2019 June Oak Cliff

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St. Cecilia raid

The Dallas Police Department raided St. Cecilia Catholic Church in Oak Cliff on the morning of May 15. A search warrant details sexual assaults by priests and claims the Catholic Diocese of Dallas has withheld documents from their investigation. Bishop Edward J. Burns said the diocese is cooperating with police and sees the raid as an opportunity to be more transparent. Here’s what neighbors are saying.

“My family was a member of this church for years, way before I was born. I went to school here from PK to 8th grade. This is heartbreaking and disappointing.”

—Jennifer Luna

“I am glad the police are investigating. I am the first in my family to leave the Catholic church after centuries of participation, specifically over the way the church has responded to these scandals.”

—Greg Pulte

Shocking crimes in May

A couple of unrelated crimes against elderly people shocked Oak Cliff last month. In the first incident, police arrested a man and a woman in a case where a 95-year-old man was pistol whipped and robbed after answering the door to his home in the El Tivoli area. The victim, Juan Flores, said the woman rang the doorbell asking for water, and the man rushed in and hit him with a gun. Flores wasn’t severely injured. His doorbell camera captured the crime and led police to the suspects. A few days later, on May 14, police were called to a home on West Illinois near Hampton Road and found a woman suffering severe head trauma. The victim, 69-year-old Telesfora Saldivar, died at the hospital. Adrian Gonzalez, 34, who reportedly was a tenant in an apartment behind Saldivar’s house, was arrested and charged with murder.

New patio, concept coming for C. Señor spot

The Cuban sandwich stand in Bishop Arts, C. Señor, closed in May, and the owners reportedly have plans to open another restaurant elsewhere. But a couple of entrepreneurial brothers have plans for the stand on West Davis at Bishop that formerly housed El Padrino taquería. Sean and Michael White are planning to open a restaurant there soon. “We should be open within the month with a built-out patio. It’s going to be Southwest fare that serves up beer and cocktails with breakfast options all day,” Sean White told Eater Dallas.

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ABOUT THE

TABLE OF CONTENTS PHOTO BY DANNY FULGENCIO

JUNE 6-9 FILM FESTIVAL

Four days of movies, music and parties take over the Texas Theatre and other venues around our neighborhood during the annual fest. Texas Theatre, 231 W. Jefferson Blvd. oakclifffilmfestival.com

5 things to do in Oak Cliff this June

JUNE 2

Puppet show

“Tlali: When We Were Earth” is an original production from Teatro Dallas that tells the story of a boy on a journey to his ancient roots. The family friendly show uses puppetry, costumes and instruments made of recycled materials.

Where: The Wild Detectives, 314 W. Eighth St. More info: teatrodallas.org

JUNE 6

Concert in the park

Pack a picnic and a blanket and join friends and neighbors for the annual Dallas Symphony Orchestra concert at Kidd Springs Park. This year’s concert will be held at the playground area off Cedar Hill Avenue rather than the baseball diamond side. It’s free and starts at 8:15 p.m.

Where: Kidd Springs Park, 1003 Cedar Hill Ave. More info: mydso.com

JUNE 16

Drag brunch

Celebrate pride with mimosas and brunch by chef John Gallegos and drag queen performances.

Where: Mercado369, 369 W. Jefferson Blvd. More info: mercado369.com

JUNE 29

Psychedelic soul

Check out the hottest stuff to come out of Austin in awhile. This psychedelic soul duo Black Puma releases their first album June 21.

Where: The Kessler, 1230 W. Davis St. More info: thekessler.org

A still from “The Farewell,” courtesy of the Oak Cliff Film Festival

BOOKER T. BROKEN

HOW SUBURBANITES CHEAT THEIR WAY INTO BOOKER T. WASHINGTON HIGH SCHOOL FOR THE PERFORMING AND VISUAL ARTS

“I absolutely see evidence of students who misrepresented their real residence to gain admission to our magnets.”

— Stephanie Elizalde, Dallas ISD’s chief of school leadership, who oversees instruction at DISD’s 230 campuses

LIE ABOUT YOUR HOME ADDRESS. Compel co-workers or friends to put your name on their utility bill. Or just rent an apartment in Uptown for your son or daughter, even if the kid never actually lives there.

Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, the nationally renowned public magnet school, is known for funneling dancers to The Juilliard School, churning out Presidential Scholars in the Arts and grooming music stars, such as Norah Jones and Erykah Badu. The high school is funded by Dallas Independent School District taxpayers and reserved for students who live in the DISD attendance zone, according to school board regulations.

But Advocate research shows neither campus nor district officials make much of an effort to verify that applicants live where they say they do. And once kids cheat their way into magnet schools, DISD generally doesn’t review their residency again.

Meanwhile, talented DISD hopefuls who live within DISD attendance boundaries are denied entry to the school and left wondering what might have been.

In the wake of the “Aunt Becky” national college cheating scandal, take a look at this year’s freshman recruits to the Booker T. dance conservatory.

