Erin Moore, Cannon Brown, Councilman Omar Narvarez and Lee Daugherty at the historical marker after the dedication on October 10. (David Taffet/Dallas Voice)

Hundreds gather to unveil first official LGBT historical plaque in Texas

DAVID TAFFET  |  Senior Staff Writer
taffet@dallasvoice.com

Mounted on a pole outside JR.’s Bar & Grill — at the corner of Cedar Springs Road and Throckmorton Street that is known as The Crossroads — stands the first historical marker in Texas honoring the LGBT community.

The marker was dedicated Wednesday night Oct. 10, with hundreds crowded into JR.’s for the ceremony celebrating the history of the community and the development of Cedar Springs Road into the center of the gayborhood. Even before it was unveiled, the plaque, which was covered in a rainbow of streamers, was a new landmark that everyone wanted to be photographed with.

The Dallas Way President Evilu Pridgeon opened the program by thanking community icons George Harris and Jack Evans, saying, “Because of those two guys, we’re here tonight.” she said. The plaque, she added, “memorializes this geographic area,” which is heart and soul of the Dallas LGBT community.

Pridgeon has stressed that the process of getting the marker approved and in place has been successful only because of an outstanding “team effort” by members of The Dallas Way. “It takes a village,” she said, adding that the organization as a whole deserves credit for getting the marker approved and ushering it through the process.

For some of those speaking at the dedication, the historical marker is a symbol of what makes the Dallas LGBT community special.

Dallas Voice Publisher Leo Cusimano noting that “The Dallas Way secures our place in history [and] this marker represents our home base,” talked about working with the Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau, now known as Visit Dallas, to promote the city to the LGBT people around the country. It’s an easy task, he said, because the Dallas LGBT community is so cohesive.

“Men and women — you don’t see that across the country,” Cusimano said as he looked out over the mixed crowd. Still, he reminded his audience, “We’ve had a lot of successes, but we have a long way to go.”

For Betty Neal, a longtime community activist who has worked in the bars and who helped found Dallas’ Black Pride celebrations as well as serving on the Dallas Pride Committee, it was more personal: “At this intersection, I see my life,” she declared. Recalling some of the bars that have come and gone at the Crossroads through the years, Neal said, it is “home” for many. “We can all be our authentic self right here,” she said.

Caven CEO Gregg Kilhoffer recalled visiting The Crossroads for the first time in 1983, when he was just 21 years old, then transferring from his job with a Caven Enterprises bar in Houston to a Caven bar here in Dallas. He never imagined, he said, that all these years later he would be running the company and standing there dedicating the first LGBT historical marker in the state of Texas.

The Rev. Neil Cazares-Thomas, senior pastor of Cathedral of Hope, spoke about how excited he had been to visit the Crossroads four years ago when he came to Dallas for his final interview for the job at the Cathedral. Standing at the Crossroads then, he said, he knew immediately that Dallas was a place he’d be able to call home.

He ended by saying that as a pastor he couldn’t tell anyone who to vote for, but could tell everyone gathered for the dedication that it was their duty to vote.

Openly-gay Dallas City Councilman Omar Narvaez recalled that his political career began there at the Crossroads after he joined Stonewall Democrats and signed up hundreds of voters while sitting at a table outside Crossroads Market.

Kathy Jack, the manager at Sue Ellen’s who has been active in the community for more than three decades, was in tears as she talked about the biggest change she has seen over the years. In the early 1980s, men and women didn’t go into each other’s bars, she said, adding, “I thought, how are we going to fight for our rights when we can’t get along? Then [the AIDS epidemic struck and] the bottom dropped out.”

That’s when people began to realize that they all needed each other to raise money as the government turned its back on LGBT people, she said.

Rick Barton talked about opening Hunky’s, the iconic hamburger joint on Cedar Springs, in 1984 with his brother David, who was also gay and who died of AIDS in the mid-1990s. And Alan Pierce, owner of The Round-Up Saloon, recalled The Crossroads as being “the meeting place of every LGBT leader” in the community.

Pierce described how far the community has come, pointing to the lawsuit filed by Mica England against the city of Dallas in the early 1990s after she was refused employment with the Dallas Police Department because she was a lesbian. Now, Pierce noted, LGBT police officers were in the crowd celebrating along with gay elected officials as the marker was dedicated.

Dallas County Commissioner Theresa Daniel said she making sure people have an equal opportunity and their rights are preserved isn’t always easy. But it was times like the marker dedication celebration that she “thoroughly enjoys her job,” because it’s a time when “things go right.” █