In its latest ‘State of the Air’ report, the DFW metroplex was named the 18th most polluted city for ozone in the country by the American Lung Association. Likewise, passing glances at the current cityscape of Dallas – and the tokens of its past – wordlessly explain many of the how’s and why’s of what brought us to this point. The former shells of factories, husks of packing plants, and skeletons of slaughterhouses line the roads on the outskirts of Downtown Dallas like bullet casings. No longer teeming with activity, the old factories stand like tombstones to the city’s economic tethers in the wake of the Great Depression. However, it was in the predominantly Black South Dallas that the air once stung the nose of anyone in a miles-far radius.
Factory buildings that did not remain hollow and silent have since been revitalized to serve Dallas’ newly emerging industries and services. It is both a reflection of the changing times and the city’s commitment to capital that former building blocks which manufactured liquid detergents, gardening equipment, and automotive parts now host software developers, tech startups, and culinary ventures instead.
Large corporations like Ford and Procter & Gamble have strong ties to Dallas, both enjoying significant economic growth in their decades of residence in the city. Beyond this, the sheer volume of manufacturing, meatpacking, and chemical production operations established in the city’s southern sector during its industrial and post-industrial eras has been lost to time; and with it, consistent records to determine the full extent of the environmental damage they might’ve wrought.
Instead, we have testimonies of living residents who remember these crucial days of Dallas’ growth and rise as a metropolis. These residents also bore witness to the health issues of those who have passed on. Conditions common to longtime residents of West and South Dallas through the middle-to-the-end of the last century include general respiratory issues, asthma, COPD, kidney problems, and high blood pressure. All of which have direct links to poor air quality and pollution.
Residents like Willie Mae Coleman, 88, have lived in Dallas their entire lives. They hold onto clear memories of the city in its transient economic phase, back when factories were still generating the mass of wealth that would go on to define Dallas as an industrial powerhouse. Slaughterhouses, in particular, helped to generate both massive profits as well as the overpowering aroma characteristic of South Dallas at the time.
“My father was a country boy from Louisiana,” Coleman says. As the main provider of the family, patriarch Robert Walker worked hard labor. Eulah, Coleman’s mother, was a housekeeper. “He worked in the slaughterhouse, cleaning and moving equipment.”
Slaughterhouses – aside from bringing on an overpowering odor and the distressing screams of dying cattle – put contaminants in the air when they began widely using chlorine treatments at facilities by the mid-1970s. As they continued to operate into the ‘80s, they continued to push out the same odor and fumes at 6 pm every weekday when the cattle hit the killing floor of the slaughterhouse. The streets were flooded with the resulting smell right around dinnertime, until City Councilman Joe Haggar pushed for deliberation on a solution. Following action from the council, killing times were set at 10 pm instead.
Nearby in the W.H. Cotton Building, Procter & Gamble was a prominent supplier of jobs. Making its presence known by its acrid stench, the six-story brick building used by P&G is now inactive and utilized for office space by Dallas Independent School District. Unsurprisingly, the factory’s prominence in the local economy during its heyday left little room for criticism. During the 1940s and ‘50s, Parkland Memorial Hospital would refuse patients seeking treatment for ‘non-emergency’ respiratory issues, citing a low supply of beds. Complaints about the factory from the community continued to compound, but sadly, public outrage went unquelled.
“They took over that whole neighborhood. We lived seven blocks away on Cooper, and Procter & Gamble had buildings all along that road. Fumes would come down from the plant,” Coleman says. “You have to remember we didn’t have air conditioning back then in the summer [the 1950s]. The best we would have was a fan, if even that. Most people kept their windows open and you could smell all those fumes.” Described as similar to dead, rotting flesh, the odor of the emissions billowing from the shafts of the factory remains strong in the minds of residents of Old South Dallas.
Twenty-two families sued the company in 1982 over an incident two years prior when a greenish-yellow sulfuric gas cloud spread over a 15-block area of downtown Dallas. The company was sued for $900,000 by each family, who suffered respiratory damage from the event, claiming Procter & Gamble previously promised to cover medical expenses and repair bills. Presumably, Procter & Gamble settled before later selling the building in 1994. DISD employees evacuated temporarily in 2016 when lead and other potentially dangerous issues were discovered.
Deeper into the city and at the edge of Deep Ellum is the site of the old Ford Motor Factory at 2700 Canton St. Later relocating to 5200 Grand Ave., Ford further cemented Dallas’ economic viability with the manufacture of the Model-T. Unfortunately, the company also incurred considerable damage to the ozone layer at this time. And even after findings confirmed negative effects as early as the 1960s, the company continued its work. Ford went on to manufacture and mass-produce its prominent F-Series pickup trucks at the factory until its closure in 1970.
As asthma is noted as having higher rates in Black Americans and other non-white demographics, it is no surprise when environmental factors play as strong of a role as they do in an individual’s overall respiratory health. Data shows that all residents in Texas are more likely to have asthma than in the country overall. Black Texan adults suffer asthma at the highest rate among the three most prominent demographics, with asthma affecting 17% of the group.
According to data collected by Dallas County Health & Human Services (DHHS), 1 in 8 Black children in Dallas are currently suffering from asthma compared to 1 in 10 white children. While a variety of factors could contribute to higher rates of asthma, poor air quality in areas such as South Dallas is a prevalent cause of poor respiratory health for many residents. To curb the issue, DHHS recently established the Pediatric Asthma Surveillance System (PASS) so parents may monitor their childrens’ potential vulnerability to poor air quality.
Other cities with comparable economic booms to Dallas – such as Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland – hold many similar or overlapping issues regarding poor air quality and respiratory health. Through these examples, the connection between industrial pollution and poor respiratory health in working-class demographics cannot be disputed. Conditions like asthma, COPD, and high blood pressure remain prevalent in non-white demographics, especially Black Americans.
As we continue to transition out of the Industrial era, poor environmental practices continue to impact Black Texans. As last February marked the second-year anniversary of the removal of “Shingle Mountain” in Floral Farms, Black Dallasites continue to feel the brunt of corporate-sponsored, environmental racism.