Little Egypt: A Forgotten African American Community in Dallas

Nov 12, 2025 0

Little Egypt, a once-thriving African American community, was located in Dallas, Texas, just north of Northwest Highway between Ferndale and Audelia, near White Rock Lake. Though Little Egypt was officially within the Dallas city limits, it remained a distinct community until 1962.

Map of Lake Highlands in Dallas County, Texas

The Origins of Little Egypt

The community began after the Civil War, when the site was deeded to former slaves Jeff and Hanna Hill, when they were freed by their master in 1865. The land was deeded to Jeff and Hanna Hill for $300. By 1870 they had built the Little Egypt Baptist Church, and the community became known as Little Egypt because the residents were delivered from bondage, as in the biblical story.

Freedmen’s Town’s history is buried deep in its roots

Jeff Hill was born in 1839 in Kansas City, Missouri, and was married to Hannah Griffin Hill, born in 1840, also in Kansas City, Missouri. The couple had about thirteen children born between the late 1850s and around 1889. In the 1870 census, Jeff’s occupation was listed as farmer. He is also said to have operated a community store in Egypt. Jeff died in 1925 at the age of 86 and is buried in McCree Cemetery.

Life in Little Egypt

From early on, people in the community farmed as sharecroppers or worked on nearby plantations. The community was centered around the church and had no running water nor electricity. There was also a one room school house for grades one through six. The community's single school taught all grade levels.

Gloria McCoy grew up in Little Egypt. Gloria McCoy lived in Little Egypt with her parents, Sandy and Iva McCoy, and her four siblings, George, Sandy Jr., Jo Ann and Gloria, until he was 18 years old, she told The Dallas Morning News. "We had electricity but we had no running water," she says. "We didn’t have any indoor plumbing. We had the outhouse. And we had butane gas. And we did have a telephone.” In the 1950s they grew up in LIttle Egypt and loved it, dirt roads, no running water, and all.

Joann McCoy recalls, “People in the neighborhood did not have phones but a lot of them got their calls there [her house], and we would run up the road and tell them, 'So-and-so! Telephone’s for you!'” The McCoy house actually had Little Egypt’s only telephone, says Gloria’s older sister, Joann.

Little Egypt never got paved. That didn’t bother the sisters. “We did not feel like we were poor,” Gloria and Joann both say, echoing each others’ comments.

As time went on and other neighborhoods got services like municipal or county services like running water, waste disposal systems, gas lines, paved roads and electricity, Little Egypt only got electricity. In the early '60s, the McCoy sisters say their dad fought but failed to get running water into Little Egypt. Rain could make the roads impassible, even though residents hauled discarded rocks in the attempt combat the mud. He had seen city sprinklers watering nearby Flag Pole Hill. “And we, this black neighborhood, could not get running water,” says Joann McCoy.

Egypt was associated with the McCree Cemetery in that the cemetery is believed to date back to just after the Civil War. On June 25, 1896, J. E. Griffin sold one acre of land adjoining the east side of McCree Cemetery to three African-American individuals, Jeff Hill, George John and Monroe Parker for $25 for the purpose of creating a grave yard for the Egypt community.

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The End of an Era

By then, what used to be farmland surrounding Little Egypt had turned into a neighborhood, Lake Highlands, and commercial development, such as Northlake Shopping Center, Morning News archives show. In November 1961, the area was rezoned for retail use. This purchase followed a November 1961 rezoning of the area for retail use.

In 1961, his family relocated from Little Egypt to Elm Thicket-Northpark. This move was in part because their family home, which Sandy McCoy Sr. built, had electricity but no running water, like most of the homes in Little Egypt. Thirty-seven moving trucks carried about 200 residents’ belongings over dirt roads - the only type of road in Little Egypt - as they moved to neighborhoods in South Dallas, Oak Cliff, Garland and Rockwall.

