Why West Dallas?

Biblically, the transformation of a city is always tied back to how the city leaders respond to social or spiritual ills. The Old Testament Prophet Nehemiah related the demise of Jerusalem to how the poor were treated, and Jesus Christ judged our current spiritual state on how we treated children and the poor. Throughout the world cities are seeing dramatic results in some of the most crime ridden and impoverished areas, after leaders dealt justly with past social, political, cultural, and economic sins.

History

Historically, West Dallas is the area of our city where injustice has occurred the most. It is infamous as the area where Bonny and Clyde lived during the 1930’s. Outlaws Clyde Barrow, Bonnie Parker, and Raymond and Floyd Hamilton often sought refuge in West Dallas frequenting the bars along Singleton Avenue. Deadly confrontations between lawmen and criminals in West Dallas continued well into the 1960s. West Dallas was annexed by the city of Dallas in 1952 with the promise of federal funds for public housing. Two years later, the Lake West developments were built, then considered state-of-the-art housing for low-income families, making it the largest expanse in the country to be set aside exclusively for public housing. More than 3,500 new units removed the eyesore of old slums, but further concentrated people and locked them into a cycle of poverty in the heart of West Dallas. Infamously this type of development became known as “the projects”. In April 1996, as a result of a lawsuit brought in 1985 and being declared by the EPA as a Superfund cleanup site, a federal judge ordered the projects demolished. From 1936 to 1984, a lead smelter operated in West Dallas (near Westmorland and Singleton), recovering lead from as many as 10,000 car batteries a day. A 300-foot smokestack pumped tons of leaded air pollution over West Dallas neighborhoods 24 hours a day for decades and lead casing chips were used for land fill, all in violation of land use ordinances. In 1983 before the smelter closed, some 90 percent of those tested in West Dallas had levels of lead in their blood considered dangerously high. “Young children living and playing in the area at the time, especially those in the housing project, were subjected continuously to “extreme’ environmental-lead exposures — exposures 10 to 20 times more severe than those of the early 1980s, when the lead-contamination health risks first were reported by The Dallas Morning News.” (DMN 12/7/86).

By 1995, 167 contaminated buildings and 24,000 cubic yards of contaminated soil were removed from industrial, home and school sites. The smelter was demolished in 2001. In 2003, blood lead levels in West Dallas are below the national average. Again from the Dallas Morning News (1992): “Good fences may make good neighbors, but 30-foot-tall levees do not. The earthen levee that hems in the scraggly Trinity River forms a “Berlin wall” that cuts West Dallas off from the rest of Dallas, leaving it out of sight and out of mind” (A survey conducted by The Dallas Morning News in July only 22 percent of respondents said they had gone to West Dallas for business, church or other activities).” Since the demise of the projects and the lead cleanup, there has been substantial infrastructure progress in West Dallas. Crime control, roads, community centers, discipline in the 8 public schools, health care, housing, public school funding, etc. are near standards for the Metroplex at large. However, West Dallas is still ranked as the 11th poorest area in the nation. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median household income in the area is less than $8500 annually with 74% living below the poverty level. The population in West Dallas is 96% minority with many of its children living in an environment of illiteracy, drugs, crime, teen pregnancy, and violence. Perhaps the most distinctive factor is that 82% of students are from single-parent homes.

Today this 11.5 square mile area (ZIP 75212), is inhabited by 22,000 people (approximate to the Park Cities population). Sixty-six percent (66%) of the West Dallas population over the age of 25 have less than a high school education (vs. 2% in Park Cities) and 98% have less than a college degree (vs. 27% in Park Cities). This environment cycles educational poverty; only 18% of the student body in the local high school passed all the Texas assessment tests (TAKS). The average SAT score at the only West Dallas high school is 758, considerably less than the state averages, i.e. Highland Park High School’s SAT average is 1198. The high school drop out rate is at least 50% and the Dallas Morning News reports estimates of 80%. The chart below shows that this dropout begins shortly after ninth grade, emphasizing the importance of reaching these children during their elementary school years: Transformation West Dallas will be a unique block-by-block strategy of Urban Renewal for West Dallas. Working with partner churches throughout our city, teams will be mobilized to reach target houses in the area in order to produce spiritual, social and economic transformation.