When many people think of Dallas, Texas, they think of things like the Dallas Cowboys, the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders, the movie North Dallas Forty, or even the Medical City Dallas Hospital, which is located in North Dallas. Surprisingly enough, this week’s Black Pioneer, Anderson Bonner once owned the land that The Medical City Dallas Hospital now sits on! In addition to the land that the hospital is on, Anderson ended up owning thousands of acres of land in what is now North Dallas( including the Dallas suburb of Richardson ). Anderson Bonner was born a slave in Alabama around 1839. Also, it is rumored that he was possibly a member of the 100,000 Negro refugees that were forcibly transported to Texas by their White slave owners,during the American Civil War to keep the Union Army from freeing them. Furthermore, it was reported that on “June 19, 1865,” Union General Gordon Granger and Union Troops under his command arrived in Galveston, Texas and pronounced the end of slavery[ on June 7, 1979, more than a century after the abolition of slavery in Texas, Texas House Bill 1016 passed in the 66th Legislature Regular Session, declaring June 19, "Emancipation Day in Texas]! The following year,on “June 19, 1980,” Texas became the first state in America to officially and legally make Juneteenth a national holiday! Not too long after being freed, Anderson got married to a young Black lady named Eliza{ to this union were born 10 children }. Mainly, because slaves weren’t allowed to learn how to read and write, Anderson,his wife, nor his brother or his sister could read or write well. In 1870, when Anderson and the rest of the Bonner family first arrived in Dallas, Texas, they found work on a farm in an area known as White Rock Creek. With the money Anderson earned from working on the farm, he was able to buy 60 acres of land in North Dallas( he purchased the land on August 10, 1874, since he never learned how to read , they let him sign the deed with an “X” ). Although he was thought of as an illiterate man, he was intelligent enough to see that he could split up the 60 acres of land[ keeping part for him and his family members, and renting out the rest to Negro sharecroppers ]. Anderson’s plan proved to be quite profitable, and he was able to use some of the money from his rental properties to buy more land. Over a period of years, he had accumulated over two thousand acres of land in what is now North Dallas and the Dallas suburb of Richardson. On a bitter note,his dear wife Eliza, the mother of his 10 children, died in a oil lamp explosion in the family home in 1903. Around 1920, Anderson decided to get married again{ her name was Lucinda, and she was from Waxahachie, Texas }. Within a year or two after the marriage, Anderson Bonner died. He was buried in White Rock Colored Union Cemetery ( which is now White Rock Garden of Memories Cemetery) in Addison, Dallas County, Texas. Hey, I strongly feel that it is worth mentioning again that “even though Anderson Bonner could not read or write, “ he was able to “come up with a plan” that helped make him one of the largest Negro landowners in Dallas Texas! Needless to say, his vast estate and holdings went to his wife and children living at the time of his death. In his honor, his family established the Anderson Bonner Endowment scholarship, which assists RISD graduates who attend Prairie View A&M University. Also of worthy mention is that the first public school for Black children in the North Dallas[ the Vickery and Hillcrest school ] was renamed The Anderson Bonner School. At the time, it was the only school for Blacks in the area. The school was eventually closed in 1955, when the Hamilton-Park School was built. Furthermore, the city of Dallas named the park west of Medical City Hospital, Anderson Bonner Park in 1976{ the park consists of 44.1 acres of Anderson’s original land }. In closing, I would like for you to think about “ALL” of the land in the city of Monroe, West Monroe, Sterlington, Bastrop, and Ruston, Louisiana that was “ONCE OWNED BY BLACK PEOPLE!“
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