Joppa

How could this happen? How does an impoverished community lose its only real walkable link to the outside world? It’s a story that’s at once profoundly disturbing and sadly typical. The short answer is that the railroad wanted to add a new bypass track to its railyard, one that would allow trains to move through at faster speeds, the increased danger necessitating the closure of the Linfield crossing.

In November 2018, at a sparsely attended community meeting held outside of Joppa by its then-City Council representative, Kevin Felder, a vote was taken among the few Joppa residents who managed to get there to allow Union Pacific to make this alteration, with the stipulation that the at-grade crossing be replaced with a pedestrian bridge

With that, Union Pacific began work on its new track and the crossing was permanently closed.

"Ever since, I can hear those diesel engines all night long banging and clanging," said Edgar Green, a longtime Joppa resident. Another issue: The closing of the crossing has forced truck traffic heading to the Joppa side of the train yard over the vehicular bridge and into the heart of the community, chewing up unimproved roads and creating noise and environmental pollution.

The pedestrian bridge? It’s nowhere to be found.

And it’s not going to be ready any time soon, because right now it’s little more than an idea, although there is a plan to pay for it. Union Pacific has agreed to chip in $1 million for the bridge (it’s spending $20 million on the new track), with city, state and federal agencies covering the rest of the $8 million bill.

But even with a funding plan in place, there’s a dizzying number of bureaucratic hurdles to be cleared, among them: engineering procurement, City Council approval, environmental review, public participation, design, bidding, City Council approval (again), construction award and construction. All of that takes time, and the clock didn’t even begin to run until a modification to the State Transit Improvement Program had been cleared by the North Central Texas Council of Governments and the Federal Highway Administration, which didn’t happen until this past July, more than a year and a half after the crossing was closed.

When the pedestrian crossing on the railroad tracks beneath the Linfield Road overpass was closed about two years ago, Joppa’s main walkable link to the outside world was cut off. Joppa is a food desert without a real grocery store or place to eat. When the pedestrian crossing on the railroad tracks beneath the Linfield Road overpass was closed about two years ago, Joppa’s main walkable link to the outside world was cut off.

Only after this lengthy process is complete will Joppa have its pedestrian bridge. Which is to say, not any time soon. Meanwhile, it’s been nearly two years, and the crossing remains closed.

"I was one of the people that was opposed to it," Green said. "The meeting was called too soon. You didn’t have a chance to get the opposition there. Anybody who would have voted against it wasn’t there."

"When they took the vote, it was with four or five members of the community," said Shalondria Galimore, president of the South Central Civic League, Joppa’s oldest community advocacy group. "When everybody found out about it, it was a done deal."

Temeckia Derrough, founder of another local advocacy group, the Joppa Freedman’s Town Association, was also unhappy

"I do agree with closing it, but the process by which they’re doing it is backwards," she said. "They should have built the [pedestrian] bridge before closing the crossing."

That seems like common sense, but the city’s relationship to Joppa has never approached that minimum standard. And to understand that, to truly understand how access to a community can be so perfunctorily shut off, you need to look back much further, to its very origins.

There is a stand of trees in Joppa Park, a row of towering post oaks emerging from orange-tinged soil that predates the city of Dallas. They are old, very old, but the area’s history of inhabitation extends far back beyond even their first days. Centuries ago, native peoples came to this area, probably from southeast Texas.

"They were Stone Age people who eked out a living on the land," said Ben Sandifer, a naturalist who leads tours through the Great Trinity Forest.

Just barely getting by has become something of a tradition in Joppa.

Henry Critz Hines, the settlement’s founder, arrived in Texas as chattel, sent for safekeeping in the custody of William Brown Miller, an Alabama planter who came to the area in the years predating the Civil War.

Miller had purchased a large swath of land south of the recently incorporated town of Dallas — it was hardly a city then — and went about building a genuine manor, Millermore, on a bluff overlooking his property. That house, two stories of whitewashed presumption fronted by Ionic columns, established a Dallas tradition for grandiosity that lives on to this day. (The house also lives on, albeit in a new location. It is open to visitors at Dallas Heritage Village.)

Miller was a determined capitalist, and one of the businesses he established was a ferry service across the Trinity River, linking points south (including his own properties) with Dallas. To oversee this concern, Miller turned to Hines, a bluff man known for a natural sense of leadership.

In Texas Childhood, a 1941 memoir that focused on her early years at Millermore, Evelyn Miller Crowell remembered Hines as one of her grandfather’s "strongest and best slaves." But, evincing the casual racism of that time, she painted him as lazy, profligate and irresponsible, a man who slept on the job as his money literally blew away in the wind.

That characterization doesn’t square with the man Miller trusted with such a significant position. After the Civil War, Miller either turned over or sold the ferry-crossing business to Hines, along with enough nearby land to establish a community with other freed slaves from his own and the neighboring Overton plantation. That settlement would be known as Joppa, named for the biblical port city that is now Jaffa, Israel. Dallas was its Jerusalem.

