The NAACP Juanita Craft FREEDOM FUND Banquet

My Day by Dr. J. Ester Davis

A special date for you!  Friday, December 9. 2022. Why, you might ask.  Well, because we cannot afford to forget the name.

Juanita J. Craft.  Call her name!!  Juanita J. Craft.  Mrs. Craft joined the NAACP in 1935 and started one hundred eighty two(182) NAACP Chapters throughout rural and scattered segregated Texas.  Riding the train on frequent trips around the state, she regularly sat in “white’only” sections and of course, refusing to move. In 1950 and 1955, she joined marches and demonstrations against the ‘white only” University of Texas Law School and North Texas State University.  This action resulted in lawsuits, much anguish and name calling.

Juanita Craft was born in 1902. She profoundly left her mark on this city.  The evidence is hard to miss.   It seems as though every year of her productive life on earth was marked with significance. Moving to Dallas, she worked at the Adolphus Hotel as a maid and promoted to dress maker when fine boutiques were moved to Downtown Dallas, i.e., Neiman Marcus, Sanger Bros.  I vividly remember the stories told by one of my neighbors, Mr. A. S. Penn, DISD Principal at H. S. Thompson School for 32 years.  Sitting on his porch when we moved into this neighbor, he would educate the new ‘neighbors’ on ‘ole black Dallas’.  Mr. Penn worked at the Adolphus Hotel in the summer time because black teachers were not paid in the summer.  In the kitchen at the Adolphus Hotel was Al Lipscomb, another former City Council hero.  Before Al Lipscomb sat around the horseshoe at Dallas City Hall, Juanita J. Craft, a civil rights pioneer served on the Dallas City Council, as the second African American female.  She was elected at the age of 73 in 1975.

So, you see. .. The NAACP Juanita Craft Freedom Fund Banquet is the special place for you to be on Friday, December 9, 2022.  The Dallas NAACP has a very capable, knowledgeable and jublilant leader in Dr. Sharon Middlebrooks and her staff, and much progress has been made in a very short time under her leadership.  But the program is not complete without your membership.

One final note on Juanita J. Craft about her fight for equality.  She lived in South Dallas on Warren Street for more than fifty(50)years.  It was known then as the Juanita J. Craft Civil Rights House.  Both Lyndon B. Johnson and Martin Luther King, Jr., visited her there, at her home, to discuss the civil rights movement and its future according to Mrs. Craft.

Get the rest of the story at the Freedom Fund Banquet on Friday, December 9, 2022.