In spring 2018, 55 eighth-graders received coveted “I am Booker T.” acceptance letters. At the time they applied, only 20 were attending a DISD middle school. Another 28 — half of the dancers admitted — were attending public schools in the suburbs, based on their middle school transcripts.

Yet as part of their application paperwork, 53 of the 55 dancers

“It makes Booker T. a school for rich kids.”

— Kristen Jackson, Oak Cliff resident and founder of art nonprofit Color Me Empowered

Go online for the full Booker T. Broken story at oakcliff.advocatemag.com Story by KERI MITCHELL | Photography by DANNY FULGENCIO

turned in utility bills purporting to live in Dallas.

In fact, all but three of the 227 freshmen in Booker T.’s dance, music, theater and visual arts academies used a Dallas address when they applied. Yet 100 of those students have never attended a DISD middle school, including 39 who attended public middle schools in the suburbs.

Juxtapose that with the 56 DISD students who applied to attend the school and were denied entry in spring 2018, along with another 144 DISD students who were rejected as “unqualified” by the magnet school audition judges.

Based on DISD numbers, children from suburban families who ignore the district’s rules have a better chance of gaining access to Booker T. than DISD’s own students.

Sure, it makes Dallas taxpayers proud that one of our public schools annually ranks among the best in the country.

But how proud should we be knowing that every suburban kid taking a spot at our nationally ranked magnet school could be stealing that opportunity from a deserving Dallas kid who played by DISD’s own rules?

And lost.

Qualified (at least 70/100 audition score)

An Oak Cliff mom remembers an information session at Booker T. in 2013 when parents were told in-district students take precedence. She also recalls a gathering where the head of the theater academy said, “We don’t check addresses.”

— Andrea Ramirez, whose two sons were theater students at Greiner Exploratory Arts Academy, a Dallas ISD middle school, before attending Booker T. She met families who drove to Booker T. daily from Little Elm, Garland and Greenville, Texas. Her sons ultimately returned to their neighborhood high school, Sunset.

“We’ve just followed the district policy, and we’re checking the utility bill as it’s presented.”

— Booker T. principal Scott Rudes

Where do Booker T. Washington applicants come from?

For a complete analysis of the applicants to Booker T. and the number attending from outside Dallas ISD, go to oakcliff.advocatemag.com/suburbans-cheating-booker-t-washington

Source: Dallas ISD records, based on eighth-graders’ spring 2019 applications

— Lisa Ormsbee, a longtime Dallas ISD parent whose daughter was wait-listed at Booker T.

—Stephanie Elizalde, Dallas ISD’s chief of school leadership who oversees instruction at DISD’s 230 campuses

These quotes are excerpted from the full story. Read it at oakcliff.advocatemag.com.

“They get a friend and ask if they can pay their phone bill, and nobody goes deeper. They aren’t paying any taxes. That is not fair. That is straight-up fraud.”

“I failed, and I’m going to fix it.”

MINDFULNESS IN THE ’HOOD

CHANGE YOUR MIND, and you can change the world around you.

That bit of enlightenment came to Ebony Smith during her very first yoga class 10 years ago, and she knew she had to make it her mission to bring yoga to the ’hood.

It all started with Ricki Lake.

Smith says she was an alcoholic addicted to benzodiazepines like Xanax. She was married to someone she barely knew and found out she was pregnant.

She watched “The Business of Being Born,” a documentary in which Lake and a journalist examine the business of medicine as it relates to giving birth.

Smith decided she wanted natural childbirth, so she found a doula, who recommended a yoga class.

“I was like, ‘Well, black people don’t do yoga,’” she says. “There are no yoga studios. The closest one was 24 miles from my house. And when I walked in, the lady at the front saw me coming, and she was like, ‘… um this is a yoga studio.’”

The typical picture of yoga didn’t include someone overweight or African American, she says.

“When I stepped on the mat for the first time, it was this familiar unfamiliar feeling,” she says. “I saw that if I change my mind, I could change the world around me. I didn’t always have to look for this healing outside of myself.”

She was harboring self-loathing because of childhood trauma.

Smith was molested at age 8 and then scolded when she told a family member, punished for her own trauma. She attended five Oak Cliff high schools and has seen the inside of a jail cell. Her boozy antics went so far that she says she was banned at one time from the Paul Quinn College campus.

It’s hard to imagine this drop of sunshine was once so angry and lost.

“I was like, ‘I have to bring this to my community and make this accessible,’” she says. “Yoga is expensive, and then it’s finding clothes that fit, then a yoga mat and all this stuff. When it’s really only you and your breath. That’s the most important part about it.”

Almost 31 percent of black children in the United States live in poverty, according to Economic Policy Institute data from 2016. Chronic stress from poverty can lead to a host of mental and physical health problems.

“The ’hood needs to know how to heal themselves. Because we are so sick not only physically from preventable diseases, but then all these mental illnesses that no one talks about,” she says. “How do we heal from that? It has to be taught, and it’s a practice.”

Smith became a certified yoga instructor and started her nonprofit, Yoga N Da Hood, offering free classes in Kiest Park.

“Yoga and wellness doesn’t look like us,” Smith says. “It looks like a luxury and not a human right.”