This was typical of the Reconstruction era. Across Texas, hundreds of what are now known as "freedom colonies" were sprouting up, settlements founded by freed slaves on whatever land they could acquire, either by squatting or gift or purchase. According to Andrea Roberts, a professor at Texas A&M University and the director of the Texas Freedom Colonies Project, there were more than 550 of them, including State Thomas and Elm Thicket in Dallas.

"These were communities that started on the edge of formal cities, on land that nobody else wanted," Roberts said. "A lot of people were surprised that Black people could build a town from scratch, but if you think about it, all the people who did work during slavery were Black. And so essentially, you had renegade development of community."

That described Joppa. The land Miller had ceded to Hines was quite literally on the wrong side of the tracks. It was not a coincidence that Joppa was founded in 1872, the same year that the Houston and Texas Central Railway came to Dallas. Miller made sure that it did, buying into the company to ensure its route would come along his property.

The land for Joppa was between those tracks — they have grown and morphed into the Union Pacific’s line — and the flood-prone wetlands of the Trinity forest.

"Those freed people couldn’t buy prime land, nothing that would accrue value," said Donald Payton, a descendant of Joppa’s first settlers and an unofficial keeper of its history. "All that was in the flood plain of the river."

For the white population, even allowing their erstwhile slaves this otherwise undesirable land was deemed an act of considerable charity. That condescending attitude is conveyed in a passage of Miller Crowell’s memoir devoted to Joppa’s Juneteenth celebrations, and the contribution of foods solicited by Joppa residents:

"They were given gladly by all of the people we knew, with perhaps some good humored smiles over the fact that they were being asked to contribute to the celebration of a proclamation which, by freeing their slaves — valuable properties in themselves — and, in so doing, taking away the workers from their fields, had in many cases bankrupted their families. But this was never mentioned to the darkies, whose joy was complete."

The surroundings were industrial even then. Joppa was adjacent to Miller’s Switch, a rail stop where products could be on- and off-loaded for delivery to Dallas or to points south. There was also a large gristmill at nearby Honey Springs, founded by Aaron Overton, another plantation owner, that had been in operation since 1853.

These businesses provided work for Joppa’s residents. They first lived in shacks and grew their own food. The sandy soil was good for okra and purple hull peas. In time, the homes became more sophisticated, with some shacks replaced by shotgun houses, a few of which still remain. A boost came with veterans returning from service overseas in World War I, men who had a bit more capital. With Black people generally barred from white areas, they had no choice but to return to their former communities.

It was a pattern that repeated itself after World War II, with Joppa expanding south to accommodate returning servicemen and their families. Their new streets bore the names of the places where they had fought: Burma, Cherbourg, Corregidor, Luzon.

"You had a mix of old families who had been there since the emancipation, then you had people migrating to Dallas, and it allowed them to own their own homes, and then you had returning veterans from both wars," Payton said of that growing population. Their circumstances, both economic and geographic, bred a sense of community and cooperation.

"It had to be a strong sense of survival because they were living down there in the flood plain."

While the men of Joppa defended the United States abroad, back home their community came under assault. In the 1920s, the woods outside of Joppa became a torture ground for the Ku Klux Klan. This erupted into civic furor in March 1922, following the abduction and whipping of two men: Philip Rothblum, a Jewish picture framer, and a week later F.H. Etheridge, a white lumber dealer. The men were taken from their homes, tied to a tree and whipped with either a leather belt or rope before being dumped on a road.

This caused an outrage because the two men were white and because they had been abducted under the cover of police authority. The instigator was police officer and Klansman J.J. Crawford, who was charged with false imprisonment and aggravated assault in the Rothblum case. Two additional officers were also suspended for their alleged involvement, which stemmed from an incident at Rothblum’s house during which Crawford accidentally shot and killed his partner while in pursuit of a Black suspect. What exactly he was suspected of is unclear.

Crawford was eventually acquitted, creating even more controversy, but the trial and ensuing coverage revealed that whippings were commonplace in Joppa, with Black people being the primary victims. Etheridge recalled that one of his captors had told him that 63 other men had been whipped in the preceding months.

Members of the New Zion Missionary Baptist Church, which had been founded by the family of Henry Critz Hines and still stands (albeit in a new building) on Hull Avenue, reported frequently hearing cries and shouting from the direction of the Klan’s torture ground.

Evidence at the scene of the Etheridge whipping attested to those reports:

The matriarch of the Black family in the nearest house was reluctant to give witness — "we attend to our own business," she told a reporter covering the whippings for The Dallas Morning News in March 1922 — but she did note that she often heard cars and yelling coming from the area. Her reticence spoke to the sense of intimidation in the local population.

"When the dark comes, I take my family in the house and shut the doors and my husband and my children and I don’t go out very often," she said.

Slideshow: Torture Tree

According to local oral history, this bur oak deep within the Trinity forest may have been the site of whippings conducted by the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. "These are what we call witness trees," said Ben Sandifer, environmental advocate for the Great Trinity Forest. "There’s a spirit to this place. It’s a bit uneasy." According to local oral history, this bur oak deep within the Trinity forest may have been the site of whippings conducted by the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.

