- Michael Amonett sits amid the rubble
Since April, the Old Oak Cliff Conservation League has been trying to find a buyer the Oak Cliff Christian Church built in 1916. The building is owned by the Dallas Independent School District.
Over the summer, when no buyer could be found, DISD offered pieces of the building to anyone who would haul them off. The pillars would have been prime architectural material to preserve from the church. Michael Amonett, president of OOCCL, said an offer came from a salvage company but was a day late. DISD refused to wait until the company could dismantle and haul off what they wanted.
On Oct. 4, DISD began tearing down the landmark church. The property will be used as tennis courts for the replacement to historic Adamson High School. Neighborhood and alumni groups have protested tearing down that historic building as well.
While crews worked just behind him, Amonett snuck behind a construction gate to sit amid the rubble of the building he and his group tried to save.
The historic property figured in the Kennedy assassination story. As Lee Harvey Oswald walked from his boarding house a few blocks away to the Texas Theater on Jefferson Avenue, he shot officer J.D. Tippett on this block. Then he walked through the church property and threw his coat behind the building. Police found the coat here, putting him at the scene of the Tippett murder, if not JFK’s.
