I am doing more work on my book about Dallas women’s page editor Vivian Castleberry – focusing on transcribing an oral history about Dallas activist Jody Furnish that is at the Sixth Floor Museum.

Vivian won numerous other awards for her reporting. For example, in 1970, she won the award for best women’s feature for the story “Neighborhood Power,” that examined a successful integrated Dallas neighborhood.

In it, she wrote about one of the first integrated Dallas neighborhoods. It was a part of the community that was bounded on the north by Lovers Lane and on the east by Inwood, and on the south, by Mockingbird Lane and on the west, by Harry Hines. She described it as “a small postage stamp of Dallas with one corner torn off. And that’s exactly what it looked like when you looked on the city map.” One of the women, Jody Furnish, a white social worker, who lived in the neighborhood called Vivian. Furnish said that some black families were looking to buy houses in the area and they were looking at how to best integrate the neighborhood near Love Field. Furnish said of herself and her husband: “We wanted to live an integrated life.”

In 1964, they held a meeting called “Neighborhood Stabilization.” The goal was to integrate the neighborhood yet some of her white neighbors thought the purpose was to keep black families out. Many of those white neighbors never forgave Furnish and her husband.

According to Vivian, “they would have meetings in their home with different people and talk about all of the neat things that could come of having their children grow up in blended neighborhoods. So they invited me out to one of their meetings and I went and I just sort of started biding my time to see how long it was going to take before I could do a story on this.” She waited until the top management were all on vacation. It can on a Sunday with a black hand and a white hand reaching across the top of the page, clasped.

It was just one of the many example of Vivian using her section to encourage social change.

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I am doing more work on my book about Dallas women’s page editor Vivian Castleberry – focusing on transcribing an oral history about Dallas activist Jody Furnish that is at the Sixth Floor Museum.

Vivian won numerous other awards for her reporting. For example, in 1970, she won the award for best women’s feature for the story “Neighborhood Power,” that examined a successful integrated Dallas neighborhood.

In it, she wrote about one of the first integrated Dallas neighborhoods. It was a part of the community that was bounded on the north by Lovers Lane and on the east by Inwood, and on the south, by Mockingbird Lane and on the west, by Harry Hines. She described it as “a small postage stamp of Dallas with one corner torn off. And that’s exactly what it looked like when you looked on the city map.” One of the women, Jody Furnish, a white social worker, who lived in the neighborhood called Vivian. Furnish said that some black families were looking to buy houses in the area and they were looking at how to best integrate the neighborhood near Love Field. Furnish said of herself and her husband: “We wanted to live an integrated life.”

In 1964, they held a meeting called “Neighborhood Stabilization.” The goal was to integrate the neighborhood yet some of her white neighbors thought the purpose was to keep black families out. Many of those white neighbors never forgave Furnish and her husband.

According to Vivian, “they would have meetings in their home with different people and talk about all of the neat things that could come of having their children grow up in blended neighborhoods. So they invited me out to one of their meetings and I went and I just sort of started biding my time to see how long it was going to take before I could do a story on this.” She waited until the top management were all on vacation. It can on a Sunday with a black hand and a white hand reaching across the top of the page, clasped.

It was just one of the many example of Vivian using her section to encourage social change.

Please follow and like us: