When Ernest McMillan was young and living in Dallas, he stood in line to make a point. The Majestic Theatre was segregated at the time, and he and other young Black Dallasites would go to church, then stand in line to buy a ticket—not to the balcony, but downstairs, where the whites were sitting.
“We—very orderly—would go to the ticket counter, ask for a ticket, we would be politely refused, we would go back to the end of the line, and keep it going for two or three hours every Sunday,” McMillan told Zac Crain in 2019. “And this was going on at other places in other ways, too.”
This weekend, the Dallas Weekly reported that McMillan died. A GoFundMe set up by his family last month indicates that he has lived in Albuquerque for five years, but was ready to return to Dallas, “the place that holds his roots, his people, and the community that has always been home.” The homecoming was not just to return to his community. McMillan was ill—he was recovering from a stroke last year, and his Stage 4 bladder cancer was not responding to treatment as doctors had hoped…