspices of the Dallas Negro Chamber of Commerce. Generations of African Americans have lived in Joppee and many descendants still do. Some of the earliest Juneteenth celebrations began in the Joppee community, and continue today.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
On the banks of the Trinity River, formerly enslaved people from the nearby Miller Plantation founded Joppee in 1872, one of the few surviving freedman towns in Texas. Henry Critz Hines, who ran the Honey Springs Ferry, helped establish the community, and freed families from across East Texas settled alongside a growing Dallas. Through churches, schools, and civic leaders, Joppee endured Klan pressure and remains home to descendants today, with roots in early Juneteenth celebrations.
Why it matters
Freedman towns like Joppee show how emancipated African Americans built self-governing, self-sustaining communities in the face of hostility, a foundational chapter of Black life after slavery.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Joppee was founded in 1872 on the banks of the Trinity River, in the first years after emancipation—one of the most consequential and least-told chapters of American history. Slavery had ended, but freedom was a raw and unprotected thing, and the great question facing four million newly freed people was elemental: where, and how, would they build their lives?
Many answered by creating communities of their own. Freedman towns—settlements founded and governed by formerly enslaved people—sprang up across the South and across Texas, offering something the wider world would not: a place to own land, worship, school your children, and simply live beyond the reach of daily white control. Joppee was one of these, and it is one of the few that still remains in Texas.
Dallas in the 1870s was on the edge of a transformation. Railroads were arriving, and the town was about to grow into a major commercial center. Joppee's people would work and live alongside that booming Dallas even as they maintained a community distinctly their own—near the Great Trinity Forest, rooted by the river that had shaped the land long before the town had a name.
People & events
The community grew out of the nearby Miller Plantation. After emancipation, freed people from that plantation established Joppee in 1872, and one man's story sits at the center of the founding. William B. Miller, the plantation's former owner, hired a formerly enslaved man named Henry Critz Hines to oversee his business, the Honey Springs Ferry Company—an important service carrying goods and passengers across the Trinity River.
That ferry was more than a job; it was an entrepreneurial opening, and Hines seized it. He turned the resources it gave him into a major role in establishing Joppee, helping build a community where freed people could put down roots. Over time, many freed families from across East Texas made their way to Joppee, joining a settlement that offered something rare: refuge and self-determination.
Joppee endured real danger to hold that ground. In times when Ku Klux Klan activity tried to push African Americans out of the area, the community offered refuge, and it built the institutions that let it survive—including the New Zion Baptist Church, which still exists today. The town's story continued well into the twentieth century: in 1948, Joppee resident Laurabelle Foster chartered the South Central Civic League under the auspices of the Dallas Negro Chamber of Commerce, carrying the community's tradition of organized self-help into a new era.
Its place in the American story
Freedman towns like Joppee are foundational to the American story precisely because they answer the question emancipation posed: what does freedom look like when you have to build it yourself, from nothing, against resistance? The answer these communities gave was self-governance—their own churches, their own schools, their own leaders and businesses—in the face of hostility that too often turned violent.
That Joppee offered refuge when the Klan sought to drive African Americans out is not incidental to its meaning; it is the meaning. These towns were sanctuaries as much as settlements, places where Black families could be secure among their own when the surrounding society was dangerous. The survival of such a community across generations, with descendants still living there, is a rare and precious thing—most freedman towns were eventually erased by displacement, neglect, or the spread of cities.
And Joppee holds a special place in one of the nation's most meaningful traditions. Some of the earliest Juneteenth celebrations began in this community and continue today. Juneteenth—marking the day freedom finally reached the enslaved people of Texas—is now a national holiday, and communities like Joppee are where that memory was first kept alive, year after year, long before the rest of the country joined in.
If you visit
Come to Joppee understanding that you are visiting one of the few surviving freedman towns in Texas—a living community with descendants of its founders still among its residents. That fact asks for a visitor's respect: this is someone's home and heritage, not a set piece.
Let the setting speak first. The community sits on the banks of the Trinity River near the Great Trinity Forest, and that river is the reason Joppee exists here at all—it was the ferry across these waters that gave Henry Critz Hines his footing and the settlement its start. Stand near the water and the whole story gains its geography.
Look for the New Zion Baptist Church, which has endured from the community's early days and still stands as a cornerstone of its life—the kind of institution that let a freedman town survive when so much was arrayed against it. If your travels bring you here around Juneteenth, you are near one of the tradition's earliest homes, where the celebration of freedom's arrival in Texas has been kept alive for generations. However you come, let the marker turn a quiet spot by the river into what it truly is: a monument to people who built their own freedom and held onto it.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Henry Critz Hines
- · William B. Miller
- · Laurabelle Foster
Themes & tags
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