“Challenge your assumptions about southern Dallas.”
Those were the words we selected — seven years ago this month — to headline our very first editorial under the “Bridging Dallas’ North-South Gap” project label.
We’ve written hundreds of “Bridging the Gap” editorials since that first one published, Oct. 28, 2007, many of them aimed at busting myths about the southern half of Dallas.
And alongside our own effort have been those of many other strong voices.
Just a week ago, Dallas Morning News staffer Dave Flick wrote about Baranda Fermin and Lincoln Stephens, who decided to marry on the front lawn of their Park Row home to demonstrate their faith in South Dallas’ future.
Asked by her students at the University of North Texas’ Dallas campus why she’d pick a neighborhood near Fair Park when she could live anywhere, Fermin pushed back with conviction: “There’s life here, and there’s good life here.”
Fermin and Stephens, who runs a media-marketing nonprofit, aren’t just talking the talk. They recently stepped up to lead the neighborhood association in their South Boulevard/Park Row Historic District.
Dallas lawyer Chequan Lewis is another of those voices trying to obliterate inaccurate perceptions about southern Dallas. He recently wrote a Viewpoints column about Wynnewood Hills, where he and wife Whitney, also an attorney, bought their first home. He notes that strong neighborhoods like theirs provide the heartbeat necessary for a successful city.
Whitney Lewis describes their Oak Cliff neighborhood as one that “values both its history and its promise, eager to maintain its character and excited to welcome new neighbors and usher in a new era in southern Dallas.”
One of the questions Chequan Lewis most often gets when he introduces folks to Wynnewood Hills is this one: “So how many neighborhoods are there in southern Dallas like the one you live in?”
His answer: “More than you think.”
Dallas, like all urban areas, is a patchwork of neighborhoods in need abutting neighborhoods of greater fortune. That’s not specific to the north or the south.
As our project enters year eight, we will keep busting away at the myth that southern Dallas is some monolithic challenge. What it is, like its northern counterpart, is home.
