-
#TheRootTrip: Good Times and Good Vibes at Shreveport, La.’s Bon Temps Coffee Bar
Nothing against Starbucks because Lord knows that over the years, I’ve spent a mortgage payment on venti iced chai lattes, but when I saw that Shreveport, La., had a black-owned coffee bar in its Red River District, well, I just had to make a stop and visit. Welcome to Bon Temps Coffee Bar, owned by…
-
#TheRootTrip: Where a La. Hotel Once Stood, People From the Past and Present Have Been Forgotten
The next spot on my 1957 Green Book list was the Will Steward Hotel. I wasn’t able to find anything about Will Steward himself, but there were a number of Will Stewards who lived in the Shreveport area in the mid-1950s, although none of them seems directly connected to the building above. Now apartments, the…
-
#TheRootTrip: To Experience This Shreveport, La., Dining Spot, You’ll Have to Use Your Imagination
As I rolled into Shreveport, La., my first Green Book location was simply noted in the guidebook as the intersection of Pierre and Looney, where the Grand Terrace Restaurant once stood. Remember, as part of #TheRootTrip, I’m not preselecting these locations, so what I find is what I find, and I do my research after…
-
#TheRootTrip: Fill ’er Up Quick at Swift, One of the Few Black-Owned Gas Stations in Texas
Guess what, guys? I found another black-owned gas station! Swift Fast Food & Gas at 801 W. Kearney St. in Mesquite, Texas, is ready for your business. Not only do they have gas like any other gas station, as well as a full convenience store where you can buy all the chips, sodas and candy…
-
#TheRootTrip: Dallas Vegan and Juice Spot Has Recipe for Success
Have you ever walked into a black business and immediately felt the authentic passion of the owners? How they hold a genuine love for their service and the black community? If you’ve never experienced that, then I suggest that you run, not walk, to Recipe, a new vegan and juice spot at 1831 S. Ewing…
-
#TheRootTrip: The Island Spot Serves Up the Flavor of Jamaica in the Heart of Black Dallas
I’m a simple man. If there are oxtails within reach, then I’m going to eat said oxtails. See? Not complicated. So when readers said that I just had to visit the Island Spot, where they have oxtails, in the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas, well, it seemed like a great suggestion. Founded by Richard Thomas—a…
-
#TheRootTrip: A Police Station May Have Replaced the Hotel Jim, but Not the Legacy of the Black Owner
You can’t expect to find every address from the 1957 Negro Travelers’ Green Book intact. Sixty years’ worth of city renewal, knocking down buildings for other buildings and then knocking down those buildings a few decades later, can transform a block. As such, the building at 413 Fifth St. in Fort Worth, Texas, isn’t the…
-
#TheRootTrip: Not Much to See at the Evans Tourist Home … Unless You Surprise a Neighbor
This is the Evans Tourist Home in Fort Worth, Texas, listed in the 1957 Negro Travelers’ Green Book. I wasn’t able to find out much about the person who lived here, and honestly, there’s nothing particularly exceptional about this house. It’s just a regular house, now turned into a duplex, in a historic black district…
-
#TheRootTrip: Dallas Cowboys Fans Will Find a Room With the Perfect View at This Motel
Whooo!! I’d never been to 99 percent of the Green Book neighborhoods prior to this trip, but I knew where 1839 Fort Worth Ave. was. It was just off Hampton Road, where all of my Dallas relatives live (and, though I can’t prove it, where I believe all 300,000 black folks in Dallas live ……
-
#TheRootTrip: The Green Acres Motel Was the Place to Be
As in most cities during the 1950s, white flight was in full flower in Dallas as discriminatory redlining by banks and Realtors worked to create middle-class suburbs and economically deprived inner cities. According to The City in Texas: A History, builders built more than 30,000 new homes in Dallas, but fewer than 1,000 for blacks. In…