She translated it into ’hood speak, she says. Hence, Beyoncé yoga.

“I might not know shit about yoga, but I know I love Beyoncé’s music, so maybe I’ll try that,” she says.

She started working with schools, teaching yoga to kids, then teachers, school staff and parents. She developed a trauma-informed yoga instructor-training

Story by RACHEL STONE | Photography by RASY RAN

NONPROFIT YOGA N DA HOOD AIMS TO HEAL TRAUMA

course to spread yoga and self-love as far as possible.

Yoga N Da Hood this year won the $50,000 Pegasus Prize from the Dallas Foundation.

They’re using the award to train 300 yoga instructors and triple their reach to 6,000 kids by 2020.

The nonprofit, which has about 15 instructors, already works in 27 Dallas ISD schools. In the fall, they’ll partner with DISD’s Harry Stone Montessori Academy to train the entire staff — principals, teachers, custodians, cafeteria workers — in a seven-week certified yoga instructor course.

An amazing thing about yoga is how fast it can change a person’s outlook, Smith says.

Often the most stubborn kids are the ones who wind up benefitting the most.

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” she tells them. “All you have to do is lie on the mat.”

All they have to do is connect to their breathing.

And sometimes, it changes their lives.

“I’ve had people cry and give me some of the best hugs,” she says. “I had a woman who lost 150 pounds, and she said, ‘I never would’ve done yoga if I didn’t see someone who looked like me.’”

Smith says she wants to set the example for her daughters, Zoe and Maya, that they have the power to create something great.

But her biggest inspiration is the ’hood.

AWARD WINNERS:

Yoga N Da Hood won the $50,000 Pegasus Prize from the Dallas Foundation. The award will pay to train 300 yoga instructors and increase their reach to 6,000 Dallas elementary and middle school students. In the fall, they will partner with Dallas ISD’s Harry Stone Montessori Academy to train the entire staff — principals, teachers, secretaries, custodians, cafeteria workers — in a seven-week certified yoga instructor course.

“Any time I drive through my community and see my neighbors who are homeless or people with mental illness or who are strung out on drugs, that’s what motivates me,” she says. “Because I know that could easily be me. They’re people who don’t have the coping mechanisms to live through what they’ve gone through.”

MIAMI ICE CREAM

AZUCAR BRINGS THE FLAVORS OF CUBA, PLUS MEXICAN SPICE AND VEGAN ICE CREAM

THE STREETS OF BISHOP ARTS are flowing with ice cream.

Fort Worth ice cream shop Melt recently opened an outpost on Bishop, where there’s also locally owned Yaya Best Tex Mex Yogurt. Not to mention ice cream floats at Espumoso Caffe and paletas at Picolé Pops and Encanto Pops. Besides that, the two chocolate shops — Dude Sweet Chocolate and CocoAndré Chocolatier — sometimes make their own ice cream.

But there’s only one Azucar.

Former banker Suzy Batlle opened the first Azucar Ice Cream shop in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood in 2011, inspired by her

Azucar Ice Cream Co. 269 N. Bishop Ave. Hours: noon-9 p.m.

Monday-Wednesday, noon-10 p.m.

Thursday and Sunday, noon-11 p.m.

Friday and Saturday azucaricecream.com

Cuban grandmother who loved to make ice cream with tropical fruits.

Their signature flavor is called abuela Maria, named after her grandmother and made with vanilla ice cream, cream cheese, guava and Maria cookies.

Batlle is from Miami, and her mother lived there for 60 years. But once Batlle’s children went off to college three years ago, her mother up and moved to Dallas, where Batlle’s brother is a neurosurgeon.

“Nobody ever imagined she would do that,” Batlle says. “She’s 89.”

So Batlle rented an apartment here, and she found the Bishop Arts District, which she

Story by RACHEL STONE | Photography by KATHY TRAN

A double scoop in a cone: strawberry and abuela Maria with house-made guava topping.

says reminds her of the Coconut Grove neighborhood of Miami.

The menu is pretty much the same except that Azucar Bishop Arts always offers at least one flavor of vegan ice cream, which is made with pea milk.

“I’m not sure if it’s because I’m next to Tribal [All Day Café],” she says. “But people kept asking me for it.”

The Dallas store also offers Mexicoinspired flavors such as Mexican vanilla and the “ay, Chihuahua,” which has chile powder.

The shop opened last year and already has a loyal following.

“People seem to love it,” Batlle says.

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LGBTQ trailblazers

MEET THE NEIGHBORHOOD ACTIVISTS WHO REVOLUTIONIZED OUR COMMUNITY

Stories by RACHEL STONE and JAIME DUNAWAY

Photography by DANNY FULGENCIO

allas observed its first gay pride celebration in June 1972, and the next parade wasn’t until 1980. While cities across the world observe pride in June to commemorate the Stonewall Riots in New York City, Dallas Pride was always in September to honor a 1982 court ruling against Texas’ anti-sodomy laws. The ruling was later overturned, and consensual sodomy was illegal in Texas until 2003, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on it.

