- The one thing that was clear was the, the, the sadness of losing the neighborhood.

The sadness of losing those kind of family ties and saddened by its, its demise.

And also, we're willing to fight for portions of it if they, if they could still - Little Mexico once a vibrant community, rich in family, culture and tradition.

Its history echoes, themes the country grapples with today.

Refugees seeking a better life.

They face discrimination, oppression, and even murder at the hands of police officers.

- People disappearing, finding bodies in the Trinity River that last time they were seen were, were the police officers.

- I remember some guy picked up a news stand and threw it.

Then the pillaging started.

- Yesterday's outbreak left a trail destruction up and down Main and Commerce Street.

- Little remains of the area's largest barrio, but its story cannot be forgotten.

- We had a big influx of Mexican Americans coming out of Mexico during the Mexican Revolution.

- In 1910, the Mexican Revolution began.

More than a million died in a decade long war that drove hundreds of thousands out of Mexico.

- My family settled in the Little Mexico area.

My grandfather Constantino Villasana and my grandmother.

They came over in 1916.

The revolution started in 1910, and like most revolutions it had gotten really, really violent.

And anybody who was old enough to carry a rifle and were conscripting them and putting them and into battle - The Villasana family, like many settle in Little Mexico, the largest barrio in Dallas, Texas.

Before it was known as Little Mexico, the area was predominantly Jewish and was called Little Jerusalem.

- The, the Jewish community had also developed their own little economy with little stores and, and, and things like that.

So when the Mexican people began to move into Little Mexico, oftentimes they would buy some of these buildings and buy some of these businesses.

- Little Mexico gained popularity thanks to the railway, which not only served as a direct line away from the violence, but was a source of employment.

Soon word spread that Dallas had a growing community of Mexican Americans.

Ideal for migrants, looking for a new home with reminders of the old.

- It was just a great community with lots of shops and cafes and cantinas, and bowling alleys and barber shops, hairdressers, all kinds of bakeries and tortillerías.

So it was not a large area, but it had everything in it pretty much really wanted.

If you were involved in, in, in the Mexican culture, - There was a boxing club there.

That's where I learned how to box, learned how to play baseball, learned how to box there.

The celebrations of food was just incredible.

The comradeship of kids coming together.

By the 1930s, just two decades after the start of the Mexican Revolution, Little Mexico's population had grown to 15,000.

Still, it looked more like a small rural town than the bustling urban center it is today.

- And in the early part of the existence of the, of the barrio, it was, the streets were not paved.

There was no sidewalks, very little infrastructure at all.

- And of course, Pike Park, that was another big community center.

You had people from all the barrios going into Pike Park.

- Pike Park was the city's first public green space north of downtown established in 1913.

Although it was in the heart of Dallas' largest Mexican American community, the park was segregated, falling in line with other racist policies seen around the city.

- They used to tell the Mexican kids that they couldn't come into the pool at Pike Park until the very end of the day.

Then they could be the last kids to swim in the pool.

So the water was, you know, this was before they had all those automatic cleanings.

Water's not that great.

And then the kids would have to clean the pool for the next day.

So when white children came to play, they would have clean new water untouched by Mexican skin.

- Policies like that illustrate a longstanding sentiment in Dallas, aimed at people of Mexican descent, a prejudice that shaped activists in the barrio, like Poncho Medrano.

- He was a force to be reckoned with.

He was very much a great leader in Dallas, - Born and raised in Little Mexico.

Poncho Madano is arguably the most iconic leader to emerge from the community.

His influence carried on in Dallas for generations expanding throughout the state and country.

- When he was working, he was approached by a union member and the union member said, Hey, you know, we're getting paid X amount of money.

They're treating us this way.

It's not right.

You know, here's a pamphlet, join the union.

So he started getting really involved in unions - Identifying as a Chicano.

His focus expanded beyond labor rights to broader issues of discrimination.

And as more and more Mexican Americans in Dallas fell victim to police brutality, Medrano and other civil rights leaders took action.

- Unfortunately, there had been police killings of citizens in Little Mexico as long back as we, anybody.

When I do was various research in my book people talked about, and it was not a, not a Friday night where, you know, if you didn't get stopped by the cops, - I don't think it's possible to really know and understand the history and growth of the city of Dallas and the development of the city of Dallas.

Without knowing the story of Santos Rodriguez and the Little Mexico barrio, - The death story of a 12-year-old Dallas boy began here at the Fina service station on Cedar Springs.

Two boys were spotted breaking into the back window of the service station.

Eight dollars in cash was missing from a pried open cigarette machine inside the station.

Two officers picked up 12-year-old Santos Rodriguez and his 13-year-old brother David at their nearby residence six blocks away, and brought them back here to the scene of the burglary for questioning.

While the handcuffed boys were sitting inside the car, Officer Darrell L. Cain pointed his 357 Magnum at Santos' head in an attempt to make him answer questions about the burglary.

