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The Dallas Farmers Market Friends will be at tonight’s Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs meeting, to speak out against a plan to open transitional housing for homeless people near the market.
In their pleas to save the place, board members have made many references to the history of the market. I asked Justin Collins, who serves on the board, to tell me more about that history, and he set me up with Margie Jackson Haley, whose great grandfather A.A. Jackson was, at least in part, responsible for the original Pearl Street Market.
Margie told me A. A. Jackson was a farmer. He came to Dallas in 1878 and became a wholesale produce guy, because there weren’t many grocery stores around at that time. In 1896 Jackson was elected Alderman, and during his term he helped pass a bill to get the city to build the original Pearl Street Market.
The photo above and the ones below obviously came long after Jackson’s work, but they provide some context for where the market was before it became a problem for City Hall. If you’ve got a vested interest in the market, make sure you hit tonight’s meeting. It’s at 6 p.m. at the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library (Commerce & Ervay).
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