The September tradition stuck, however.

While New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. got their pride on every June, Dallas collectively experienced FOMO, the fear of missing out.

But not anymore.

The Dallas Tavern Guild, the collective of Oak Lawn business owners who took over what is now the Alan Ross Texas Freedom Parade in 1982, handed the parade over to Dallas Pride, a newly formed nonprofit, last year.

This year, Dallas Pride is in June, and it’s moving from Cedar Springs to Fair Park.

The new setup allows for more parade entries. Previously, Dallas police restricted the parade to 100 because there is a limit on how long the street can be closed.

And Fair Park can accommodate more vendors than Reverchon Park.

The 2019 celebration commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots with the theme “Stonewall strong, Dallas proud.”

In a nod to the new Dallas Pride, we talked to neighbors who were around in the early days of pride and the local LGBTQ struggle.

BETTY NEAL

ADVOCATE

Be tty Neal started bartending at what was then the only gay bar in her hometown as soon as she was old enough.

She moved to Dallas from Fayetteville, Arkansas, in 1979, and by January 1980, she was bartending at a gay club here.

It was the beginning of a decades-long career in nightlife that would put her at the center of the Dallas gay community and set her on a path as a leader and organizer.

Back then, all of the gay clubs were for white men, and those clubs would have occasional lesbian nights. Neal says one of the first white lesbian clubs was called JUGGS.

“They had a Friday night thing when all the black lesbians went,” she says. “We didn’t know there were so many black lesbians in Dallas. And we were like, ‘We should open a black club.’ ”

And they did. Neal and partners opened Raps near Love Field in 1989, and it later moved to Wycliff.

While Dallas’ legendary gay honky tonk The Roundup was boot-scootin’ to George Strait, Raps catered to the black LGBTQ market with rap and R&B. “Gay clubs often wouldn’t let black people in,” Neal says. And there were a couple that denied entry to women.

Bars would request multiple forms of identification or inform club-goers they were not properly attired for entry. If black people did get in, sometimes bartenders ignored them. Even as recently as 2017, reality TV star Tamar Braxton accused the 40-year-old JR’s Bar and Grill of denying her entry because of dress code, which she took as a racist snub.

Neal says Raps was the first club in Dallas to give drag queens a regular performance space, predating the Rose Room. “Drag queens unified the community more than anybody,” she says. “If somebody was to get sick, everyone always called on the drag queens to perform benefits.”

Raps started building their business around drag

as mammograms, health screenings and discussion panels. “It’s open to everyone,” she says. “Come out. Dress up. Turn up. Have a good time.”

n WE DIDN’T KNOW THERE WERE SO MANY BLACK LESBIANS IN DALLAS.

RICK BARTON

ENTREPRENEUR

Rick Barton and his brothers worked every summer in the Waco cafeteria their dad owned.

He went to Baylor University and dated a guy for the first time at the end of his sophomore year. He and his younger brother, David, never came out to their parents, but they did follow the family business.

Barton moved to Fort Worth after graduation to work for JC Penney, at the newly opened Ridgemar Mall, in 1977. Meanwhile, David opened a hamburger restaurant called Billy Whizbang’s in Arlington. The oldest Barton brother, Mike, founded the original Billy Whizbang’s, which is still open in Waco.

Barton was living in Oak Lawn and working for Southwestern Bell, driving a boxy Volvo 240 when David came to him suggesting a Dallas restaurant. “David decided he wanted to open one in Dallas, but he wanted a partner, so he approached me to open it with him. I was in the real world of business, which I found that I didn’t really care for too much,” Barton says. “So I decided to take the leap and go in with him.”

They each put up $50,000, as Barton remembers it. He put up everything he owned as collateral, including his Volvo. They opened Hunky’s in a 1,000-square-foot space at “the crossroads,” on Cedar Springs at Throckmorton, in 1984.

Hunky’s, with its cheeky name and delicious burgers, was one of the first gay hangouts in Dallas that wasn’t a bar or club. “It was still a happy time in 1984. The AIDS crisis hadn’t really taken hold yet,” he says. “We opened to just almost instant success. And the neighborhood was so welcoming.”

While David was running Billy Whizbang’s, Barton helmed Hunky’s. Barton says he worked constantly for the following five years.

“We were there to run a good restaurant and provide good food and

good service to everybody,” he says. “Being gay was almost secondary to everything else. You had to conform to society a little bit more. And then when you wanted to be gay, you went to Cedar Springs.”

Hunky’s was a place you could come have a burger while showing Kaposi sarcoma, the rare cancer that sometimes inflicts AIDS patients. It was common for customers to bring friends and family to Hunky’s as a neutral place to come out to them, Barton says.

It worked because Hunky’s didn’t discriminate — gay, straight, women, men, black, white, sick, healthy, everyone likes a good burger.

While the wild mid-80s days of Cedar Springs were going down, Barton worked seven days a week. “I didn’t have much time to go crazy, but I lived vicariously through my employees who partied a little harder,” he says. “I heard all the stories.”

