10 minute read

Black history Little Egypt

Living above freedom

Prior to commercial development, this was a freedmen's town.

Story by RAVEN JORDAN

Photography courtesy of Dallas Municipal Archives. Map courtesy of Dallas Morning News Historical Archive.

NORTHLAKE SHOPPING CENTER and homes to the west, east and north of the strip center sit along the streets of Shoreview and Ferndale; that’s where the core of Little Egypt existed for nearly 100 years.

Little Egypt was one of Dallas’ eight freedmen’s towns, neighborhoods where newly freed slaves lived after the Civil War.

“Just a couple of years after Little Egypt was gone, I actually lived in Lake Highlands,” says Clive Siegle, a Richland College professor leading the ongoing excavation of an empty lot that was Little Egypt.

“My parents bought a house about half-a-mile from the house that I’m in now.”

A freedmen’s town is a historically Black community, typically located in the South and “founded via cash purchase or adverse possession, often in flood-prone bottomlands on the edges of plantations and city boundaries,” according to the Texas State Historical Association.

Following the Civil War and Reconstruction, formerly enslaved African-Americans sought places to live and raise their families. Few of these communities survived Dallas’ transformation into a bustling metropolis, except for some churches and cemeteries.

“When it comes to freedmen’s towns, usually you’ll find a cemetery, especially a Black one, and you’ll find an older congregational Black church,” says Dr. George Keaton, a genealogist and historian.

“Even though they may not be there, like Little Egypt, the congregation that’s there still exists when they moved in the mid-‘60s. And then you’re going to have some evidence of some type of business because [residents] had to be self-sufficient.”

Little Egypt was a pocket that was once a small, yet significant, part of Lake Highlands. The name of the community alludes to the slaves finding freedom from Egypt in Bible stories.

The 35-acre land was deeded by former slave owners to freed slaves Jeff and Hanna Hill in 1865 for $300. One of the original buildings was the Little Egypt Baptist Church. The community grew to about 200 as residents built their own houses.

The Hill family pioneered the community, but the McCoy family also was influential. Theirs was the only house in Little Egypt with a telephone line.

The community was centered around the church and had no running water nor electricity, Siegle says. Though

lack of city services was often a characteristic of Texas rural communities at the time, it was especially common in freedmen’s towns because they generally were established away from city centers and more valuable developments.

“Take a look at the landscape in 1930: It’s pretty deserted land, but you’re looking at the same land that pioneers were looking at in the 1850s,” Siegle says.

“There was no plumbing anywhere in that development. [Residents were] still using outhouses,” Siegle says. “If you are familiar with the sticks in rural Texas, you’ve got these water tanks up on stilts kind of behind the house. That’s what they’ve got here. It was still rural, in its own way.”

On a single day — May 15, 1962 — all of the Little Egypt residents moved out of the neighborhood, and the entire community was bulldozed. A year earlier, the residents had agreed to sell their homes and community to a developer for a few thousands of dollars apiece, and they looked forward to life in a neighborhood with utilities.

“It was commercial real estate development that took over the neighborhood,” says Collin Yarbrough, a Lake Highlands resident and author of Paved A Way.

“It was a little more peaceful than some of the others.”

The Little Egypt exodus made national headlines. An archived clip from New York’s Oneonta Star newspaper says William Hill, 87 at the time, was concerned about something other than his future: “The community’s patriarch, William Hill … worried about his long unused sets of mule harness.”

The Little Egypt Church relocated to Oak Cliff in 1962, because that’s where the church congregation and many of the former residents moved, taking a piece of their former home with them.

The McCoy house was built on the now-empty lot behind East Lake Veterinary Hospital, Yarbrough says.

“That’s where their family home was, and it’s the only hub that was never built on top of,” Yarbrough says. “So, it’s kind of the only last vestige of Little Egypt facilities.”

Surviving McCoy family members in the Dallas area helped Richland students working on the excavation find more “Egyptians” and descendants to interview. Jerry McCoy and his siblings gave students contact information for other residents who grew up in Little Egypt. The McCoys also drew a map of the area and provided more family names.

Richland students excavated the McCoy lot from 2015-2019, but the project slowed significantly as a result of the pandemic. The technological part, including building a virtual reconstruction of the McCoy house, is still in progress.

There’s now a historic marker for the site that has yet to be put up due to health and safety protocols created by the pandemic, Siegle says.

“There’s a ceremony that goes with it. It’s a state historical marker; it’s a big deal,” he says.

In the future, Siegle also hopes a museum can be established to showcase excavation finds, articles and other items related to Little Egypt and McCree Cemetery, where many residents are buried.

“What we’re trying to do is keep going … and eventually have it to the point where we reach a critical enough mass that we could actually have a museum exhibit.”

