Tenth Street Historic District Freedmans Town
Dallas, Dallas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The first African Americans to live in Oak Cliff were slaves, brought here by settlers such as William H. Hord in 1845 to work the land. The neighborhood that grew here became known as the Tenth Street District, an important African American enclave within the historically white community of Oak Cliff. It was not until after the Civil War that the Freedman’s Town began to grow and thrive. Records differ as to when and how quickly African Americans settled here, but by 1900, Oak Cliff contained more than 500 African American residents, almost a sixth of the town’s population. Segregation forced the development of a separate commercial district. The community thrived, and even gave rise to famous entertainers like the noted blues artist, T-Bone Walker, and 1960 Olympic gold medal decathlete Rafer Johnson. Though the community continued to maintain a strong African American heritage, the construction of IH-35 east in 1955 and integration in the 1960s resulted in the demolition of around 175 original structures and influenced residents to seek opportunities elsewhere. Residential buildings date to as early as 1910 and are relatively unchanged. Oak Cliff Cemetery, established in 1846 by settler William Beaty, is within the heart of the district near the 1928 N. W. Harllee School. Other significant buildings include the 1889 Sunshine Elizabeth Chapel CME (demolished 1999) and the 1886 Greater El Bethel Baptist Church. The degree to which these historic buildings remain standing and in good repair marks the Tenth Street Area as one of the more well-preserved African American communities of this time period remaining in the Dallas Metropolitan Area. Oak Cliff’s Tenth Street Historic District was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1994 in recognition of its cultural significance and architectural value. (2015)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Tenth Street District grew from the enslaved people first brought to Oak Cliff in the 1840s into a thriving African American enclave after the Civil War. By 1900 hundreds of Black residents lived here, building a segregated commercial district, churches, and schools that nurtured talents the marker credits, including blues artist T-Bone Walker and Olympian Rafer Johnson. Highway construction in the 1950s and integration reshaped the neighborhood, yet its historic homes remain among the best-preserved of their kind in Dallas.
Why it matters
Listed on the National Register, Tenth Street stands as a rare intact freedman's town, testifying to African American resilience and community-building under segregation.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The Tenth Street District sits inside Oak Cliff, a part of Dallas whose story reaches back before the Civil War. The land was settled by families who came to farm it, and the first African Americans here arrived not by choice but as enslaved laborers brought by those early settlers in the 1840s. That origin is the hard ground on which everything later was built.
Emancipation changed the terms but not the geography. In the decades after the war, freed people and their descendants gathered into a neighborhood of their own within a mostly white community — a "Freedman's Town" of the kind that took root across the South during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age. By 1900 hundreds of Black residents lived in Oak Cliff, a substantial share of the town's population.
Segregation was the iron rule of that era, and it forced Black Dallasites to build a parallel world: their own commercial street, their own churches, their own schools. The Tenth Street District became one of the places where that world was made real, brick by brick, congregation by congregation.
People & events
The neighborhood's earliest chapter is bound up with settler William H. Hord, who brought enslaved people to work Oak Cliff land in the 1840s. Nearby, the Oak Cliff Cemetery was established by another early settler in the following years — reminders that this ground held a community's dead as well as its living almost from the start.
After the Civil War the Freedman's Town grew and thrived. Its residents raised houses that still stand, some dating to around 1910, and built institutions to anchor their lives — among them churches like the 1886 Greater El Bethel Baptist Church and a chapel congregation from the 1880s, and, later, a 1920s public school named for N. W. Harllee. These were the load-bearing walls of a segregated community's daily life.
And the neighborhood produced talent the wider world would come to know. The marker names the blues guitarist and singer T-Bone Walker, a giant of American music, and Rafer Johnson, the decathlete who won Olympic gold in 1960. That a single modest district gave rise to figures of that stature says much about the life inside it.
Its place in the American story
Freedman's towns were one of the great, often overlooked, achievements of African American life after slavery. With little capital and against the full weight of segregation, communities like Tenth Street created something durable: neighborhoods where Black families could own homes, worship freely, educate their children, and support Black-owned business.
The twentieth century was unkind to many of them. Here, the construction of an interstate highway in the 1950s and the changes that came with integration in the 1960s led to the demolition of scores of original buildings and drew residents elsewhere — the same pattern of highway-era disruption that cut through Black neighborhoods in cities across the country.
What makes Tenth Street nationally significant is that so much survived. Its historic homes remain among the best-preserved of their kind in the Dallas area, and the district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994. It stands as physical testimony to a chapter of American history that is too often remembered only in words.
If you visit
Walk the residential streets and look at the houses themselves — modest frame homes, some more than a century old and relatively unchanged. Their survival is the whole point; each one is a piece of a rare, intact freedman's town.
Seek out the surviving landmarks the district is known for, including its historic church congregations and the school building that served the neighborhood's children. Nearby lies one of Oak Cliff's oldest cemeteries, a quiet place that predates much of modern Dallas. Together they map the institutions a community leaned on.
As you go, hold two things in mind at once: the creativity and resilience that produced figures like T-Bone Walker and Rafer Johnson, and the losses of the highway era that thinned these blocks. This is a good stop on a Dallas history route for travelers who want the fuller American story — not just the grand buildings downtown, but the neighborhoods where ordinary people built extraordinary lives under hard conditions.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · William H. Hord
- · T-Bone Walker
- · Rafer Johnson
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Greater El Bethel Missionary Baptist Church
Dallas, TX
Rooted in the mid-1800s and rising with Oak Cliff's Tenth Street Historic District, Greater El Bethel Missionary Baptist Church became a spiritual and civic anchor for Dallas freedpeople after Emancipation. Congregants dug the basement by hand and mule team, worshipping there until noted Black architect William Sidney Pittman completed the sanctuary in 1926. Under Rev. William L. Dickson the church ran a day nursery for working mothers and served as a place to counsel calm during years of racial violence.
1910 Lynching of Allen Brooks
Dallas, TX
As Jim Crow tightened its grip after Reconstruction, the threat and reality of lynching enforced the racial order even in cities. On March 3, 1910, a mob stormed the Dallas County courthouse, seized 60-year-old Allen Brooks from a pretrial hearing, threw him from a second-floor window, and dragged him down Main Street to hang him near the Elks Arch before a crowd estimated at 5,000. Though many called for a grand jury, no one was ever held accountable.
Fire and Lynchings of 1860
Dallas, TX
In the brutal summer of 1860, a fire on a 115-degree day destroyed much of downtown Dallas as the nation edged toward civil war over slavery. Amid panic and unfounded suspicion of abolitionists, a self-appointed vigilance committee bypassed any trial and condemned three enslaved men—Sam Smith, Patrick Jennings, and 'Old Cato'—who were hanged on July 24, 1860. Generations later, in 1991, the ground was consecrated as Martyrs Park to honor them and confront the inhumanity of slavery in the city.
Juanita Craft House
Dallas, TX
Juanita Craft joined the Dallas NAACP in 1935 and became one of Texas's most influential civil rights organizers, mentoring generations of young activists as advisor to the South Dallas NAACP Youth Council. From this 1925 craftsman bungalow she hosted Thurgood Marshall, Roy Wilkins, and touring artists like Duke Ellington and Marian Anderson, who could not stay in the hotels of Jim Crow Dallas. Her home became a hub of activism, community, and hospitality that shaped the city's struggle for equality.