The Communities Foundation of Texas & Deep Vellum invite you to join us for a cause-minded conversation series. We Are One City: Elevating the Story of Dallas.
Alan Govenar, co-author of Deep Ellum & Central Track and See That My Grave Is Kept Clean, discusses the 150th anniversary of Deep Ellum, the biography of blues musician Blind Lemon Jefferson, and histories of the city.
Presented with the support of the City of Dallas Office of Arts and Culture
A new edition of the biography of Dallas's own Deep Ellum.
Alan Govenar and Jay Brakefield—using oral histories, old newspapers and photographs, city directories and maps, as well as more traditional public records and secondary sources—reveal another side of Deep Ellum which includes Central Track (formerly called Central Avenue), an area lined with Black-owned businesses which served both Black and white patrons during its heyday in the 1920s and 30s. In the Deep Ellum and Central Track areas, African Americans and whites, primarily Eastern European Jews, operated businesses from the late 19th to the mid-20th centuries, creating a unique social climate where cultural interaction took place. Much of the information in the book is presented through the stories of remarkable individuals, including professionals, pawnbrokers and other merchants, police officers, criminals, and the blues and jazz musicians who had a lasting impact on American popular music.
A new biography of beloved but mysterious Blind Lemon Jefferson, famous blues musician. Born in 1897, Jefferson was a blind street musician who played his guitar at the corner of Elm Street and Central Avenue in the Deep Ellum area of Dallas, Texas, until a Paramount Records scout discovered him. Between 1926 and his untimely death in 1929, Jefferson made more than 80 records and became the biggest-selling blues singer in America. Although his recordings are extensive, details about his life are relatively few. Through Govenar and Brakefield's extensive interviews and research, See That My Grave is Kept Clean gathers the scattered facts behind Blind Lemon Jefferson's mythic representations.
Alan Govenar is an award-winning writer, poet, playwright, photographer, and filmmaker. He is director of Documentary Arts, a non-profit organization he founded to advance essential perspectives on historical issues and diverse cultures. Govenar is a Guggenheim Fellow and the author of more than thirty books, including Paradise in the Smallest Thing, Stoney Knows How: Life as a Tattoo Artist, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Untold Glory, Texas Blues, Stompin’ at the Savoy, Everyday Music, Texas in Paris, Osceola: Memories of a Sharecropper’s Daughter, and A Pillow on the Ocean of Time. His novel Boccaccio in the Berkshires was published by Deep Vellum in 2021.