By 1986, he was burned out, and his brother sold the Arlington restaurant. Barton left Hunky’s to his brother’s management and moved to the Upper West Side of New York City “just to see what the world was,” and work in retail and fashion. He worked at the original Tommy Hilfiger store on Broadway at one point, and he lived in the Ansonia Hotel, where some of his neighbors were old Ziegfeld girls. He paid $250 a month after taking over a pal’s lease.

The Ansonia’s ground-floor club, where Bette Midler used to perform, already had closed as AIDS ravaged New York’s gay community. Barton returned to Oak Lawn and Hunky’s in 1989. Soon after, David moved to San

n HUNKY’S DIDN’T DISCRIMINATE — GAY, STRAIGHT, WOMEN, MEN, BLACK, WHITE, SICK, HEALTHY, EVERYONE LIKES

A GOOD BURGER.

Francisco. And very quickly, he became ill.

David moved to Houston for treatment for AIDS, but he died. Barton was the one to tell his parents that David had AIDS, but no one talked about it.

While Barton excels at operations — he wakes up at 6 a.m. and reports to Hunky’s in Bishop Arts by 8 a.m. — his brother was good with numbers and marketing.

“I hated the name ‘Hunky’s’,” Barton says. “But people thought it was catchy and cute and that it doesn’t bring out any negative connotations. So I give him credit for the name.”

Barton opened the Oak Cliff Hunky’s in the building that once housed Ginny’s Bishop Grill. He and then romantic partner Michael Amonett bought that building in 2006. Barton opened Hunky’s, and Amonett opened Alchemy Salon. They still own the building together.

Even though Barton, now 64, says he and his brother never came out to their parents, he says they knew. It wasn’t talked about, but it was accepted. “My grandparents came up from Waco one day,” he says. “My dad came up, and he walked over to JR’s and had a beer one time.”

DON MAISON

ATTORNEY + ADVOCATE

The 1979 police raid on the Village Station nightclub was just one of many along Cedar Springs Road during that time. But it was a turning point in uniting the gay community against police harassment and unfair charges.

Don Maison’s involvement was accidental. The former civil rights attorney hadn’t heard of the bust — in which the police department’s vice squad arrested 12 men who were doing the bunny hop on charges of public lewdness. But when an old law-school classmate asked him to represent a client, he couldn’t refuse.

In the past, most gay people charged with public lewdness had pleaded guilty. They feared publicly fighting the charges would alienate their families or cause them to lose their jobs. When the group of arrested men decided to stand up to the police, it marked a significant step in the city’s movement for equal rights.

“That event was really the first time the Dallas gay community stood on its feet and said, ‘This is enough,’” says Maison.

Maison knew the layout of Village Station well, and he knew the testifying officer was lying when he claimed to have seen lewd behavior from where he was standing. Maison called the nightclub’s owner and told him to bring the bar’s floor plan to the courtroom. It was enough evidence that the judge acquitted Maison’s client.

But Maison’s role in this tale wasn’t over. At the trial of another defendant, he asked people to dance in the courtroom to the song “Enough is Enough,” which was playing at Village Station when police made the arrests. Groups of gay supporters and opposing evangelicals added to the circus. The Dallas Morning News reported the case with the frontpage headline, “Bible totters watch a parade of perverts.”

The judge found the defendant guilty, but an appeals court later reversed the ruling.

“It isn’t the job of a prosecutor to get convictions. It’s to get justice,” Maison says. “They take advantage of vulnerable situations, which I don’t

think is right. I feel like things have changed a great deal.”

After the trials, Maison served on a committee of several gay lawyers that met with police personnel to create better understanding between the communities. As a result, the police department appointed a liaison to the gay community, and the LGBT nonprofit, the Resource Center, began training officers to treat gay people with respect.

As proud as Maison is of his legal work, he’s most pleased with his advocacy as CEO of AIDS Services of Dallas. The Oak Cliff nonprofit provides affordable housing and support services for low-income individuals and families living with HIV and AIDS.

When Maison first started in 1989, he faced hostility from demonstrators who protested the nonprofit’s entry into the neighborhood with placards that read, “No gays/AIDS colonies.” The post office wouldn’t deliver mail to its address.

Despite no previous nonprofit experience, Maison grew a staff of four into more than 70. He increased a budget of $25,000 to $4.8 million. When no one else wanted to care for AIDS patients, his staff developed services that today include access to homehealth aides, home-delivered meals and transportation to medical appointments.

Maison served at the position for more than 30 years. He retired in 2018.

“I made a difference in many people’s lives,” he says. “To read the comments on Facebook and the emails when people found out I was leaving, it made me extremely proud. It made me realize how many people were affected.”

n THAT EVENT WAS REALLY THE FIRST TIME THE DALLAS GAY COMMUNITY STOOD ON ITS FEET AND SAID, “THIS IS ENOUGH.”

A SAFE HAVEN FOR ASPIRING ARTISTS

THIS STUDIO SPACE INSPIRES THE NEXT GENERATION OF OAK CLIFF ARTISTS

THE RUNDOWN STOREFRONT on Clarendon and South Oak Cliff Boulevard may have been an unlikely spot to create an artistic haven for neighborhood students.

