The Dallas Morning News hosted several events in the Red Bird neighborhood in March as journalists worked from a pop-up newsroom.
It was part of The News’ ongoing effort to build trust with communities across North Texas through engagement and dialogue.
The turnout was strong, with committed residents, nonprofit groups and business leaders offering thoughtful ideas on how to enhance and safeguard this vital southern corridor.
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The first person I met was Sandra Alridge, president of the Singing Hills Neighborhood Association. She distributes bulletins to about 800 people in the neighborhood on topics ranging from highways and crime watch groups to sales at local stores.
Alridge has spearheaded projects like the southern Dallas community’s fight over Shingle Mountain and advocated for the demolition and excavation of the former Lane Plating Works site.
She talked about her opposition to the proliferation of low-income housing units that developers are incentivized to offer in the community, “As they always say, we need affordable housing. Well, it’s widely concentrated over here,” she said.
Michael Hogue
“We finally won that,” she said of the vacant hospital property. “Now the developer is going to build townhomes there… But I’m getting old, so someone else needs to step up and start getting in everyone’s business,” Alridge said, with an infectious laugh.
Terrence Maiden (left) grew up in Oak Cliff and is the CEO of Russell Glen, a real estate development and investment company in the area. Bill Chinn (right) is the CEO of The DEC Network, a nonprofit organization that helped develop a 20,000-square-foot innovation center at the Shops at RedBird location, which acts as a start-up for small businesses, aiming to revitalize the neighborhood.
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“When you support this community, they will support you right back,” Chinn said.
Anga Sanders is the founder of FEED Oak Cliff, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending “food apartheid” and bringing fresh, healthy and affordable food to underserved areas in southern Dallas.
In 2014, Sanders was grocery shopping in Uptown Dallas when she had a revelation. Standing in front of a salad bar filled with fresh greens and crisp vegetables, she noticed something striking — not many stores like it existed south of I-30.
Michael Hogue
The Oak Cliff area contains several food deserts. The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines these as “low-access communities,” where at least a third of residents live more than a mile from a supermarket. Sanders spoke about a recent disappointment after Tom Thumb canceled its plans to expand to the Shops at RedBird.
“It’s another slap in the face,” Sanders said. “Am I disappointed? Absolutely. Am I surprised? Absolutely not.”
A spokesperson for Albertsons Companies Inc., Tom Thumb’s parent company, said the decision was made “after discussions with the City of Dallas and a thorough economic evaluation.”
Oak Cliff resident Flor Blanco is a single mother of six children and a cancer survivor. Through an interpreter, she talked about her childhood in El Salvador, where she never had the opportunity to eat at a restaurant.
Michael Hogue
She also grows vegetables, which helps her family access healthy food. “That has helped me provide organic food to feed my six children on my own and beat cancer,” Blanco said.
Dr. Michael Sorrell, president of Paul Quinn College, has led the historical Black college in southeast Oak Cliff for nearly 19 years. He talked about how his university has hosted several athletic tournaments — and how the feedback he’s received from people who worry about visiting southern Dallas confounds the people who live there.
Michael Hogue
The accomplishments during Sorrell’s tenure have been extensive, including the demolition of dilapidated buildings, the construction of the first new building on campus in 40 years, the conversion of a football field into a farmers market, the arrival of both a charter school and a Dallas ISD school on campus and the creation of numerous paid internship opportunities for students. Graduation rates have increased by more than 30% during his tenure, according to the college.
Ramiro Luna Hinojosa, co-founder of Somos Tejas, is working to engage and inform voters in the Latino community every step of the election; from providing education, registering voters and turning them out to vote. They’ve done door-to-door canvassing at over 120,000 homes, along with text messaging and social media.
“When you address the nature of voter turnout, the knee-jerk reaction is voter apathy,” he said. “I used to run campaigns for a living, and the Latino vote is often an afterthought because the turnout wasn’t as high as other communities.”
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“Before Texas was a state, it was Tejas. It’s a name that connotes ally and friendship,” Hinojosa said. “We’re intricately a part of this state and we’re allies. Don’t criminalize us. Don’t see us as a nefarious force. We are the opposite of that.”
A friendly Dallas Police Department officer spent some quality time at the pop-up newsroom. Over the past 20-plus years, he has served in neighborhoods across Dallas, including the last seven years in the Red Bird area. I asked if he had any stories to share from his time in the community.
Michael Hogue
Twenty minutes later, the officer introduced Jeanette Berry, founder and president of Operation Community Care, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing life necessities to youth, families and the homeless or displaced.
She discussed some examples of working hand-in-hand with the DPD and how they live up to the motto “to protect and serve.”
“A few months ago, we got a call about a mom who didn’t have a car seat — and that’s a ticket,” she said. “They [DPD] called to say, ‘We have a mom that needs a car seat, is there anything you can do?’ So we made sure that mom got a car seat.”
Michael Hogue
“They know us, we know them and we help each other as a community,” Berry said of the DPD.
Milette Siler (left) and Dr. Jaclyn Albin (right) spoke about a unique model of culinary medicine cooking classes that UT Southwestern Medical Center at RedBird is sponsoring for neighborhood residents.
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Following the “food as medicine” philosophy, the program aims at making delicious, nutritious food accessible to everyone, preventing and treating chronic disease, and improving people’s relationship with food.
“We’re not just doing a cooking class. We’re connecting it to health care so it’s a part of someone’s health insurance,” said Dr. Albin.
Arrie Jackson took part in the UTSW culinary medicine program.
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Concord Church is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and the Rev. Bryan Carter has served as pastor for the past 22 years. The congregation began in 1976 with around 250 members and has grown to roughly 9,000 today.
“It’s a privilege for us to be one of the many churches that are part of the fabric of the Red Bird community,” Carter said. “The last three years have been exciting for us because we’ve welcomed around 5,000 new members to our church, and many of them are around the median age of 35.”
Michael Hogue
The church partners with multiple organizations focused on civic engagement, food pantries, housing assistance, free counseling sessions, tax preparation assistance, career pathways, scholarship programs, economic empowerment, health screenings, aging services and other support to the community.
“Last month, we hosted 80 Black-owned businesses and helped them raise around $70,000 for their businesses,” Carter said. “We give out about $100,000 each year in scholarships to individuals. … Last fall, we were able to give $400,000 to members of our congregation who were furloughed during the government shutdown.”
Laura Freeland spearheaded an initiative to provide transportation to underserved communities in southern Dallas. “I wish people would write more about this,” she said of the on-demand, curb-to-curb ride service that began in 2021.
“No car? No problem!” is the slogan of the service, which partners with Dallas Area Rapid Transit, STAR Transit, the North Central Texas Council of Governments, the Texas Department of Transportation and the GoLink Inland Port Connect.
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“We have small buses that pick people up at their door,” she said. “If a bus is not available, we’ll call an Uber for them, all for the cost of a DART fare.”
Near the pop-up newsroom is Breakfast Brothers, a restaurant that delivered delicious food to our staff and visitors. It began in 2017 as a small food trailer parked behind a nightclub in Dallas. Now, there are three Breakfast Brothers locations, two in Arlington and one in the Red Bird neighborhood.
I sat down with restaurant co-founder Rickey Booker at the jam-packed Red Bird location. “We took some bumps and bruises in the beginning, and we never thought that it would turn into what it has turned into,” he said.
Michael Hogue
“The energy around here is great. You don’t feel unsafe, people are not breaking into things around here,” Booker said. “This is a community that people love.”