Reports in The Dallas Morning News followed the 1922 case of police officer J.J. Crawford, who was accused in the abduction and whipping case of two men.

Crawford was eventually acquitted, but news coverage revealed that whippings were commonplace in Joppa, with Black people being the primary victims.

If you are intrepid, you can still find your way to these grounds, though you’ll have to fight your way through tall grass that now rises above 6 feet, and you might run across a wild boar or coyote. The road that had once given the Klan access here no longer exists, wiped away over the decades, and is now covered by dense brush. But deep in this overgrown thicket, one of those haunted torture trees remains: a bur oak that rises some 40 feet into the sky.

What made Joppa an appealing place for Klansmen bent on torture was its unusual geographic situation: at once isolated but also convenient to central Dallas. Roughly a century later, that same duality applies. From the end of Fellows Lane, where Joppa backs into the Trinity wetlands, Dallas’ crystalline skyline is visible above the verdant forest, an Oz city that is both present but distant.

That position gave the community a modicum of security from the destructive forces of midcentury urban development. When other more centrally located freedom colonies were ravaged — State Thomas, for example, which has been subsumed into Uptown — Joppa survived, out of sight and out of mind.

There were no city services — no water, no electricity, no sanitation — because technically Joppa was not even a part of Dallas: It was unincorporated land described by the city as an "industrial area." The city did not annex Joppa until October 1955, and even that came over the opposition of two manufacturing companies that preferred to remain outside the regulatory reach of City Hall.

Shotgun houses, a few of which still remain, were built to replace shacks in Joppa.

When the annexation ordinance was up for debate, a lawyer representing the Certain-Teed Products and Vernon Manufacturing companies told the City Council that his clients provided "their own utilities and policing and would not benefit by being in the city."

When white Dallas did come to Joppa, it was for entertainment. Miller Crowell recalls her regular visits to Juneteenth celebrations. "The preparations always began weeks ahead, with plans for picnics or fish fries or barbecues, or all three in one," she wrote. There was also the frisson of danger. "Lots of beer and corn whiskey and gin would be consumed and there were likely to be some fights, maybe a cutting scrape with a razor, or even a killing."

The visits became a good deal more tranquil, and more exclusive, in 1956, with the opening of Riverlake (later renamed Sleepy Hollow) Country Club, an 18-hole golf course carved out of 261 acres of Trinity wetland forest. Comedian Bob Hope was on hand to celebrate its inauguration. Riverlake advertised "gracious living for all the family," with an air-conditioned clubhouse, a pool, tennis courts, an artificial lake for fishing, child care and even a private train to carry club members around the campus. But the families experiencing that graciousness were all white. The only Black people at Riverlake were employees.

"I used to go down there and caddy," Green said. "We used to hustle golf balls out of the water and then go and sell it back to ’em." If you walk through that now-overgrown wetland marsh, you can still find the occasional half-buried golf ball.

The club reinforced Joppa’s isolation, forming another physical barrier between the community and the world beyond. It also cut Joppa off from itself, with a spit of the course property dividing Joppa’s older settlement from its more recent expansion to the south.

The isolation was further exacerbated by a less bucolic neighbor: the city’s landfill, established at the end of Linfield Road. Joppa, homestead of emancipated slaves, would now be where the city sent its garbage.

Residents made the best of it, finding what profits they could in the city’s detritus. "They were into recycling way before recycling became popular," Payton said.

For Edgar Green, it was a way to make a few dollars, and perhaps get something useful.

"As kids we’d go down there and unload people’s trucks. People throw away all kinds of stuff," he said. "I found a motorcycle down there."

Not being a part of Dallas meant that Joppa was not a part of the Dallas school system; it was in the independent Wilmer-Hutchins district. Historically, the children of the neighborhood had been schooled in makeshift quarters in Joppa — a teacher was on the books as early as 1893 — and then in the segregated schools in South Dallas. Students walked in groups up the rail tracks, accompanied by chaperones. The Southern Pacific, which then operated the railroad, halted traffic in the mornings and afternoons to accommodate the commuting children.

Joppa didn’t get its own school until 1953, and only then thanks to the generosity of one of its own. The Melissa Pierce School, enrolling students from third through 12th grades, was built on land given for the purpose by a beloved figure known in the community as "Auntie Melissa," who had been emancipated out of bondage as a child.

A new school building was a significant milestone for Joppa, but within a year, students were already trying to escape it. In May 1954, the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education decision rejected the sanctioned racial segregation of public schools. This prompted parents in Joppa to attempt to enroll their students in the heretofore whites-only Linfield Elementary School.

This was not so much a referendum on the quality of education at Pierce, but on its schedule. Because it was a segregated school, its year did not begin until Oct. 17. A spokesman for the children hoping to enroll in Linfield explained the reason for the delay: It was "for the convenience of several local farmers who wanted cotton pickers."