In May 1962 the 200 residents of Little Egypt moved to their new homes, led by community patriarch William Hill, who was eighty-nine at the time. He lived in Little Egypt for 76 years. The mass exodus occurred after a real estate syndicate bought the land and homes as a site for a shopping center.

Since the houses in Little Egypt were dilapidated and some residents feared the buildings would be condemned, they were in favor of selling the land. The families were given enough money to buy new houses and most of them settled either in Oak Cliff or in Rockwall County. William Hill, 87, patriarch of Little Egypt, paused while cleaning out his shed before the move he and almost 200 other black residents of Little Egypt made on May 15, 1962, to modern homes in other neighborhoods. To Hill, it meant a new home with indoor plumbing, plus an extra $22,000 cash.

After eight decades, Little Egypt was no more. On a single day - May 15, 1962 - all of the Little Egypt residents moved out of the neighborhood, and the entire community was bulldozed. Their family homes were brought down by bulldozers.

Here's a summary of the key events:

Year	Event
1865	Jeff and Hanna Hill, former slaves, receive land.
1870	Little Egypt Baptist Church built.
1961	Area rezoned for retail use.
1962	Residents sell land and relocate; Little Egypt is demolished.

Rediscovering Little Egypt

For decades, this freedman’s town was just a memory. Then, in late May, it was permanently commemorated with a Texas state marker after years of work by Siegle, the McCoys and others.

In 2015, Siegle, who lives a few blocks down from where Little Egypt used to be, and his colleague, anthropology professor Tim Sullivan, created a class at Richland College to research Little Egypt. The genesis of Little Egypt’s recognition and its rediscovery can be traced to 2015, when Dallas College Richland Campus students assisted history professor Dr. Clive Siegle and archeology professor Dr. The students documented a history of the development of the community and the lives of the former residents and their descendants, Dr.

They wanted to speak with former Little Egypt residents, but they didn’t know where to start looking for them, Siegle said. So they turned to what used to be the pillar of the community, Egypt Chapel Baptist Church. When Little Egypt dissolved in 1962, the church moved to Oak Cliff. Many former residents, including Jerry McCoy, still attend the church.

Through this first interview with McCoy and his siblings, Siegle and his students began to reconstruct what Little Egypt used to look like and who used to live there. They set up interviews with more former residents: the Hills, the Dotsys and other descendants of Little Egypt.

The end goal of the “Little Egypt Project” was to place a permanent state historical marker where the community used to exist, so it would never again be forgotten. This location is across from the only remaining undeveloped lot of former Little Egypt, which just so happened to be where the McCoy house used to stand.

The marker was approved, and would be funded by the White Rock Rotary Club and the city of Dallas. But its installation was delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Little Egypt historical marker unveiling

A Permanent Commemoration

On May 20, more than 100 former residents of Little Egypt, members of Egypt Chapel Baptist Church and others in the community came together to celebrate the permanent marker.

The rural settlement of Little Egypt began when former slave Jeff Hill bought a tract of approximately 30 acres of land across Thurgood Lane from this marker in 1883. By the 1920s, the Egypt Chapel Baptist Church and a one-room school had been added to a growing number of homesteads on the tract. Due to Little Egypt’s early establishment and distance from Dallas, for more than seventy years it retained many of its rural characteristics despite the growing encroachment of urban development. In 1962, however, the entire community collectively sold their property to developers. The church was relocated to south Dallas, where it remains as a testament to African American accomplishment and perseverance in Texas.”

When the marker was unveiled, he took a breath. “Oh man, look at this,” he said to himself. It was the best day of his life.

Siegle, who has retired, is in contact with the African American Museum of Dallas. He wants to transfer all the interviews, photographs and other resources he has compiled to the museum, with the hope that a Little Egypt exhibit will be created. He said he also wants to digitally reconstruct a house in Little Egypt so people can virtually tour it. He would base this reconstruction on the McCoy home, he said, because the family has been at his side for the whole journey.