Present-day Tenth Street is bounded by Interstate 35, East Eighth Street, and Clarendon Drive at the eastern edge of Oak Cliff, not far from the Dallas Zoo. But the community began in the 1880s, south of the Trinity River, as formerly enslaved people settled and began buying lots and homes. By the turn of the century, those families had created a community with churches, a school, and small businesses. By the 1950s, nearly 2,000 residents lived here. At one point, it had a hospital whose doctor lived next door.
But then I-35 came, cutting the neighborhood off from the rest of Oak Cliff and demolishing neighborhood businesses. City demolition policy in the 2010s helped bring down even more homes before the City Council repealed the ordinance that allowed it to happen.
Historians and residents with longtime ties to the neighborhood have worked to preserve the stories and artifacts that tell its story. That includes Tameshia Rudd-Ridge, who owns Kinkofa with her cousin, Jourdan Brunson. Kinkofa is a technology company that helps Black families document and preserve their stories. Rudd-Ridge’s work began in her own family. She learned that jazz trumpeter Clora Bryant was a cousin of her great grandmother. She wanted to find Bryant’s Betterton Circle home, but instead arrived at an access road to the highway.
“Literally the highway is where my family home was supposed to be,” she told D Magazine in 2024…