Even after this, Pierce remained separate, but by no means equal. "We got the white hand-me-downs from the white schools," said Green, who attended Pierce in the 1950s. "If the pages were still in the books, we were good."

In some ways, those were glory years for Joppa. The community was close-knit and self-reliant. There were two grocery stores, Hager’s and Williams’, a laundry, a barber shop and a number of places to eat, drink and listen to music, including the Holiday Inn, a hamburger joint and honky-tonk in one. And to offset what ungodliness might happen in those places, there were churches, more than a dozen of them, practically one on each of Joppa’s 18 streets.

Much of that progress was the product of a single woman: Laura Belle Foster, who moved into the community with her husband in 1940, when they were forced out of their home on Jordan Street in South Dallas, which was cleared to make way for the South Central Expressway, since renamed S.M. Wright Freeway.

Their house, like others in Joppa, had a hand-pumped well for water and a wood-burning heater. Gas for cooking came from a tank of butane in the backyard. The roads were dirt and gravel, and all of the mailboxes were lined up on Carbondale Avenue, facing the rail tracks — there was no direct home delivery.

Foster was not one to accept the status quo. In 1948, she formed the South Central Civic League to lobby the city for the services the community lacked. She also became the first president of the Pierce school’s PTA. That advocacy gradually paid off in paved roads and other utilities: gas, water, electricity.

"By the time I was 12 — that was in 1966 — we were finally able to get running water into the house," recalls Delveeta Thompson, Foster’s granddaughter. As late as 1977, there were still residents using what Joppa’s then-City Council representative Juanita Craft called "pit toilets."

But while the end of the Jim Crow era brought increasing prosperity and freedom of movement for Black residents, the new era also led to the depopulation of many poor Black neighborhoods, Joppa among them. Families that had grown up in the isolated, impoverished community without city services could now move to previously restricted communities and new suburbs with the amenities that Joppa lacked.

Although not even 10 miles south of downtown Dallas, Joppa has maintained a sense of rural ambience.

It was a story playing out in freedom colonies across the state, and in Black communities generally. "Desegregation was a wonderful process in that it was focused on making institutions accessible to all," said Roberts of Texas A&M. "However, in the process there was a hierarchy established about which types of institutions were valued more, and which were not. As a result, there was an increasing investment in white spaces and places, and a disinvestment in Black places. So if you have a disinvestment in roads and schools, then people move out."

That cycle fed on itself: The more families that left, the lower the investment the city made in the community. This hit home in 1998, when the city decided there was no room in its $543.5 million bond program to fund a $3 million bridge over the Union Pacific train tracks, long a neighborhood priority. For residents, this was something more than a convenience: Emergency response vehicles frequently got stuck at the crossing, blocked from entering Joppa by a stopped train. The results could be fatal.

Charlie Mae Jackson, who had taken up Foster’s mantle as the community’s conscience and chief advocate, spoke plainly of the city’s negligence.

"Nothing major has been done for this community in the history of this community," she told The News in February 1998. "We’ve had to go to the city to get stoplights, water and gas for individuals and yield signs, but we’ve never gotten anything major. ... This is a community that time forgot."

For many Dallas residents, the generally unspoken feeling about Joppa was summed up by Charles Tabor, the one-time head pro of the neighboring Sleepy Hollow Golf Course, in a 1993 interview with The Dallas Morning News.

"If there’s anything worse than that in Dallas, I’ve not seen it. We really wish it would just go away," said Tabor, who died in 2011. "I’m not the white male racist son of a bitch. I’m really not. I just have a little perspective. They ought to bulldoze that place in the middle of the night."

It was nearly a decade before Joppa got its bridge over the railroad crossing, in April 2006. That the ceremony inaugurating the $5.6 million project was dampened by rainfall was fitting. The bridge was not only a long time coming, but essentially inadequate given that it made provision solely for motor vehicles.

James "Peter Rabbit" Freeman moved to Joppa three years ago and found he sometimes needed to use his bicycle to cross the bridge into the neighborhood.

"People tend to support things that are going to make them money first, and this wasn’t going to make anybody any money," said Maxine Thornton Reese, then Joppa’s City Council representative, by way of explanation.

But new investment was coming to Joppa. One month after that bridge opened, in May 2006, the nonprofit Habitat for Humanity built 20 new houses in the community. Fifty more followed soon after. That July, with temperatures swelling into the 90s, there was a strong turnout for the inaugural Joppa Heritage Festival. "This area is experiencing a rebirth," said Don Hill, then the Dallas mayor pro tem. "It’s a rebirth that’s been long delayed."

It was easy to feel optimistic, especially so for politicians and journalists parachuting into the community when there was good news to report. And Habitat’s arrival seemed like a stroke of good fortune, if not an outright miracle. According to Cindy Lutz, then Habitat’s Dallas real estate director, the community had shrunk to only 150 active households. Of the roughly 600 addresses within Joppa, half were vacant lots; the houses that remained were largely in poor condition. Habitat effectively stabilized the neighborhood. Since 2006, it has built over 100 new houses and helped residents repair more than 50.

