History of African Americans in Dallas–Fort Worth

[2] In 2007, Black Enterprise magazine ranked Dallas as a "Top 10 city for African-Americans".

[3] Freed slaves began to locate to the Dallas area when slavery was abolished.

[5] The Hamilton Park neighborhood was one of the first suburbs in Texas built for African Americans in 1953.

[9] The Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex gained approximately 259,000 new African-Americans between 2010 and 2020, or a nearly 27% increase, 10th of U.S. metropolitan statistical areas during that time span.

[13] In addition to the New Great Migration, since around 2010, many African Americans have been moving to the metroplex for its affordable cost of living and job opportunities.

[7] Historically, the black community was strongly concentrated in the inner-city areas of Dallas and Fort Worth but that has slowly changed since the 1980s.

The former Dallas Colored transitioned into Booker T. Washington High School, which opened in 1922.

[26] Around 2005 increasing numbers of African-American students attended schools in the Best Southwest area.

Wealthier African-American parents often moved to different school districts to get perceived better educations for their children.

One reason for the decline in the percentage of black students is the move of black people to suburbs; they did so due to a perception that public schools there have a higher quality than those in DISD, as well as general desires for higher quality housing and lower crime environments.

[35] Notable African-American cultural point of interest includes the African-American Museum of Dallas in Fair Park and the Dallas Black Dance Theatre and The Black Academy of Arts and Letters both in downtown.

[20] The South Dallas Cultural Center places a heavy emphasis on supporting and displaying blacks in the performing, literary, and visual arts.

In Fort Worth, The Lenora Roll Heritage Center Museum and National Multicultural Western Heritage Museum houses history highlighting African-American culture primarily in the North Texas region.

[36] In Irving, the Jackie Townsell Bear Creek Heritage Center is a museum that tells the story of Bear Creek of West Irving, one of the oldest established black communities in North Texas.