Articles

The Will to Exist

The Bombing Campaign Dallas Forgot

In the early 1950s, a systematic campaign of racial terror swept through South Dallas. Black families who dared to buy homes in previously white neighborhoods found dynamite on their porches, bombs in their yards, their houses destroyed while they slept. At least eighteen bombs exploded. The police did nothing — or worse. Grand juries were convened and mysteriously disbanded. No one was ever convicted. Dallas erased the whole thing from its official history.

The Highway Over the Graves

For a century, Dallas built over its dead. Freedman's Cemetery was established in 1869 for formerly enslaved people — the only place in the city where Black residents could bury their dead. By 1900, over 5,000 people lay there. Then the city forgot. Roads were built. The cemetery disappeared from maps. In 1990, construction crews discovered they'd been driving over graves for generations. What they found forced Dallas to confront a history it had literally buried.

The Coney Island Dallas Forgot

In the early 1900s, Lake Cliff Park was the entertainment capital of Dallas. Roller coasters looped over a spring-fed lake. A massive natatorium drew thousands of swimmers. Vaudeville shows packed the pavilion. Then came the 1908 flood that wiped out the bridges and trolley lines. Without easy access from Dallas, the park couldn't survive. It closed in 1913, and Dallas erased it from memory. Today, a quiet city park sits where the roller coasters once ran. Almost nothing marks what was lost.

The Day Dallas Invented the Future

Every smartphone, every computer, every digital device traces back to a lab in Dallas. In 1958, Jack Kilby invented the integrated circuit at Texas Instruments. He won the Nobel Prize for it. You're using his invention right now.