Dallas Observer, Dec 5, 2019: City Hall Exhibit Aims To Educate About Dallas’ Segregated Past And Present
Racially based redlining practices divided Dallas and cities across the country for decades in ways that still affect neighborhoods today. An exhibit about the history of this practice and its effects, as well as what to do about it, will be on display in Dallas City Hall’s main lobby until Dec. 31.
“Red means a word I want you to keep in your mind: hazardous,” Victor Obaseki, Dallas’ equity officer, told a group of local advocates and city employees on a tour of the exhibit Wednesday afternoon.
The term “redlining” comes from a set of maps made by the Home Owner’s Loan Association in the 1930s. The maps were part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal plan to pull the country out of the Great Depression. On the surface, the maps offered banks a metric for protecting themselves from bad mortgages and loans, outlining economically disadvantaged neighborhoods across the country.