For more information about Little Egypt and other freedmen’s towns in Dallas, visit Freedmen Towns of Dallas County: An insight Presentation and Discussion on Facebook.

WORK+PLAY

HAVILLAND VOSS TAKES REMOTE WORK TO THE SKY AND SEA

Story by RAVEN JORDAN

Why work remotely from home when you can be on the coast of Spain or hike up the mountains and work at the same time?

Havilland Voss doesn’t trek the globe in her free time or as a vacation.

This 29-year-old Lake Highlands grad takes work along and couchsurfs with friends and family when home for a week or two. As the lead data analyst for Podsights, a podcast data and advertising company for brands and agencies, Voss has

the flexibility of full remote work. In August 2021, Voss joined Remote Year. This program of 3,000 adventurers between the ages of 21-77 allows anyone with a remote job that grants approval to participate. Remote Year has sent her to five countries, including Spain and Portugal, so she can be in a different country every month. ”I was actually on a program previously. I had originally started on one in January 2020,” Voss says. “I was seven weeks into it when COVID hit. I finally got to restart in August.” The Europe portion wrapped up 10 lakehighlands.advocatemag.com FEBRUARY 2022 in November; next was Africa. After that is Latin America for four months. And the best part?

With Remote Year, anyone with a remote job, whether it’s part-time or full-time, can travel with a monthly fee starting at $2,850. That’s for a one-month excursion, but there are also four- and 12-month trip options.

“Basically, you just sign up, and then you’re paying a monthly fee, and they provide apartments, co-working space, book flights,” she says. “They also have a bunch of events and activities in those cities. We have a local person who lives there who helps kind of coordinate those things.”

Of all the places she’s seen so far, Croatia sticks out in memories because she spent a lot of time with the locals.

“They had this couple who was pretty old, and they made soparnik, which is a Croatian traditional dish (pie typically filled with chard, onion, parsley and flaky dough), and it’s only supposed to be homemade,” Voss says. The dish originated in what was once the Republic of Poljica in Croatia.

“It’s not supposed to be good if you get it at a restaurant, so they invited us to their home and made the soparnik for us,” she says. “It was really cool because it was something pretty authentic, and they also didn’t speak English.”

Another memorable travel moment is when she and some friends went from Croatia to Bosnia and Herzegovina, a neighboring country to the south.

The first stop was Dubrovnik, Croatia, featured in The Daily Beast for its unique rental houses. From that point, they drove more than two hours from the coast of Croatia through Bosnia and Herzegovina to get to the city of Mostar.

“I think it’s like the most predominantly Islamic country I’ve ever been to,” she says. “I haven’t really been to that region of the world. Just kind of something I didn’t even expect, getting to go to a place like that.”

In previous work as a consultant, she was going across the country on assignments. But she’s always had an interest in the history and cultures of other countries.

“No matter where you go, you can find a way to make a connection with someone even if you don’t think you have anything in common,” she says.

December MLS home sale statistics*, plus annual totals area home valuesREAL ESTATE REPORT

SUB SOLD SOLD Year-To-Date Year-To-Date Avg Days on Avg. Sales Avg. Sales AREA DEC ‘20 DEC ‘21 Sales ‘21 Sales ‘20 Market YTD Price YTD ‘21 Price YTD ‘20 1 5 10 114 100 45 $470,880.00 $322,205.00 2 5 6 78 73 22 $322,426.00 $296,919.00 3 8 7 81 69 33 $322,412.00 $302,095.00 4 10 16 269 218 38 $213,104.00 $182,117.00 5 10 10 94 83 29 $388,152.00 $336,437.00 6 2 0 26 44 18 $574,661.00 $490,520.00 7 11 7 69 104 35 $586,659.00 $509,456.00 8 2 1 33 20 29 $498,318.00 $472,475.00 9 8 7 91 87 23 $546,493.00 $436,804.00 10 15 12 104 93 36 $225,254.00 $264,639.00 11 2 2 29 28 30 $643,186.00 $538,980.00 12 5 1 35 17 62 $611,703.00 $562,283.00 13 10 10 127 121 26 $525,011.00 $484,437.00 14 4 5 34 48 11 $530,782.00 $441,274.00 15 12 6 82 112 27 $489,051.00 $460,464.00 TOTAL 109 100 1,266 1,217 464 $6,948,092.00 $6,101,105.00 AVG 7.26 6.66 84.40 81.12 30.93 $463,206.13 $406,740.33

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PATTY COLLINS PATTYCOLLINS@EBBY.COM 214-862-5524

*Statistics are compiled by Ebby Halliday Realtors, and are derived from Dallas Multiple Listing Service (MLS). Numbers are believed to be reliable, but are not guaranteed. The Advocate and Ebby Halliday Realtors are not responsible for the accuracy of the information.

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