For all its benefits, Habitat’s presence transformed Joppa, altering its essential character both physically and demographically. What had always made Joppa special was its isolation, the fact that it seemed a place out of time and on its own. Habitat opened it up to the city, introducing it to an entirely new population. It was the most significant change within the community since Henry Critz Hines had established it more than a century earlier.

Inevitably, those changes led to friction.

Driving through Joppa, it’s easy to identify the houses built by Habitat, and not just because they’re new and typically painted a standard Carolina blue with white trim. That differentiates them from Joppa’s older stock, but so do some of their other features, or lack thereof. Habitat’s houses are generally larger than the neighborhood’s historic stock, and they often don’t have the front porches that are familiar in Joppa. They do have snub-nosed garages that face the street. Joppa Circle, newly platted by the city to accommodate Habitat development, looks as if it were yanked up from a North Dallas suburb and plunked down in Joppa.

That auto-centric model did not square with Joppa’s history or its culture. The minimization of porch life and the addition of attached garages (in an area with no shortage of on-street parking) discouraged interaction and the fostering of communal relationships, suggesting that Joppa was just another Dallas bedroom community.

One unintended consequence of Joppa’s low residential density is that it has, at least anecdotally, insulated Joppa from the coronavirus. Although it is in one of the hardest-hit ZIP codes in the city, according to Dallas County records, interviews with Joppa residents suggest the community has been relatively safe.

"The people here don’t socialize. They don’t get out, and for that reason the virus hasn’t infected us," said Larry Christopher, a retired egg inspector for the Department of Agriculture who has lived in Joppa for 15 years. That Joppa has virtually no stores or businesses — places where people might gather — is surely another factor.

When the nonprofit Habitat for Humanity brought new houses to Joppa, it was the most significant change within the community since Henry Critz Hines had established it. Since 2006, Habitat has built over 100 new houses and helped residents repair more than 50 homes. When the nonprofit Habitat for Humanity brought new houses to Joppa, it was the most significant change within the community since Henry Critz Hines had established it.

Gabriela Medina, who moved into her Habitat for Humanity home in 2016, said Joppa is a great place to raise children. In early August, she posed with her children (from left) Jose Lara, 5, Heidi Lara, 10, Isaias Lara, 3 months, and Elias Lara, 7. The children are proud to tell friends at school about the history of the neighborhood, Medina said. Gabriela Medina, who moved into her Habitat for Humanity home in 2016, said Joppa is a great place to raise children.

For many of Habitat’s buyers, that’s what it was: a quiet neighborhood tucked into the bucolic Trinity forest that was just a few miles from downtown. It’s safe, too, particularly for a low-income area. "It’s still one of those places where people look out for each other," said Lt. Eric Roman, a watch commander with the Dallas Police Department’s Southwest Division. "It’s not a hot spot."

Because Habitat sells its homes only to buyers it aggressively screens for their financial stability and character, they tend to be more secure than their neighbors. And they are not universally Black; the community founded by freed slaves was becoming diverse. Between 2010 and 2017, the Black population in census tract 202, which encompasses Joppa, dropped by nearly 20%, from 97.1% to 77.9%. In Adam Bazaldua, who was elected in 2019, Joppa has its first Latino representative on the City Council.

"Habitat has had an enormous impact on the neighborhood, building dozens of houses and fundamentally altering its character and its history," said Kathryn Holliday, an architectural historian at the University of Texas at Arlington who has studied the community. "It has provided much-needed investment and housing — but at the same time it has done so by following the Habitat formula with little attention given to the historic landscape and the very particular meanings that Joppa has for generations of families who have called it home."

The principal objection to Habitat is that it was building houses — lots of them — but not doing much else to support the community it has been so instrumental in transforming.

"What they’ve failed to do is be a good community partner," said Galimore, of the South Central Civic League. "They’ve failed to partner with the community to provide upgrades. They have literally done nothing but build houses."

"I can see it through their lens," said Tosha Herron-Bruff, who handles Habitat’s outreach in Joppa. "We’re synonymous with homebuilding. But to be a good community partner, organizations have to take a holistic approach to the issues and challenges of the community, and Habitat is committed to doing better."

Among the sore points is the fate of the abandoned Melissa Pierce School, which closed in 1970 and had been acquired by Habitat. Residents, concerned it would be torn down to make way for more houses, wanted it preserved and put to use as a community center.

"When we asked them for a community center, they told us, ‘We are not in the community center-building business,’ " Galimore said.

"Our priority is to make sure we get the community involved in what happens with this building," Herron-Bruff said.

In 2017, Habitat committed to preserving the school, and last summer it commissioned a historical consultant, Sankofa Education Services, to work on the project. In February, Habitat brought in the architectural preservationist McCoy Collaborative to assess the condition of the school.

"We’re going to be looking at what’s in the building, ultimately trying to provide information for the community, so the building can be used by the community," said Clarence Glover, Sankofa’s founder and chief executive. He would also like to see Joppa become an educational destination "reflecting the history of freed African American men and women."

