![]() The McCoys have shared stories of life in Little Egypt with Siegle and students at Richland College in Dallas. In the 1950s they grew up in LIttle Egypt and loved it, dirt roads, no running water, and all. KERA News McCoy sisters Gloria, left, and Joann, sitting in the home the family moved to in 1961. “Because we did everything anybody else was doing here.” “We did not feel like we were poor,” Gloria and Joann both say, echoing each others’ comments. That road she ran on was all dirt – Little Egypt never got paved. “People in the neighborhood did not have phones but a lot of them got their calls there, and we would run up the road and tell them, 'So-and-so! Telephone’s for you!'” Joann says. The McCoy house actually had Little Egypt’s only telephone, says Gloria’s older sister, Joann. “We had electricity but we had no running water,” she says. Siegle says the alley behind them had been a country dirt road before Lake Highlands took over the African American neighborhood in 1962. KERA News Richland College professors Clive Siegle (red tie) and Tim Sullivan standing in what used to be Little Egypt. This community, named for its Egypt Chapel Baptist Church, thrived until the early 1960s. Siegle tracked down the deed showing former slaves Jeff and Hanna Hill paid $300 for 35 acres. The rural community was settled in the 1880s. The Richland College history professor was so curious, he dug around and found out this was once a small, African American neighborhood called Little Egypt. That’s because, Siegle discovered, it was once a country lane. It looks more like a country lane than it does a regular alley behind a suburban house around here.” "It just looks like it doesn’t belong there. That gravel road leads to an old alley that also seemed out of place. “Like, why didn’t they finish paving this place or what-not?” Siegle asks. ![]() But something always puzzled him: a dirt and gravel road. ![]() He’s lived here for years, surrounded by houses, apartments and businesses. Another one in Dallas that's been nearly forgotten, Little Egypt, is getting a renewed look thanks to Richland College.Ĭlive Siegle stands at the corner of Thurgood Lane and Shoreview Road, in Lake Highlands. They range from Ellis Alley in San Antonio to the Fourth Ward in Houston to Deep Ellum in Dallas. Texas is dotted with Freedmen’s communities - African American neighborhoods that sprouted after the Civil War in the era of segregation.
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