Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Black History Local Preservation topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Grand Prairie program leaders push to preserve local Black history, host children’s 'Black Bingo'
Summary
Local historian Dr. Angela Luckey described several February events in Grand Prairie to record and teach local Black history, including a children’s 'Black Bingo' at Dalworth Recreation Center and an evening program drawing on the recordings of former Mayor Pro Tem Ruthie Jackson.
Dr. Angela Luckey, a genealogist and library researcher in Grand Prairie, said Thursday that the city will host a children’s Black History Month event designed to teach local and national African American history.
The first-Thursday event will begin at 3:45 p.m. at the Dalworth Recreation Center and organizers said 80 students are expected to attend. “We will feed them. They will have hot dogs, chips, drinks, cookies, and we're gonna also have them a gift bag with African American history information inside of those bags,” Luckey said on the city program It's Happening in Grand Prairie.
Organizers said the event, which they described on air as “Black Bingo,” mixes games and prizes with lessons in African American heritage and local history. Luckey said the activity is intended to address gaps she sees in school curricula about local Black history.
The program also highlighted an evening presentation scheduled at 7 p.m. at the Grand Prairie Chamber of Commerce building that Luckey described as carrying the theme “our black history is under attack — help us save our history.” That event, she said, will draw on interviews and videotaped histories recorded by the city's former mayor pro tem, Ruthie Jackson, which organizers are digitizing for public viewing.
Luckey pointed to examples she said are not covered in some widely circulated local illustration books, including the contributions of early Black landowners and the city’s first Black police officer, Henry “Babe” Redmond. “You won't find that in the illustration book,” Luckey said. She urged residents and newcomers to learn the local stories preserved in the Jackson interviews and other archives.
On the program Luckey also said children who attend the Dalworth Recreation Center event will make a commitment based on Martin Luther King Jr.'s six principles of nonviolence; she recited the principles on air and described the commitment as part of the children's activity.
Organizers said some of Jackson’s recorded interviews are being digitized for YouTube to broaden public access, and they expressed an intent to compile more complete local histories in print.
The events are open to Grand Prairie children and families; organizers encouraged attendance and use of the digitized archives for research and education.