But Kristen Jackson has a knack for turning rough canvases into beautiful creations.

The Westwood resident taught visual art for 10 years at Dallas ISD’s K.B. Polk Elementary near Love Field. Many of the students she worked with hadn’t picked up a crayon until they entered her kindergarten class. Most of the fourthgraders she took to the Dallas Museum of Art for an annual field trip were absorbing the famous works for the first time, despite the fact that they lived less than five miles away.

“These are things we don’t understand as part of the middle class,” Jackson says.

She could see her students’ curiosity and

Story by KERI MITCHELL

innate talent; they just needed the time and space to create.

For the first few years at Polk, she watched students line up for recess beside a long, short wall outside the cafeteria where a mural had been painted. Their little fingers picked at the paint while they waited, flecking it off.

Jackson asked her principal for permission to install a new, less corrodible public art project: Each student glazed their self-portrait onto a single ceramic tile, and Jackson fired them and installed them in rows covering the wall.

It was “an electrifying experience” for the students, she says. “Kids would come back years later and find their tile. I started thinking, ‘It would be so cool to do projects like this other places.’ ”

“They can come and be whoever they are.”

Above: Debora Sauceda-Sanchez swirls her paintbrush at Color Me Empowered’s recent West Side Stories festival. Opposite page: The art nonprofit’s new storefront at Clarendon and Oak Cliff Boulevard shares space with FGIII and Calendaria & Co., which opened their studios for the festival. Photography by Kaleb Fulton.

In 2009 she founded the nonprofit Color Me Empowered and launched summer programming that created public art in partnership with community centers. They began asking her to consider teaching weekly classes since art was a high and unmet demand in many communities. The City of Dallas’ Office of Cultural Affairs wanted Jackson to focus attention in the southern sector, and around the same time, her family moved to Oak Cliff.

She left Polk in 2014 to focus full-time on Color Me Empowered, and started by teaching after school in a leased church classroom space. They also offered a weeklong summer camp, which is now seven weeks. Then one of the nonprofit’s donors offered to purchase commercial space.

“Strategically, we wanted to be within walking distance of an elementary, middle and high school,” Jackson says.

Their new home on Clarendon sits a mile or less from Sunset High School, Greiner Middle School, and Winnetka and Lida Hooe elementary schools.

After school, inside the studio, students find clay, Legos and craft supplies runing the gamut.

“If we have it in our studio, they can use it,” Jackson says. “We give them time and space to come and create whatever they want to create. That open freedom is so important to development.”

Jackson doesn’t just want students to learn how to make beautiful art; she

wants them to learn to take chances. Trial and error provide the foundation for kids to continue to pursue art, she says.

“When they are not afraid to make a mistake or work through something, or even to create some bad art, I think you see them growing by leaps and bounds once they get to high school,” Jackson says.

Though Oak Cliff is an artistic hub, art programs for kids are much harder to find in our neighborhood than in north or northeast Dallas, Jackson says. Color Me Empowered is exploding with growth because “parents in the neighborhood really, really, really want these programs for their kids,” she says. They connect with art teachers in the area to identify students, and they offer tuition based on a sliding scale so that it’s affordable for all families.

“We don’t want their finances to be the reason they don’t come through the doors,” Jackson says.

Color Me Empowered still creates public art, usually seven to 10 projects a year. Most recently, the students crafted little ceramic hearts. “We try to plaster the community with them, as gifts for our neighbors,” Jackson says.

Those projects are important to her, but the canvases she values most are the faces she greets every afternoon in the studio.

“It’s a safe space. They can come and be whoever they are,” Jackson says. “We need to let the weird kids know they can be as weird as they want to be.”

COMING SOON: KIDD SPRINGS PARK AQUATICS CENTER

KIDD SPRINGS PARK opened 124 years ago as a private park, and it’s been the location of a neighborhood pool since the 1950s.

For years, it served the community with the basics — a place to cool off in the heat of the summer for just a few bucks and a home for the swim team, the Kidd Springs Sailfish. But after the City of Dallas sold parkland it owned at Lake Ray Hubbard for $31 million in 2016, it is a new day for public pools in Dallas.

The city budgeted $4.5 million for a snazzy new aquatics center.

Aquatics coordinator Raul Robles says the pools, bathhouse and office are on track to open June 1.

HERE’S WHAT WE ARE GETTING:

• Six-lane lap pool and “plunge pool” with a diving board and climbing wall

• 20-foot slide tower with two body slides

• Children’s pool with beach entry and play structures

• Shade pavilion, tables with umbrellas and lounge chairs

• 3,000-square-foot locker rooms with showers, toilets and changing areas

• Break room for employees

• Concession stand

Admission to the new Kidd Springs Park aquatics center costs $4 for kids 11 and younger and $6 for anyone 12 or older. Season passes to “community pools,” which include Kidd Springs, Martin Weiss, Tietze Park and about a dozen others, cost $50. A $70 pass for “the cove” membership will gain entry to all of those pools plus the water park at Samuell Grand and almost every Dallas public pool or water park except for Bahama Beach.

