Rev. Peter Johnson
I arrived in Dallas in 1969 to show a documentary on the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life. Leaders in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) had identified 800 cities worldwide to screen the film. To my dismay, 799 cities said yes. Dallas was the only no. I didn’t realize at the time that my challenge and struggle to show the film in Dallas was only a precursor to a deeper, more ingrained fight I would be involved in regarding Black homeowners in Fair Park.
Although I was ordered to return to Atlanta immediately after completing my job in Dallas on the documentary, I received a knock on my hotel door one night around midnight. I was prepared to fight! My life had been threatened too many times to count since I was in Dallas, and my thoughts were that this may be the end.
To my surprise, it was representatives from a homeowners association near Fair Park. They wanted my help. They told me their small shotgun homes, which they had worked hard to purchase, had been condemned by the city to make way for an expansion of Fair Park. They wanted a fair price for the homes and believed the city’s offers were too low. They told me the city was offering Black homeowners around 65 cents per square foot, in some cases up to $1. But a white-owned rental house of the same size and age would be appraised for $4 per square foot. The owner’s skin color made the difference in the price.
I was told they were shunned at City Council meetings, had asked to meet with the mayor and were turned away.
I listened, I shed tears, and then I got mad. I wanted an excuse to put my foot up the ass of the Dallas power structure, and here it was!
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That night, I was also told about the numerous death threats made against some of the homeowners, and how cars would speed up and down their streets displaying Molotov cocktails or throwing bricks at their homes. Just imagine: retirees, hardworking parents with children at home, being threatened with violence for seeking fairness. For these homeowners, every night was a question of safety, but they remained resolute. They organized. And they refused to be bullied back into silence.
I called my supervisor, Andrew Young of the SCLC, and its president, Ralph Abernathy. I told them I was staying in Dallas to help with this fight.
Andy was angry. He reminded me that if a U.S. president could be killed in Dallas, then I could be killed in the blink of an eye. Abernathy warned me about the Black pastors here and their lack of support for civil rights. But my mind was made up. The Fair Park homeowners were going to fight, and I was going to fight with them.
I explained to the members the best way to get wealthy people’s attention was to hit their pocketbooks. We had learned during the Civil Rights Movement that racists and bigots may not acknowledge Black or brown faces, but they saw green. So the goal was to interrupt the largest, most nationally known, revenue-producing spectacle in Dallas at the time: the Cotton Bowl and its parade.
The Cotton Bowl Parade was still segregated in 1970. Black children could watch from the curbs, but their schools and organizations were not allowed to march. It was another wall of exclusion that sent a pointed message to every Black child in Dallas: You’re not wanted at your own city’s party.
On New Year’s Eve, there were hundreds of people in the basement of Mount Olive Lutheran Church near Fair Park, which included homeowners, local activists and friends of mine from the movement. We planned to march from the basement of that church on New Year’s Day to the parade route and stand in its way. The city sent Black ministers who recommended we call off the protest and agree to a cooling-off period. Dallas police, warning of bomb threats, showed up in riot gear and demanded the protesters leave the church.
I told the police that they would have to drag us out of the church. We told the mayor, J. Erik Jonsson, he had until midnight to respond to us. I began sending some of the women and all the children home. The death threats were becoming more frequent, and we could hear people shouting outside the church, their intentions to bomb us or shoot us.
Around 11:30 p.m., Jonsson called to say he would meet with us that night in his office. I insisted that the mayor speak directly with the Fair Park homeowners, represented by community leaders J.B. Jackson, Jr. and Elsie Faye Heggins. Just before the meeting, I urged the group to get the mayor to give them some public sign of good faith.
I received a phone call early New Year’s morning from Andrew Young. He told me to leave Dallas immediately. He said he was told there was a group headed to the church to kill me. I was told to head to Shreveport and stay there until I received a phone call from him. Reluctantly, I left town, the outcome of the Fair Park standoff still hanging in the balance.
I will never forget turning on the television later that day to watch the Cotton Bowl Parade. I busted out laughing and shouting when I saw that leading the parade was a Cadillac convertible carrying the mayor. And sitting right next to him was J.B. Jackson.
In a news story that day, the mayor stated the homeowners had a point. He said the city might have approached the Fair Park housing issue the wrong way. He said he would do his best to be sure that what the homeowners received was equitable. I remember shouting over and over again in my room, “Thank you, Jesus! Thank you, Lord!”
Looking back at it now, over 50 years later, I admire the courage it took for the Fair Park homeowners to stand up in that time and place. It would take several more years for the city to settle with some of the homeowners on fair and equitable prices for their homes. But what also came out of those struggles were women and men whose leadership traits and voices were sharpened in a grassroots movement. Heggins and another activist, Albert Lipscomb, would both later become City Council members who could trace their development to that struggle.
The story of the Fair Park homeowners’ fight for equity provides insight into the power of collective action. These families were not famous. They were not wealthy. They did not have media machines or political machinery. They had one another and the belief that justice was theirs for the taking. And that was enough for them to make history.
Today, when I think about Fair Park, I think about something we owe to that legacy. We need to remind ourselves that progress is not guaranteed. We fight for it in the basements of churches, in our community meetings and on our family porches, with heads down, planning the next move as threats loom.
The desegregation of the Cotton Bowl Parade and the fight for equal housing in Fair Park represent the fact that change happens when ordinary people have had enough, when they join together and refuse to be turned away. That was what bravery looked like in the 1970s. And if we intend to finish the work these families so bravely began, it must look like that once again.