By Karen Juanita Carrillo

New York City has its African Burial Ground (ABG) and Dallas, Texas has its Freedman’s Memorial Cemetery.

The memoralization of the Freedman’s Cemetery actually got its start around the same time as the establishment of the ABG.  What is today the hip, newly developed neighborhood of

Uptown Dallas, was at the turn of the century known as Freedman’s Town, a settlement established by Blacks just outside of Dallas proper. 

Because Dallas still enforced harsh vagrancy laws – particularly on people of African descent who authorities still wanted to make work for free – African Americans needed a safe place to live that still gave them access to local employment and services. 

Freedman’s Town served this purpose:  it became a place where Blacks could establish homes, build churches, and feel safe.  The area became part of Dallas in 1874, during the years after Reconstruction. At that time, it came to be known as North Dallas Freedman’s Town, a well-populated area where residents were known to have even established their own cemetery at the edge of the neighborhood.

A victim of gentrification – like so many traditionally Black neighborhoods throughout the Americas – in the 1990s, a large swath of North Dallas’ Freedman’s Town (which, by this time, people were calling “North Dallas” or “State-Thomas”) was taken for the building of the Central Expressway (U.S. Highway 75).  But as construction of the Expressway began, workers dug up remains from what had been a cemetery established by African Americans. 

The Freedman’s Cemetery is known to hold the remains of more than 7,000 African Americans and the construction of the Central Expressway unearthed numerous burial artifacts.  Because of community activism, those artifacts were collected and today are part of the permanent collection of Dallas’ Historic Fair Park African American Museum http://www.aamdallas.org/.  

Those visiting Dallas, Texas can also visit what remains of the Freedman’s Memorial Cemetery at the intersection of Lemmon Avenue and North Central Expressway.  It is a historic landmark that is a monument to Dallas’ early African American citizens.  Graced by striking bronze statues created by the artist David S. Newton, the Freedman’s Cemetery is maintained by the Freedman's Cemetery Memorial Foundation http://freedmansfoundation.org/.