Members of the community are skeptical. "I guess people have ideas, but the ideas keep circling in their heads, and nothing’s been done," said Lola Jean Gardner, a 92-year-old who has lived in Joppa since 1955.

"Even if we got a community center, who’s gonna step up to run it?" asked Derrough, of the Joppa Freedman’s Town Association. "We talk about a community center. We need it. But we need the city of Dallas to step up."

"I know that there’s been a strong desire and huge demand for services in Joppa," said Bazaldua, who has been an advocate for preserving the Pierce school and now sits on the advisory board formed by Habitat to determine its future. "The community has been involved in many stages, and we’ve heard in many different platforms their desires and hopes, and we’re going to keep pushing."

Distrust between Galimore and Habitat may also be attributed to contention over Habitat’s ownership of an empty lot next to one of Joppa’s few two-story structures, known colloquially as either the "Big House" or the "Blue House." The house, which has a reputation in the community as a haven for gambling and other illegal activities, is owned by Galimore’s father, Fred Crawford. Galimore herself is listed as a director, with Crawford, of a nonprofit organization, Big House Inc., founded in 2018.

"It’s ridiculous what goes on at that place," Derrough said. "People are scared to call 911. The residents, they all talk about it on the front porch and their living rooms, but they don’t want to do anything about it. They are scared."

"I’m not saying it’s a church," Galimore said. "It’s where people go and hang out because there’s never been a community center."

There are times it does serve that function. On Juneteenth, the house became a place of gathering, with food and drink, and genial games of dominoes. Galimore defends her father and blames Habitat for neglecting its lot, thereby allowing for criminal activity. "Everything that goes on in the parking lot, he can’t control."

"Most of what I’ve known about the Big House is hearsay," Habitat’s Herron-Bruff said. "If the community is saying that they’d like to do more, we need to figure out how."

The Mini Linfield Motel, a dilapidated motor court off Corregidor Street, is another community nuisance and crime magnet. The property is without the special-use permit required to operate as a motel, according to city records, but the $1,000 cost to bring a compliance case to the city has proven prohibitive. For the police who patrol Joppa, both the Big House and the motel are a challenge. "Looking at it from a law enforcement perspective, we can only respond to tips from the community, or a complaint," Roman said. "When did you call and how did you get that information to us."

That may be so, but the persistence of these nuisances only reinforces the longheld sense, within the community, that the city is neglectful of its needs.

Changing demographics have exacerbated rifts that fall largely, though not entirely, between residents with historic ties to the community and more recent arrivals. The divided constituencies are represented by competing civic advocacy groups: the South Central Civic League, led by Galimore, a fourth-generation Joppa resident, and the Joppa Freedman’s Town Association, founded by Derrough, who moved into a Habitat home in 2006.

Legacy residents worry about the changing face of the community and contend that Habitat is selling homes to immigrants without citizenship. "That will be disastrous for Joppa, because they are continuing to put families in there that don’t have voting power," Galimore said.

South Central Civic League President Shalondria Galimore said her house was built by hand by her late great-grandmother Rosa Lee Bosh Jackson in 1949.

Those fears are misplaced, according to Habitat. "Everyone that Habitat has sold a home to in Dallas is a U.S. citizen or legal, permanent resident," said Lauren McKinnon, a Habitat spokesperson. But legal, permanent residents do not have voting rights.

Newer residents believe that the legacy Joppa leadership is chiefly interested in retaining its own power, and that families who have moved out (but remain connected through familial, church and historic ties) exercise undue influence on its affairs without doing much to support it.

Sometimes it seems as if nobody can agree on anything, right down to Joppa’s name. In 2015, in an effort to promote the community’s roots, members of the South Central Civic League persuaded then-City Council member Carolyn Davis to put historic "toppers" on Joppa’s street signs. But instead of "Joppa," the historically accurate spelling, the signs read "Joppee," because that is how it’s pronounced. In Joppa, the historical markers get their own history wrong.

It may sound comical, but the dissension within the community isn’t funny, and over the last three years it has grown more and more acrimonious. It is a conflict befitting Hollywood: a Dallas Chinatown, with Big Business pulling the strings of corrupt politicians, and residents fighting forces that seem beyond their control.

What has divided Joppa is not water, as in that film, but concrete. To be more precise, whether it is acceptable for concrete batching plants, notorious for their adverse environmental and public health impacts, to operate near residential Joppa.

That Joppa has suffered next to industry, of course, is nothing new; it was a condition of its birth back in the 19th century, when the only land Black people could acquire was land that was compromised. Ever since, the area adjacent to Joppa has been a convenient place for heavy industry. By the most recent count, there are 33 active industrial businesses in Joppa’s census tract. Among them is Tamko, a roofing company that produces asphalt shingles, and in December was named the third worst polluter in North Texas by the Environment Texas Research and Policy Center.

What had been a matter of simmering contention erupted into a full-bore conflagration when Union Pacific and the industrial giant Martin Marietta formally petitioned the city to approve two new concrete batching plants on the railroad’s property adjacent to Joppa.

