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Fahim J. Minkah
Fahim Minkah (1939-2018) was born Fred Bell in a small town in east Texas, where he recalled being harassed by police from an early age. As a young man, he studied pre-law at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA). In 1968, he organized the first Black student organization at UTA. He participated in many organizations advocating for racial justice, including the Dallas chapters of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Angela Davis Liberation Party, and the Black Panther Party. In 1988 he founded African American Men Against Narcotics (AAMAN) Drug Fighters, an organization that patrolled neighborhoods where drug dealers were known to hang out. The AAMAN Drug Fighters asked them to leave—sometimes at gunpoint. They did not believe that the City of Dallas was taking drug-related crime seriously and that they had to defend their own communities. Minkah did not withhold his criticism of the City of Dallas, especially the Dallas Police Department. In 1976, the Black Panther Party filed a suit challenging a city charter amendment that would prohibit citizens from investigating police violence, following the deaths of Black children George Johnson, aged fourteen, and Johnny Johnson, aged thirteen. Minkah said in his personal statement that he spent “approximately 5000 hours working on the police abuse of citizens” between 1973 and 1978. He stated that “they [the police] treat the African American Community like they are in occupied territory, rather than like fellow citizens.” Apart from his political activism, Minkah loved coaching children’s sports teams. He was described by The Mile Split TX as a “legendary” coach upon his death in 2018. He is buried in the Dallas-Fort Worth National Cemetery. https://txarchives.org/dalpub/finding_aids/01820.xml
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A little bit about our efforts: Local activist Yafeuh Balogun and several others submitted the application to rename the park. They’ve created a group called Friends and Family of Fahim J. Minkah to advocate for the name change. The people behind the group include Balogun and local organizers Davante Peters, Marcus Russell and Talissa Shamsid-Deen. "We want to honor an elder activist that gave his entire adult life to service of the community," Balogun said. He and the others have been influenced by Minkah in their activism. In the late ’80s and early ’90s, crime in Dallas reached an all-time high, with more than 500 homicides in 1991. In 1989, Minkah organized a group he called the African Men Against Narcotics Drug Fighters (AMAN Drug Fighters for short). At the time, he told news outlets the group was meant to combat the lack of police protection in South Oak Cliff. His group would conduct armed patrols in neighborhoods and apartment complexes that had come under siege by drug pushers in the middle of a crack cocaine epidemic. The idea was to find the drug dealers in these places and harass them until they left. Years later, Balogun, Russell and Peters would help organize armed patrols in their own neighborhoods in an attempt to help reduce crime. On top of the AMAN Drug Fighters patrols, Minkah wanted to provide social services through his nonprofit United Front of Dallas and more recreational activities for children and families. Without those things, Minkah thought, it was no wonder people in his community were turning to drugs. "We needed something in this neighborhood that would generate money, that we could circulate into other programs," Minkah recalled in a 1997 Observer article. "We needed something that would serve youth and families, that would promote physical fitness. The best drug prevention is well health." As a lifelong skater, one of Minkah’s solutions was a roller rink.
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Opening in 1999, the place would be called Southern Skates, which later became owned by the city and is still open for business today. It’s just a four-minute drive from College Park which, if Balogun and the group are successful, will bear Minkah’s name. They'd like the park at 33000 Highland Woods Drive to be called the Fahim J. Minkah Community Park. Minkah, a former member of the original Black Panther Party, also owned an auto repair shop about a quarter mile away, and much of his work was done in the surrounding area. All of these are reasons that Balogun and others think the park should be renamed after him. Now that they’ve filed the application for the name change, Balogun and the group are gathering signatures to show the city their efforts have support from the community. If everything goes according to plan, the group will eventually make their case for the name change at a hearing with the city’s Park and Recreation Board. Balogun, Peters and Russell were among those behind efforts that saw a portion of Dallas' Lamar Street renamed after Botham Jean in 2021. The 26-year-old Jean, a Black man, was shot dead by a white off-duty Dallas police officer in his own apartment. These efforts are part of something the group calls "landscape reparations," a term created by local author Edward Sebesta. The idea is to make the local landscape more representative of the communities that built and live in them. https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/activists-want-college-park-renamed-after-latecommunity-organizer-fahim-j-minkah-14936212
For more details contact: Yafeuh Balogun yafeuhbalogun@yahoo.com (469)254-8889
Internet Archive links:
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https://web.archive.org/web/20240208212236/https://www.dallasobserver.com/news /protecting-themselves-underserved-communities-tasked-with-combatting-crime11962611 https://web.archive.org/web/20240208211340/https://www.dallasobserver.com/news /dallas-city-council-unanimously-approves-botham-jean-boulevard-11978298 https://web.archive.org/web/20240208211010/https://www.dallasobserver.com/news /a-dream-deferred-6402845 https://web.archive.org/web/20240208211933/https://www.dallasobserver.com/news /activists-want-college-park-renamed-after-late-community-organizer-fahim-j-minkah14936212