Saturday, 30 May, Chapter Three, “Two Formative Years Teaching at Pinkston High” >>>>> >A Teacher’s Journey from Southern Methodist University to North Minneapolis: Foundations for Overhaul of the Minneapolis Public Schools< >>>>> A Memoir >>>>> Gary Marvin Davison

Dallas is a city with a virulently racist past;  it was a Ku Klan haven in the 1920s and through the 1970s maintained a city government dominated conventionally by a white male business establishment that had no interest in admitting women or people of nonwhite skin hue to the leadership club.  The city features a quirky residential scheme that historically directed African Americans and Hispanics to South, West, and Deep East Dallas;  and to areas in all directions radiating three miles from downtown.  Adjoining Deep East Dallas is the toney Lakewood area that also sends students to Woodrow Wilson High School;  but many Lakewood parents opt to send their children to private schools such as Hockaday (girls) and St. Mark’s (boys).   

 

Spanning a large area north and east from the junction of Abrams Road and Mockingbird Lane are mostly solid middle class homes.  The Lake Highland area north of Northwest Highway is one of those curiosities that one can also find in affluent Far North Dallas, whereby the residential area falls within the Dallas city limits but the schools are part of the Richardson public schools.  Richardson is a near suburb;  a bit farther northward, some fifteen miles from Dallas city center, is Plano, which features homes of outrageous square footage, sought-after schools, and high teen suicide rates.

 

Enveloping Southern Methodist University are the Park Cities, with University Park to the immediate north and west;  and Highland Park to the south and southwest.  These areas are oddities from a racist and elitist past;  they function much like suburbs but are residential islands surrounded by Dallas, with their own city government, nevertheless drawing upon Dallas police and fire services as necessary in times of unusual gravity.  Both areas send students to Highland Park High School, consistently rated near the top in public school ratings by the likes of U. S. News and World Report.

 

Preston Road runs north-south from Far North Dallas through Highland Park to just beyond Lemmon Avenue, beyond which about three miles is a bridge at the end of which Preston turns into Hampton Road and one enters another economic and racial universe:

 

West Dallas.