Abstract
Dallas County Records Building
Dallas, TX
A Dallas Drinking Fountain Project honors fiftieth anniversary Civil Rights Movement milestones, as well as courageous citizen activism, by assembling people to address the task of rendering our country more equitable.
The Monument
Drinking Fountain #1 (2013), is a transformed, yet still functional, public drinking fountain that triggers video projection of 1960s newsreel footage of civil rights direct action protests. Located under the remains of a the rediscovered “White Only” sign, visitors to the building unknowingly initiate, as they attempt to drink, this reflection on activism that addresses the social dynamics of race, racism, class and institutionalized violence as well as the capacity of the human spirit to resist injustice and bring about social change. Upon activation, the water flow suspends for the duration the video, allowing one to drink only after it ends.
The sculpture is accessible to the public during normal operating hours of the building.
Site as Praxis
Reactivating civic space to provide unique platforms for dialogical exchange is a continual process that is built into the project. Organized “Brown bag” lunches, impromptu press conferences, and tours on-site at the Records Building reclaims these spaces for populace use. It asserts that critical dialogue between neighbors is just as important and part of our civic duty as what traditionally takes place in this building-- filing paperwork, paying taxes, renewing car registration etc. These gatherings connect county employees, El Centro Community College students (across the street), neighboring downtown businesses/institutions, tourists, local grassroots organizers and the greater public at the site for various purposes.
Project Background
For decades, a seemingly innocuous metal plate that was screwed into a marble wall hung above a public drinking fountain in the Dallas County Records Building in Dallas, Texas.
One day in early 2003, it fell off.
A public outcry ensued as people learned what that metal plate was meant to cover up: traces of a Jim Crow "White Only" sign that was removed during desegregation.
The metal plate inadvertently preserved a memory that it was meant to help erase…
Upon further study, the county realized that, in fact, all of the drinking fountains in the building had these metal plates attached to the wall above them, and behind those plates where the reminders of this country’s racist institutions. The fate of these artifacts fell before the Dallas County Commissioners Court to decide. A months long public debate and process ensued, at one point even making national headlines. Vote after vote ended in stalemate as the court could not come to consensus on whether to preserve or destroy the trace etched into the marble wall. Finally, in March, the commissioners decided in a controversial 4-1 decision to meet in the middle: they would deem the drinking fountain locations as sites of historical significance by keeping the artifacts on public view, unpreserved, and installing interpretive signage to discuss the, “historical, social, and legal significance of such segregation-era signage”
In 2005, I went before the commissioners court, independently, without institutional affiliation, and proposed what has come to be known as The Dallas Drinking Fountain Project. Almost decade later after independently raising funding, A Dallas Drinking Fountain Project launched.
On November 15, 2013, Dallas County Commissioners and I unveiled the centerpiece of the social sculpture project, Drinking Fountain #1 (2013), an interactive interventionist monument. By transforming the functional drinking fountain into an intermedia sculpture that projects raw newsreel documenting civil rights activism, the installation reveals the symbolic relationship between the preexisting segregationist relic, a drinking fountain, and a fire hose cabinet in proximity at the site, utilizing these elements to facilitate a meditation on interrelated systems and structures of power.
A Dallas Drinking Fountain Project utilizes the residue from the Jim Crow sign to activate a public conversation in Dallas/Fort Worth on racial justice. The intent was that over time more videos would be added to the sculpture—especially current video to make the link between now and then. The re-revealing of the Jim Crow sign becomes a poignant metaphor as racism and denial of civil rights continue exist at the structurally in many visible and invisible ways.
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Please visit the following video links for news coverage:
Monument Proposal to Dallas County Commissioners Court, NBC5 Coverage, 2005
Before Unveiling, CW33 Coverage, 2013