Anyika McMillan-Herod grew up in Elm Thicket, a former freedman’s town wedged between Love Field and the Park Cities. It has become emblematic of gentrification and the pushing out of longtime residents.
Her new play is a love story set in the neighborhood where her family still owns the duplex she was raised in during the late ’70s and ’80s. Produced by Soul Rep Theatre Company, which McMillan-Herod co-founded, Elm Thicket opens the 2024 season of the AT&T Performing Arts Center’s Elevator Project series.
“It was a predominantly working-class African-American community,” she says of the area formally known as Elm Thicket-Northpark, which is now mainly a mix of Black, white and Hispanic residents living amid gentrification and skyrocketing property values. “I thought we were such an anomaly, bordered by one of the wealthiest areas in Dallas. It’s amazing what’s happening now didn’t happen sooner.”
The racial makeup of the neighborhood, bordered by Lovers Lane, Mockingbird Lane, Lemmon Avenue and Inwood Road, began to change more than 20 years ago.
In 2000, the population was still more than 60% Black, but by 2014 that had dropped to about 32%, according to data compiled by the city of Dallas. During that period, the number of white residents grew from about 11% to almost 20% percent while the Hispanic population rose from more than 25% to 42.5%.
Estimates for 2021 show further erosion in the Black population, a dramatic decrease in Hispanics and almost a doubling of the number of white residents since 2014.
Modern homes upward of 4,000 square feet and selling for $1 million to $2 million now overshadow modest bungalows that have stood for decades.
As if that backdrop wasn’t enough, Elm Thicket takes place in 2020: “the year of the pandemic, the year of social unrest, the year when this huge zoning fight that the legacy neighbors recently won really kicked off,” McMillan-Herod says. “That was very intentional.”
She wraps these social and political issues into what she calls a “serio-comedy” about Ronald and Mira, the play’s only characters. Now in their mid 50s, they grew up in the neighborhood. Ronald, played by Soul Rep company member Keith Price, has returned after 30 years in Denver. Mira, portrayed by McMillan-Herod, has remained in Elm Thicket.
“Their families were close,” McMillan-Herod explains. “Her brother was his best friend, he was her first kiss, they had this wonderful childhood together. There’s history there. It’s them trying to reconnect, revisit their past, but also face the decisions that many in the community are facing now. He’s thinking of selling the family home, which is a big issue for Mira.”
That central tension mirrors the reality of Elm Thicket residents dealing with the rising taxes that go along with gentrification. McMillan-Herod recalls her family receiving inquiries about selling their duplex while she was in college.
“It was wonderful to grow up there,” she says. “But in the late 1990s what started to happen, like what happened in Uptown, which was another freedman’s community, there began to be interest. It’s prime real estate in great locations. Who wants to live near downtown? Now everybody does.”
Following a seven-year battle over zoning, legacy residents won limits on the size and style of new homes in 2022. But it was not the first fight and is unlikely to be the last.
Black settlers of Elm Thicket in the ’30s and ’40s had been displaced from the State-Thomas neighborhood by Central Expressway. Then the city’s first Black golf course and 300 homes were seized in the 1950s to make way for the expansion of Love Field. Many residents were forced to move again.
Maintaining a foothold, McMillan-Herod’s family rents its duplex to former neighbors. She talks about returning herself. Since getting married, she’s owned homes in Oak Cliff, DeSoto and now Plano.
“Every time we’ve moved, I’ve always gone back to Elm Thicket,” she says. “But we were not able to afford my old neighborhood. And that is very telling. I just never thought I’d be living on the periphery of Dallas. ‘I can’t stand these commutes’ — that’s a line in the play. It’s all about proximity.”
It’s a source of tension between Ronald and Mira, according to McMillan-Herod, “this issue of having roots and the importance of preserving our neighborhoods and not being selfish in our decision-making but thinking long-term about what is best for our community. This is the legacy of our families.”
Details
Jan. 11-20 at Wyly Studio Theatre, 2400 Flora St. $29.50. attpac.org. soulrep.org.
