By Gwenda Jackson
There are only a few stories told through the eyes of Black Dallas on the events that took place on November 22, 1963. A photograph of the 1963 St. John Missionary Baptist Church, Kindergarten graduating class is a reminder for five students from the North Dallas community of Hamilton Park.
In 1963, St. John Missionary Baptist Church, one of Dallas most prominent black churches was located not far from Downtown Dallas on Allen Street near the area known today as Freemans Park. In the 1960’s St. John and Munger Avenue Baptist Church were the two main pre-schools where many of the children from Hamilton Park attended. In 1963, North Dallas was pretty much a rural area that consisted of farmland. Central Expressway/75 was a four-lane highway, two lanes north bound and two lanes south. Long before the construction of North Park Mall, the nearest business district before entering downtown Dallas, was near the SMU University campus.
At the time, St. John Baptist Church was a two or three-story building and the classrooms were located on the 2nd and 3rd floor. I remembered sometime during the early morning or afternoon, several of the teachers came into our classroom and we were asked to put away our storybooks and writing tablets. I remember traveling down the stairs where we normally would go at the end of the day to catch the school bus back to Hamilton Park. It was not until I was much older when I realized why we were all asked to go downstairs so early in the day.
I remember there was a television located on the 1st floor or in the basement area and my teacher and the other grown-ups were crying as they watched the events unfold on television. As children we were uncomfortable, because we did not understand why we were not allowed to continue our normal activities and were asked to remain still and quiet for the rest of the day.
When I think back how upset my teachers were during the chaos taking place several blocks away and how they remembered their responsibility to make sure we all got back on the school bus to make it back home to Hamilton Park, I knew how blessed we were to have attended St. John’s Kindergarten in 1963. Four of the Hamilton Park children pictured in the photo grew up and finished high school together, many years later.
As a teenager, I was reminded of how history could appear out of nowhere and bring up memories from the past. Through another one of my classmates of Hamilton Park, I meet his cousin Amy, age 90 at the time. Amy lived in South Dallas. She was a proud woman and talked about her life and growing up raising her children in Dallas.
One day we were all looking through her photo album and there was an 8 1/2 x 11 black and white photo of President and Mrs. Kennedy seated in the black convertible. The famous convertible car with the suicide doors as they were called, where both car door handles were staring me straight in the face, a perfect clear photo. Amy and her husband went downtown that day and her husband snapped the picture. I knew it was an original photo the minute I laid eyes on it.
On the other page of the photo album was another 8 1/2 x 11 photo of a wedding party. The bride and groom was a white couple. To the left of the bride were two rows of black women each wearing a black dress with a white apron attached. Next to the groom, on his right, were another two rows of black women wearing the same identical dresses and white aprons? The black women were all carrying silver trays and it appeared to be champagne glasses on the trays.
I asked Cousin Amy, “Who is the white couple in the photograph”?
First, she pointed to one of the black women left of the bride and said “That’s me in the picture.”
Then she pointed to the bride and groom and said, “That is Sanger and the other is Harris.”
It suddenly dawned on me, she was a servant in the wedding of Sanger and Harris; the once famous Dallas department store.
Now as I look at this kindergarten photo today, I am also reminded that 50 years ago at another church 16th Street Baptist Church, four little black girls never made it back home.
If you are wondering about the four classmates pictured in the photo from Hamilton Park, Cheryl passed away a few years ago; Steve and Abe were college roommates at Texas Tech University where Abe also became the first Black to graduate from the College of Chemistry at Texas Tech University. Kevin and I became in-laws because his sister is married to my brother.
For information regarding this article, please contact; Gwen Jackson at gwenda7710@yahoo.com