—RACHEL STONE

By SCOTT SHIRLEY

Rituals keep us together

How ‘date night’ readies the spirit

My wife and I are approaching our 26th year of marriage. Throughout that time — lean times and abundance, law school, seminary and demanding jobs — we have sustained a regular Friday date night. With few exceptions, Friday night has been the one time we set everything else aside and spend time together. Marriage expert John Gottman says that kind of ritual is one key to a healthy relationship. It allows us to catch up, to remain aware of what is happening in one another’s lives and to build shared experiences. For people of faith, spiritual practices give us the same opportunity to connect with the divine.

When we think about spiritual practices, we often go straight to the classics: prayer, meditation, studying scripture, maybe a labyrinth if we’re feeling frisky. But, just as a marriage ritual can be something as simple as a kiss goodnight, a spiritual practice can be anything. Contemplative practitioner James Finley defines spiritual practice as “any act habitually entered into with your whole heart that awakens, deepens, and sustains within you a contemplative experience of the inherent holiness of the present moment.” That’s pretty broad. Watch a movie that stretches you. Take a walk. Engage in intentional conversation with someone you trust. Sit still for a moment. Find whatever works for you.

I will warn you, however, that “what works” can be a little hard to ascertain. For one, it’s not a formula where if you do this, then you will get this. This isn’t self-help. It isn’t transactional. Instead, spiritual practices prepare us for transformation.

Transformation is beyond our control. Things will happen to you and you must decide how you will go forward. It could be something traumatic, such as death or illness, loss of a job or relationship. It could also be more success than you expected and more than you are prepared to handle. In those moments, we can double down on what got us there, or we can allow ourselves to be transformed. But you may

not be as free to choose as you would like if you haven’t done the work.

There is a Buddhist parable about a man on a journey that comes to a river. On this side, dangers abound, but the far shore is safe and serene. He builds a raft to cross the river. Of course, when he gets to the other shore, he discards the raft. It was useful for getting him there, but not for living in this new place.

Most of us probably think we’re pretty good at knowing when to discard the raft, but not so with our habitual patterns of behavior that help us make our way in the world. At some point, they stop working for us and may even be harmful. Even good

night

things can be a problem. For example, being helpful is good, but there are those who become so addicted to the praise they get for their service that they don’t know how to feel or accept love without it. This kind of self-abnegation leads to resentment, but it is so hard to break away from it. We’ll drag that raft around forever.

Spiritual practices help us see the raft. They help us see what a burden it is. They help us see that this shore, this new place, is okay. We don’t need the raft anymore.

Life can be relentless. It is easy to get swept up in whatever gets us through. And it’s easy to get addicted to that. We need a date night with ourselves, a moment to set aside the world of constant cares and reconnect with who we really are. In that, without the haze of the muchness and many-ness of life, we get a little glimpse of God and who we might be in God’s embrace.

Scott Shirley is the pastor of Church in the Cliff. The Worship section is underwritten by Advocate Publishing and the neighborhood businesses and churches listed here. For information about helping support the Worship section, call 214.560.4202.

WORSHIP

BAPTIST

CLIFF TEMPLE BAPTIST CHURCH / 125 Sunset Ave. / 214.942.8601

Serving Oak Cliff since 1898 / CliffTemple.org / English and Spanish

9 am Contemporary Worship / 10 am Sunday School / 11 am Traditional

GRACE TEMPLE BAPTIST Come to a Place of Grace!

Sunday Worship: English Service 9:30am / Spanish Service 11:00am 831 W. Tenth St. / 214.948.7587 / gracetempledallas.org

DISCIPLES OF CHRIST

EAST DALLAS CHRISTIAN CHURCH / 629 N. Peak Street / 214.824.8185

Sunday School 9:30 am / Worship 8:30 am - Chapel

10:50 am - Sanctuary / Rev. Deborah Morgan-Stokes / edcc.org

EPISCOPAL

CHRIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH / ChristChurchDallas.org

Sunday School: 11:15am /Mass: 9am & 10am English, 12:30pm Español

Wednesday Mass: 6pm English, 8pm Español / 534 W. Tenth Street

NON-DENOMINATIONAL

KESSLER COMMUNITY CHURCH / 2100 Leander Dr. at Hampton Rd.

“Your Hometown Church Near the Heart of the City.”

10:30 am Contemporary Service / kesslercommunitychurch.com

TRINITY CHURCH OAK CLIFF / Love God. Love Others. Make Disciples.

Sundays 10:00 am / Worship & children’s Sunday School 1139 Turner Ave. / trinitychurchoakcliff.org

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Helping inventors and idea people since 1989.

Cliff Temple Child Development Center admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs and activities generally accorded or made available to children at the Center.

