Hamilton Park Community

The school at Hamilton Park's center was its pride, then its loss. It served first grade through high school, and students called teachers Aunty and Uncle. Richardson ISD did not desegregate until the 1964 Civil Rights Act and federal guidelines forced it, and because Hamilton Park was the district's only Black school, children in one family were sent to different campuses. The high school closed in 1969 and the junior high a year later. In 1975 it reopened as Pacesetter, required to enroll equal numbers of Black and white students. Neighbor Ladell Jernigan says Black teachers were moved out.

What the plaque says

Hamilton Park Community Located ten miles north of downtown Dallas, the African American community of Hamilton Park began as the White Rock Farming Settlement. In the 1940s and 1950s, racial violence in the South Dallas community of Queen City and the discriminatory displacement of African American residents for the new Love Field Municipal Airport resulted in the need for many of these families to move outside of the downtown area. In response, Jerome Crossman, a local oilman, compelled the Dallas Citizens' Interracial Association (DCIA) to locate land in North Dallas for the project and consulted philanthropist Karl S.J. Hoblitzelle for funding. On February 13, 1953, the Hoblitzelle Foundation lent DCIA funds to purchase acreage to address the housing shortage of African Americans. Named for Dr. Richard Theodore Hamilton, an influential voice in the African American Equality movement in Dallas, the Hamilton Park Community was the first African American suburban development in Dallas. Intentionally planned in two phases with the segregated twelve-grade school at the center and each street named for prominent African American individuals and institutions, the community officially opened in 1954. By 1958, many homes built near the school were complete and middle-class families began to move in with the community complete by 1961 with 741 single-family homes. In addition to the school, the community included three churches, a shopping center, and park, complete with a swimming pool, tennis court, basketball court, pavilion and playground. Since the 1950s, the Hamilton Park Civic League has served the community residents, connecting them with City of Dallas resources, encouraging voter registration and turnout, and planning community events. This sense of community and pride among residents helps preserve the Heritage and Legacy of the original homeowners. (2016)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Dallas Museum of Art — 9.3 mi
  A city art museum that began as the Dallas Art Association in 1903, grew up in Fair Park, and has stood in the Arts District since 1984 under a forty-foot barrel vault.
• Fair Park — 9.4 mi
  The State Fair of Texas grounds since 1886, where the 1936 Texas Centennial Exposition left one of the country's greatest concentrations of Art Deco exposition buildings.
• African American Museum, Dallas — 9.5 mi
  Founded in 1974 at Bishop College, a free Fair Park museum holding the Sepia photograph archive, African art and A. Maceo Smith's papers, and the story of the Hall of Negro Life.
• The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza — 9.9 mi
  A plow-company warehouse of 1903, identified by the Warren Commission as the building Oswald fired from, now a museum on its sixth and seventh floors above Dealey Plaza.

More markers nearby

• Anderson Bonner — 1.1 mi
• Demonstration of the First Working Integrated Circuit — 1.1 mi
• Wheeler School — 2.5 mi
• Mount Pisgah Missionary Baptist Church — 2.9 mi