Seconds later, Santos couldn't answer any questions.

He was dead with a bullet in the left temple.

Of course, the unanswered question in everybody's mind is why, why did a Dallas police officer point his pistol at a youngster's head?

Why does 12-year-old Santos Rodriguez have to be dead?

- It shows us a lot about, you know, police activity in the seventies.

It shows us a lot about the political activities that were happening here.

It shows us a lot about community responses, community activism.

- I was working at Children's Television Workshop there, the Little School House behind Channel 13, and I got a call from my mother.

And so my mother knew Bessie and knew her mom, and so she heard about it.

I don't know whether she heard from her.

She heard on the radio.

Anyway, she called me and said, Bessie's son was killed.

And she said they were killed by policemen and what are you gonna do about it?

I got on the phone that afternoon there at, in my office and started calling people.

We set up a meeting at Pikes Park.

We had a large meeting and a lot of anger, a lot of emotion.

- It's been alleged that he's been involved.

He was involved in previous cases two years ago of police brutality cases.

And they, they're documented instances where, where it's alleged.

And our community is very, very upset over, over the transpires of the fact that he's been assigned to the barrio, assigned to our community.

And of course, that he's killed one of our, one of our people.

- Darrell Cain had actually been moved to Little Mexico because members of the black community said, you can't let that man come here.

He killed a child.

He shot an 18-year-old who was lying down in grass.

He cannot come here.

He's killed before.

He's going to do it again.

- What I think changed with what, what made the Santos murder stand out and be different was he was just a little boy and everyone I've interviewed and talked to that was just too much.

- We're here to, to, to get organized in terms of what are we gonna do as a group of people, Chicanos in this area, all over the city.

- That they had never been exposed to like they paroled on this little child today.

Now, when they get to where the abuse the children, it is time that we unite and we go before the city council and take some type of positive action.

- It was hot July in the afternoon, we gathered at Kennedy Plaza and myself, Rev.

Sanchez, Rev.

[Inaudible] Tino Ramirez, a group of the Brown Berets.

- Inside that city council chamber everybody's in there.

They'll listen.

If you send [Inaudible] They're going to throw them crazy.

[Crowd Shouts] - You know, we, we led the march and it was peaceful, and then we had speeches at city hall, old city hall, and then another group of young people, African Americans and Latinos together, and some had been drinking the heat, the alcohol, the anger, the emotion.

And they joined us and they said, no, no, no, no, let's, let's march again.

And so I huddled up and said, okay, let's go, but you know, let's calm it down, calm the rhetoric down.

And by the time they got back to the same place where we had started the steps, there's a lot of anger.

A lot of anger.

- [Police radio Chatter] - We had an arrangement with Chief Dyson not to have the tact squad visible at all.

They were behind the library, and I remember some guy picked up a news stand and threw it into the window of a liquor store.

Then the pillaging started.

- The preliminary damage estimates are in after last Saturday's disturbance in downtown Dallas.

- Those blocks of Main and Commerce sustained a great number of broken windows and some missing merchandise.

- But somebody made a mistake and they left a motorcycle on Commerce parked next to the city hall.

They blew up the, the motorcycle, they smashed the squad car.

People got on top of the squad car.

We were trying to, you know, get people to not riot but by that time it was too late.

The, the tactical squad then was unleashed and they started arresting people.

- In the end, the officer only served two and a half years of a five year sentence.

He passed at the age of 75 in 2019.

As for the family of Santos Rodriguez, they never received compensation for the loss of their child.

The old wounds of Little Mexico are slowly starting to heal.

Over 50 years later, the community still mourns the murder of Santos Rodriguez.

- It was an apology that one Dallas family had been waiting decades to hear, and today they finally received it.

- On behalf of the Dallas Police Department as a father, I am sorry, - The recreation center in a park where the child once played, was renamed in his honor in a statue of him was erected in 2018.

- Neighborhoods change.

That's inevitable.

Little Mexico is going to change.

When we saw Little Mexico disappear, we didn't have anybody on the city council.

There were no people on, on the plan commission or zoning.

So what's changed now is I see, of course we do have people, the Mexicans and Mexican American and and African Americans on the city councils, they appoint people to the planning board and commissions like that.

And so we have more and neighborhood associations have, have sprung up and are important.

What I see now is I see neighborhoods trying to retain some of their quality of their life, understanding that things will change.

Properties might be, might be impacted and turnover in in population or whatever, but you don't have to destroy and lose entire neighborhoods to gentrification.

- Today the skyline of Uptown is speckled with million dollar high-rise apartments, upscale restaurants, and high-end shops.

It's a far cry from its legacy as Dallas' Little Mexico where its residents formed a strong community.

Despite gentrification and other changes, the seeds planted still bear fruit and Little Mexico's history and impact lives on.