By Taylor Adams Cogan
When Jerry Hawkins moved to Dallas in 2010, he wasn’t expecting to become a dedicated champion for understanding its past.
He came from Chicago, a place he knew deeply, arriving in North Texas during what he calls “the hottest summer Dallas had in a while — like 114 every day.” (For those of us who remember, that was true, followed by record-breaking summers.) But even that heat felt preferable to the blizzard he had just endured.
“I saw the city stop for the first time, and I had never seen Chicago stop,” he says.
While Dallas wasn’t yet home, it was a place he felt he could build a life.
Jerry’s early experiences in the city made something else clear: Dallas wasn’t often telling its own story. It didn’t celebrate, at least not much, the rich layers that define a place long before a skyline fills in. That gap didn’t frustrate Jerry as much as it energized him, and it eventually became the foundation for his work.
Today, Jerry is the executive director of Dallas Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation, where he focuses on addressing race and racism through narrative change, relationship building, and equitable policies. He’s also the co-founder of the Imagining Freedom Institute, a group that helps people understand the historical contexts shaping the issues cities face today.
Deep Ellum is one of those places where history is both undeniable and often ignored — which is partly why Jerry suspects he was nominated for the Deep Ellum People project.
“We’ve done several projects, including one on I-345, which is the highway that runs through and destroyed part of Deep Ellum,” he says.
His work, in many ways, is about connecting past decisions to present realities and showing how history still lives in the streets people walk every day.
Jerry lives just north of the entertainment district, though it’s feeling closer as the years go on.
“Deep Ellum is now moving into my neighborhood,” he says, “there’s a club like a block away from me.”
He spends time in the district not just as a neighbor but as someone who’s long been involved: he served on the Deep Vellum Board of Directors and continues to support its publisher and CEO, Will Evans, in growing Deep Vellum Books and its literary footprint. Jerry is currently working with writer Stephanie Drenka on a book with Deep Vellum about the city’s history, too.
His interest in the neighborhood starts with a love for cities and the stories that shape them.
“People should care about where they live,” he says. “Dallas contains multiple histories; it is important to know how we’ve become a city. And it is imperative to the policies and practices that we now have to participate in.”
Jerry believes Deep Ellum would not be what it is today without the communities that built it. That’s true for Deep Ellum, Dallas, and any city people call home. But Deep Ellum is particularly important for Dallas.
“Deep Ellum was initially organized as a Freedman’s Town after Juneteenth,” Jerry says.
Following the Civil War, freed Black residents created a community that quickly grew to include other groups, including Jewish neighbors who arrived by train. Over time, Deep Ellum became an entertainment district — “some newspapers called it the Harlem of the South,” Jerry says — filled with theaters, music clubs, and the stages where artists like Blind Lemon Jefferson and Lead Belly performed. Jerry, who collects books and archives, has a large collection of Lead Belly material, which frequently mentions Deep Ellum.
His favorite buildings in Dallas are in Deep Ellum, too, such as the former Knights of Pythias Temple. It still stands beautifully today, operated as the Kimpton Pittman Hotel, and was the first major building in Dallas designed and financed by Black residents.
“The fact that it’s still standing is a miracle,” he says.
But for all the history embedded in Deep Ellum, Jerry sees how much of it can feel invisible to most people. And he thinks that needs to change.
“My hope is that Dallas embraces its history, which is what I travel to cities for,” he says.
When he visits places like Memphis, Charleston, Nashville, or Washington, DC, he looks for museums, walking tours, and the sites where the past is preserved and made accessible.
“I think that type of historical tourism brings excitement to a place and also learning and the ability to walk around,” he says.
He imagines a Deep Ellum where people come not just to party or drink, but to understand what this neighborhood has meant to Dallas and to the country.
“Dallas has a much richer history than it’s showing,” he says. “And I think that in itself can produce a whole new economy, but also a way of treating the city that will grow.”
For Jerry, the work is both professional and personal. He describes Dallas as a city full of potential — one with all the resources it needs to tell its story more fully, if only it chooses to.
“There’s no reason not to do it except that we don’t want to deal with our past,” he says.
But he believes in the possibilities that come from facing it directly.
That belief in learning, in storytelling, in the value of knowing where we come from is part of what makes Jerry Hawkins one of the people shaping Deep Ellum’s future, by shining a light on its past.
