Sen. Royce West said it before I could. I stopped to speak to him during the November 1 grand return of the Forest Theater, and as we looked around at a room filled with what felt like everybody, he smiled and said, “This feels like a family reunion.” There really was no better way to describe it. Everywhere I turned, I saw someone I had worked beside, advocated beside, celebrated with or occasionally fought alongside in the work of uplifting Black Dallas. Colleagues. Friends. Community leaders. Artists. Elected officials. My South Boulevard neighbors. People I have sat beside in meetings, worked with on community initiatives and encountered through years of covering South Dallas through Dallas Weekly. Every person I could possibly imagine seemed to be there, showcasing their best Black celebratory fits and taking in the magnitude of what we were witnessing. To call it momentous almost feels inadequate.
I experienced the night from several perspectives. Dallas Weekly has been following the Forest Theater journey long before I became a board member of Forest Forward. We covered the vision when much of it still existed on paper, along with the fundraising, community engagement and belief required to convince people that something this ambitious in South Dallas could actually happen. But I was also there simply as a community member—the same girl who shows up at District 7 meetings ready to cuss out policymakers or delvelopers in the name of South Dallas when necessary. I love this community enough to fight for it, which made it impossible to experience this as just another Dallas event. Then there was the honor of experiencing the evening as a Forest Forward board member, serving alongside some of the most influential people I admire in this city. Sitting in the front row among fellow board members, city leaders, artists and advocates, I kept looking around trying to fully absorb what we were witnessing.
The VIP reception opened with gospel—as it should have—and I could already feel the emotions welling up. Then the students from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Arts Academy performed, and that tore me apart. At some point, I genuinely started wondering whether my makeup was still on. They sang Quincy Jones and Tevin Campbell’s “Tomorrow,” and for me, it was a full-circle moment because it encapsulated exactly what all of this work was for: them. The children. The next generation. The young people who will grow up with a Forest Theater that is not simply something their grandparents tell them about. They will know it for themselves. They will perform there, learn there, gather there and make their own memories there. Suddenly, the answer to why preservation matters was standing directly in front of us.
And then the lights came on. For the first time in more than 50 years, the Forest Theater tower illuminated the South Dallas sky again, and I cried some more. There are very few moments when you understand, while you are living them, that they will become part of the history people talk about later. This was one of them. There are even fewer moments when Black people get to stand together inside an institution connected so deeply to our history and witness something being returned rather than removed, preserved rather than demolished, invested in rather than abandoned. We spend a lot of time talking about what Black Dallas has lost. On November 1, we got to celebrate something we kept. This was one of those rare moments that felt like it belonged to us.
Watching the history of Forest Forward unfold that evening also made me think about the incomparable Elizabeth Wattley and what it took for us to reach this night. Elizabeth is one of the most powerful Black women I know, and I don’t mean power in the way Dallas sometimes defines it—through titles, proximity or who gets invited into which room. I mean the power to believe in something when other people cannot see it yet. The power to hear criticism and keep moving, experience rejection and keep asking, be underestimated and keep building. In a climate where racism and misogyny have hardly disappeared, and where Black institutions continue to fight for resources and investment, what happened at the Forest Theater was never inevitable. Someone had to keep pushing, fundraising, convincing and believing. Elizabeth, you should be proud. You are a child of Dallas carrying the legacy of your family while creating a path distinctly your own. I admire you not only as a businesswoman and fellow Black woman in leadership, but for doing this work while also being a wife and mother. You believed long enough for the rest of us to finally stand inside what you could already see.
Before I left that evening, I saw Willie Mae Coleman, undisputably the queen of South Dallas. At 93 years old, Ms. Coleman has seen a version of this community many of us know only through photographs and stories. She has watched South Dallas thrive, and she has watched it endure decades of decline and disinvestment. Now she has lived long enough to watch the Forest Theater come back. I asked her how she felt knowing everything she had witnessed over the course of her lifetime. Her answer stopped me: “Baby, I had to stay alive just for this moment.” I don’t know that I will ever forget hearing those words. I cannot possibly experience November 1 through her eyes or fully understand what it feels like to remember the South Dallas of decades ago and then stand there at 93 years old watching those lights come back on.
But perhaps Ms. Coleman’s words explain better than anything why preservation matters. It allows generations to meet one another. It allows an elder to walk back into a place carrying memories that a child standing beside her has not yet had the chance to make. It gives us somewhere physical to put our history so our children do not have to understand their inheritance only through photographs, plaques and stories about what used to be there. South Dallas is in a season of reclamation, with millions of dollars being invested after generations of disinvestment. But the measure of that progress cannot simply be how much money is spent. We must continue asking who gets to decide what is worth saving, who benefits from what is being built and whether the people who sustained this community when investment was nowhere to be found can still recognize themselves when the work is finished.
On November 1, I looked around the Forest Theater and saw South Dallas recognizing itself. I saw elders and children. Artists and activists. Business leaders and elected officials. Neighbors, colleagues, friends and family. Maybe Senator West was right. Maybe it really was a family reunion. But it was also proof that Black institutions do not have to exist only in our memories. Sometimes, after years of fighting, fundraising, believing, organizing and refusing to give up, we actually get to stand together and watch the lights come back on. Congratulations to every single person who helped turn those lights on at the Forest Theater. And Ms. Coleman, I hope you know something: We are proud, too. All of us.