Beginning in 2015, that request made its way through the city bureaucracy, until it came to the City Council, at which point it became the subject of an opposition campaign that pitted the upstart Joppa Freedman’s Town Association, backed by a cadre of advocacy groups (among them: Habitat, Legal Aid of NorthWest Texas, the League of Women Voters, Downwinders at Risk, the Sierra Club and the Dallas Green Alliance), against Union Pacific and Martin Marietta.

The affair had a David-vs.-Goliath aspect to it, with members of the JFTA, in blood-red "Justice for Joppa" T-shirts, facing off against the corporate giants’ white-shoe representatives, lawyers and lobbyists, for whom testimony at City Hall was business as usual, and usually good business.

The corporations could also count on members of the community and local contractors, whom they had enlisted over the years with relatively paltry donations and promises of jobs and other benefits for Joppa residents.

This history was thrown into public view by a 2018 Dallas Morning News investigation into the dealings of Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway.

In 2008, Caraway, then a City Council member whose district included Joppa, negotiated an agreement by which Austin Industries funneled cash into a Joppa nonprofit managed by a political ally, Claudia Fowler. In exchange, Caraway voted in favor of allowing Austin to operate a concrete plant on the Union Pacific property adjacent to Joppa. Neither Caraway nor Fowler could account for Austin’s contributions, which amounted to $72,000 over six years. (Caraway is now serving a 56-month sentence in federal prison after pleading guilty, in August 2018, in a separate corruption case.)

On the subject of air quality, the companies noted that they had always met standards set by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, and would continue to do so. Indeed, the plants were presented as the lesser of evils: If they were not approved, rock would still come into the site by rail, but then it would have to be trucked off elsewhere, meaning some 380 tractor-trailers lined up and moving in and out of the site every day, said Dallas Cothrum, a lobbyist representing the two corporations. "With regard to emissions," he warned, "the emissions from the truck trips are more than from the batch plant."

In an echo of the patronizing tone that was typical of the city’s historic treatment of Joppa, Cothrum told the council the batch plants were in the community’s (and the city’s) own best interests, regardless of their environmental impact. "This plant is for the southern sector," he said. "Unless we want to surrender the economic prosperity that we’ve worked so hard for, you have to have cranes and you have to have batch plants."

Those arguments neglected several key factors, the most important being that there was no reliable data on air quality in Joppa, or what the batch plants would do to it. Although the individual plants operated by the companies may have passed TCEQ review, there was no record of their cumulative effect on the neighborhood. Indeed, TCEQ only has one monitor in Dallas that measures carcinogenic pm2.5 (particulate matter under 2.5 microns), and it is located north of Stemmons Freeway, far from Joppa.

"We do not even have a monitor around our community," Derrough told the City Council in March 2018. "It is 9 miles away from the Joppa community. How would the company even know what we are breathing? If we keep allowing these companies to come into our community, we’ll have to wear a mask to go outside."

Jim Schermbeck of Downwinders at Risk was more blunt. "These fights never take place in Preston Hollow," he told the City Council. "You don’t need any monitoring equipment other than a moral compass."

The controversy was public enough for a divided council to reject the batch plant applications, but the problem of industrial pollution has not disappeared. This past September, Austin Industries’ request before the TCEQ to renew its permit to operate its batch plant in Joppa was challenged by the Joppa Freedman’s Town Association, with the assistance of Legal Aid of NorthWest Texas and Downwinders at Risk. Despite that effort, the permit was approved. "It went as expected," said Mark Oualline, the Legal Aid attorney who represented the Joppa association. "It came up on the agenda and it took three seconds."

It was just the latest example of how the Texas bureaucracy treats the people of Joppa. Often the population is unaware of activities that will have a direct impact on its wellness, because industry is only required to notify the population within 200 feet of its property of many proposed uses. That means only a handful of residences are advised of pending changes that can have farreaching consequences.

Meanwhile, Austin Industries is still offering community groups, including the JFTA, the same deal it offered Caraway’s allies back in 2008: 7 cents for every ton of concrete batched. To put that figure in context, the going rate for a ton of concrete is roughly $62.

"When people say that no amount of money is worth our health, they’re correct," said Galimore, who was in favor of the batch plants, provided the two companies agreed to a community benefits agreement with Joppa nonprofits. "But the plants are still there; the plants are still there, and we’re still where we were when we first started."

A spring 2020 study of Dallas air pollution by Paul Quinn College, "Poisoned by ZIP Code," revealed the extent of the problem with air quality in Joppa. According to the study, Joppa’s ZIP code of 75216 was among the most polluted in the city, and the worst for harmful sulfur oxide compounds, which can cause asthma and other respiratory problems. Joppa itself was exposed to 317 tons of pollution per year, or nearly a half ton per resident. The study noted the lack of any barrier between polluting areas zoned for industry and residential Joppa.

A new system of networked monitors operated by the nonprofit SharedAirDFW, may finally provide accurate data on air quality in Joppa. But that initiative, spearheaded by Downwinders at Risk and the University of Texas at Dallas, began collecting data only this September.