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ADVOCATE PUBLISHING does not pre-screen, recommend or investigate the advertisements and/or Advertisers published in our magazines. As a result, Advocate Publishing is not responsible for your dealings with any Advertiser. Please ask each Advertiser that you contact to show you the necessary licenses and/or permits required to perform the work you are requesting. Advocate Publishing takes comments and/or complaints about Advertisers seriously, and we do not publish advertisements that we know are inaccurate, misleading and/or do not live up to the standards set by our publications. If you have a legitimate complaint or positive comment about an Advertiser, please contact us at 214-560-4203. Advocate Publishing recommends that you ask for and check references from each Advertiser that you contact, and we recommend that you obtain a written statement of work to be completed, and the price to be charged, prior to approving any work or providing an Advertiser with any deposit for work to be completed.

By RACHEL STONE

WPA ex-slave narratives

Oral histories of former slaves aren’t perfect, but they are stunning

The Great Depression-era Works Progress Administration sent writers to collect oral histories from former slaves in 17 states from 1936-1938. They collected 2,000 stories, producing a body of work that can never be recreated. That said, the “WPA Slave Narratives” has problems. Historians have judged that it’s unreliable for historical research because the subjects were elderly and usually living in poverty.

Their memories didn’t always serve them, and sometimes they mistook their interviewers for government officials who could help them receive pensions, so their recollections could’ve been presented “with rose-colored glasses,” the Library of Congress states. Besides that, not all of the writers were experienced or reliable interviewers. Some were indifferent to the truth and may have censored the stories.

The Library of Congress made the full narratives and photos available in 2002, and they can be found at loc.gov. These are snippets from some of the narratives of former slaves who lived in Dallas, including one who lived in Oak Cliff’s Tenth Street Historic District.

In Texas, the end of slavery wasn’t announced until June 19, 1865, twoand-a-half years after the Emancipation Proclamation took effect, on Jan. 1, 1863. After the Civil War, some slaveholders moved to Texas in order to keep people enslaved.

Stated age: About 82

Residence: 1120 E. Tenth St.

Hursey was born in Louisiana, and his family was sold to Jim Boling of Red River County, Texas, when he was a child. The day he left the plantation with his parents and siblings, Hursey recalled that Jim Boling called him over and gave him a cup of sweet coffee. “He thought considerable plenty of me,” Hursey said. His mother and father worked for farmers after emancipation, and the children had to work too. Hursey attended school for one week and taught himself to read with the help of friends. He became a preacher and at the time of the interview, described himself as “head prophet of the world.”

Mary Ellen Johnson

Stated age: 77

Address: Owned a restaurant at 1301 Marilla St. Johnson was born near San Marcos, Texas, and she said she was so little when emancipation came that she hadn’t known she wasn’t free. She recalled making a “playhouse” with white and black children, sweeping a patch of ground under the trees and playing with broken pieces of pottery. After emancipation, Johnson, her mother and siblings worked in cotton, corn and wheat fields. She had 10 children and never learned to read or write, but her interviewer noted that she spoke without dialect. She said she never cared about religion until she became very ill at about age 15 and she saw a heavy white veil over her bed. After that, she was saved. “I’m looking to the promise to live in Glory after my days here is done.”

Mose Hursey

Lula Wilson

Stated age: 97

Residence: Good Street, which later became Good-Latimer Expressway

An intro to her narrative states Wilson was blind and bedridden, but the photo shows her standing up outside in a fur coat. A cruel mistress, who often tied her down and beat her as a child, sometimes rubbed snuff in her eyes, and she believed that’s why she lost her eyesight. At about age 8, she was forced out of her mother’s cabin and had to sleep at the foot of the woman’s bed.

She says her father was born free, a “full-blood Creek Indian,” and eventually he was forced off their homestead. Wilson, her siblings and mother belonged to a man named Wash Hodges of Kentucky. Her mother later was forced to mate with an enslaved man and bore 19 children, according to Wilson. The children would be sold off while Wilson’s mother was working in the fields, and she would return to find her child stolen.

Wilson grew up near Mammoth Cave and said she used to play inside that natural wonder as a child. But most of her time was spent spinning cloth. She was married and told to start having children at around age 13.

“Now, when I was little they was the hardest times,” she said. “They’d nearly beat us to death.”

William Moore

Born: About 1855 in Selma, Alabama Residence: Good Street

Moore’s master, Tom Waller, moved to Mexia, Texas, during the Civil War to avoid the emancipation of slaves. As a boy, Moore was a shepherd, and he recalled being hungry all the time. Occasionally, he was allowed to go to church on Sundays, but they had a white preacher who told them to obey their masters in order to get into heaven. They were allowed to sing but had to pray in secret, Moore said.

Moore describes Tom Waller as a sadist: “He just about had to beat somebody every day to satisfy his craving,” he said. Waller tied men to the ground and would force another slave to hold their heads into the dirt while he beat their backs with a bullwhip. The children were told to watch. Waller once beat Moore’s mother’s back with the teeth side of a handsaw, and she bore the scars for the rest of her life.

After emancipation, Moore, his mother and siblings worked on farms in the Corsicana area. He never went to school, and the school his brother, Ed, attended was destroyed by the Ku Klux Klan. Moore said all three of his own children attended school.

Photos courtesy of the Library of Congress.

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