Where I Live: Hemphill Neighborhood Rich With Hispanic Culture

Arlington TX

10 October, 2021

6:22 PM

Description

By The FWR Staff, Fort Worth Report October 9, 2021 Where I live is a majority Hispanic community integral to the historical fabric of South Fort Worth. Nestled between Hemphill Street, Berry Street, I-35, Bolt Street, La Fundición (The Foundation), was one of the first Hispanic neighborhoods on the city's South Side. Today, La Fundición is known as the Worth Heights Neighborhood. Before integration, Hispanics and Latinos were discouraged from crossing west of Hemphill after 6 p.m. After the 1965 Civil Rights Act, the U.S. — and Fort Worth included — experienced a phenomenon known today as white flight. This term was coined as a result of the record number of white families who left their inner city homes to more rural, generally all white communities known as the suburbs.This phenomenon also opened the door for Black, brown, and migrant Asian and Latino families to fill in the gaps in inner city neighborhoods, which to this point had better funded schools and city services. As the influx of people of color filled these spaces, so, too, did development, and maintenance began to dwindle in south Fort Worth. Currently, because of the great value our land holds — tucked between Interstate 30, I-35, I-20 and McCart Avenue — and with proximity to downtown, the city of Fort Worth wants to impose its will once more on our vulnerable and aging community with developments in the neighborhood. But we, the seeds of those who built and sustained Hemphill and South Side for so long, are older and wiser than the misled and ill-represented residents we once were. To read the full article, click here. Fort Worth Report is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that produces factual, in-depth journalism about city and county government, schools, healthcare, business, and arts and culture in Tarrant County. Always free to read; subscribe to newsletters, read coverage or support our newsroom at fortworthreport.org.