It is a different, and in some ways opposite, threat that most concerns Joppa residents now, the same issue that confronts so many other minority communities across the country: gentrification.

The Trinity River Corridor Project has only made land in Joppa more valuable. The neighborhood will soon be linked to downtown, and the rest of the city, by bike trail. That project has also brought an equestrian center, the championship Trinity Forest Golf Club and the Trinity River Audubon Center into the area around Joppa.

But these amenities don’t speak to Joppa’s residents.

"None of this is for the community," Edgar Green said. "We don’t bike, we don’t hike. That golf course that came down. We can’t even afford to be a member. It’s not for us."

Slideshow: Joppa's Community

"I’ve watched those kids grow up these last few years," said Treewana Davis of Yamilet Gonzalez, 2, Isaac Flores, 6, and Janessa Gonzalez, 4, during a Juneteenth celebration at Joppa Park. "So to be able to talk with them and have them remember me is special for me." "I’ve watched those kids grow up these last few years," said Treewana Davis of Yamilet Gonzalez, 2, Isaac Flores, 6, and Janessa Gonzalez, 4, during a Juneteenth celebration at Joppa Park.

A drive-through Easter-themed giveaway drew smiles from Jose Lara, 5, and Heidi Lara, 9, during the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. Habitat for Humanity donated dozens of Donettes and South Central Civic League President Shalondria Galimore combined them with materials she had planned to use for a community Easter gathering. A drive-through Easter-themed giveaway drew smiles from Jose Lara, 5, and Heidi Lara, 9, during the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Snacks and a newsletter were shared at a drive-through giveaway on April 6.

Friends Kimberly Jones, 16, (from left) Kennadie Hall, 13, and Miracle Pride, 14, posed for a portrait on their all-terrain vehicle on March 1. Hall’s father, Lekeith Hall, owns the only convenience store located in Joppa (background). Friends Kimberly Jones, 16, (from left) Kennadie Hall, 13, and Miracle Pride, 14, posed for a portrait on their all-terrain vehicle on March 1.

In early March, Adrianna Smith of Pleasant Grove and her 19-month-old child, LaRey, visited Joppa Park with friends.

The family of brothers Jose Lara, 5, and Elias Lara, 7, moved into their home, acquired through Habitat for Humanity, in 2016. Their mother, Gabriela Medina, said her children are proud to tell their classmates about Joppa’s history. The family of brothers Jose Lara, 5, and Elias Lara, 7, moved into their home, acquired through Habitat for Humanity, in 2016.

James "Peter Rabbit" Freeman (left) sometimes relies on a bike to travel across the Linfield Road bridge, which lacks pedestrian access or bike lanes. Arnettia DeSquare (center) moved to Joppa 16 years ago when she received a home through Habitat for Humanity. Angela Collins (right), whose grandmother Ruthie is one of the neighborhood's oldest living matriarchs, attended a Juneteenth celebration in Joppa.

In late February, De'onta Oliver (left), 9, prayed with Cash Willis during a children's activity night hosted at the New Zion Missionary Baptist Church. The boys' families moved to Joppa more than 10 years ago. In late February, De'onta Oliver (left), 9, prayed with Cash Willis during a children's activity night hosted at the New Zion Missionary Baptist Church.

"Give me a sidewalk so I can walk our neighborhood," Derrough said. "I don’t need trails. It’s nice that they want to give us the same things as North Dallas, but that’s not our need."

Dallas, however, has never been too concerned with the needs of Joppa or its residents, even as their numbers increase. And Habitat’s recent announcement that it plans to build 26 new houses in the neighborhood has only fueled gentrification concerns.

Many longtime residents have been approached by real estate agents looking to buy homes at previously unheard-of prices. A typical listing for a house in Joppa, even after the coronavirus-induced economic slide, is now in the range of $150,000-$200,000. Just five years ago, those same houses sold for $50,000 or less.

Delveeta Thompson has an inch-thick stack of brochures from agents interested in listing the house that her grandparents acquired when they first came to Joppa decades ago.

"My grandmother ever since 1940 told people this land was valuable," Delveeta Thompson said. "Do not allow your descendants to sell the property. She made it explicitly clear." Thompson has received a stack of mailers from agencies interested in purchasing the family property. "My grandmother ever since 1940 told people this land was valuable," Delveeta Thompson said.

A typical house listing in Joppa, even after the economic slide caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, has moved into the $150,000-$200,000 range. Just five years ago, those same houses sold for $50,000 or less.

"I’ve been getting phone calls and text messages from people wanting to buy my property," she said, but she isn’t tempted, and she’s warned her children not to be either. "My grandmother ever since 1940 told people this land was valuable. Do not allow your descendants to sell the property. She made it explicitly clear."

That the land in Joppa is becoming more and more valuable is undeniable. The question Dallas must face — and the question America must face as it looks at countless other historically Black communities — is what value it places on the people who call that land home.

The answer, as it stands, is painfully clear: Not nearly enough.