From KERA News:
Meshia Rudd-Ridge spent a day driving around Tenth Street Historical District looking for the childhood home of famous jazz trumpeter Clora Bryant. She circled the area a few times until realizing that what had once been Bryant’s home was now taken over by Interstate 35.
For Ridge, Bryant is more than a musician. She’s Ridge’s second cousin.
“To know that I come from a long line of people who just really have made a way out of no way is literally… like I feel invincible,” Ridge said.
Ridge only learned they were related in 2020, a year after Bryant’s passing. Ridge had faced challenges in tracing her family history: She said traditional genealogy sites like 23andMe and Ancestry.com often overlook the unique heritage of Black families.
After being able to find her own distant relatives, she wanted to be able to provide a better experience for others looking to do the same. She began exploring better ways for Black descendants to connect with their lost ancestry.
“OK, how can we all figure out how we’re related?” Ridge said.
During the pandemic, Ridge began discussing Black ancestry with other Tenth Street descendants on the social media app Clubhouse, where she met Jourdan Brunson. Brunson, who has family in Texas but was living in Chicago at the time, had been a family historian for 15 years and was looking for a change of pace.
“I really wanted to spend more time getting into who are my people? Where they from?” Brunson said. “Seeing the places and meeting relatives to put the stories together.”
Together, Ridge and Brunson collected stories from Dallas locals and eventually launched the website Kinkofa — a platform helping Black families uncover, record and preserve their stories.
“There just wasn’t a tool that allowed us as Black folks to reexplore our stories and tell them in a way that resonates with the pride and dignity that we have in our culture and who we are,” Brunson said.
The website allows users to contribute their own photos, legal documents, and stories to be stored and recorded, as well as share more information on what was uploaded.
“You give our platform a starting point, and we’re helping you enrich that story by connect you to other pieces of it,” Brunson said.
Since launching, Kinkofa has focused on collecting oral history of the historically Black Tenth Street neighborhood. It is one of Dallas’ oldest Freedmen’s towns — still intact and filled with rich cultural heritage.
Over the years, many families have moved away, but the city of Dallas has designated this area as the only African American historical district worth stabilizing. Ridge and Brunson believed this was an chance for current residents and descendants to control the narrative as the city works to preserve the Freedmen’s town.
An interactive map of Tenth Street Historical District.
Zara Amaechi / KERA
“This is a wonderful opportunity to help Tenth Street strengthen its brand,” Ridge said, “and help people understand its story so more people can stand up for what Tenth Street is, not whatever you’re trying to sell me.”
At a recent event hosted by Kinkofa and the group Remembering Black Dallas, Brunson and Ridge unveiled plans for the neighborhood and how to rebuild it as it was. Old memories and stories were shared from those that either lived those experiences or heard of them from their relatives.
Donald Payton is a well-known Dallas historian who took a moment to highlight the importance of preserving Tenth Street.
“Churches, bail bonds, small grocery stores, cleaners, everything our community needed, we had to meet because we knew we couldn’t get it from the white people,” Payton said. “So, we built it ourselves.”
Ridge and Brunson received a grant from the Library of Congress to collaborate with other organizations — including Remembering Black Dallas and the Five Mile Neighborhood Association — to raise public awareness of the area’s history. Their plans include libraries, digital museums, and a cultural center that will be a learning environment for those that know nothing about the district.
However, the first steps to rebuilding Tenth Street starts with gathering oral history and connecting with the community.
Through its relative matching tool, Kinkofa has already unlocked about 35,000 connections of people to their relatives in Tenth Street.
“It’s like Dallas’s last opportunity to do that because all the other communities have pretty much been wiped out,” Ridge said. “And so, it’s like a once-in-a-lifetime chance to do something very impactful.”
And among those who found relatives were Ridge and Brunson — the two discovered they are cousins.
“We aren’t just co-founders,” Brunson said. “We were visiting Aunt Faye, who’s my Aunt Faye now. So, there’s shared family and lots of shared moments. This is my kinfolk.”
Ridge and Brunson hope to expand Kinkofa beyond Dallas, allowing Black relatives across the country to find each other and preserve their heritage.
