Dean Highland is one of Waco’s more densely-populated neighborhoods and has lots of history, lots of potholes, and some important city institutions. The neighborhood is rectangular-shaped and it stretches from McFerrin Ave in the north to Bosque Road in the south, and from MacArthur/33rd Street in the west to 25th/26th Street in the east.

The neighborhood is as diverse ethnically and financially as it is historically vibrant. The diversity and the history of the neighborhood are the reasons for establishing an interview series. The series, which is being done with the guidance and full support of the Institute for Oral History at Baylor University, has three main purposes:

1) It’s an attempt to bring neighbors together through the medium of stories; to remind us, as Dean Highlanders, that life is a beautiful thing and neighbors are an integral part of it. The bringing together of neighbors will also tie in to the Dean Highland Neighborhood Association’s efforts at recruiting more Dean Highlanders to join it and thus to participate in the all-important practice of self-government.

2) It is also going to be an attempt to look at the relationship between historic institutions and people in the neighborhood. The history of Dean Highland is the history of important city institutions. The neighborhood’s heart is the old Hillcrest hospital complex, which has since been

torn down, and the prestigious Highland Baptist Church, a large evangelical church situated in the southern end of the neighborhood. On the polar end of Dean Highland, on 30th and McKenzie, is Zion Hill Baptist Church, an old Black church that still brings in large crowds for Sunday worship.

Notched into this intricate weave of prizewinning century-old homes, ethnically-diverse and still-populated housing tracts for the working masses, prominent and well-respected religious institutions, and the ruins of a massive and vital medical complex, is the 10-story home of the Waco Police Department.

Sometimes institutions can be overrated, or there can be an over-focus on them by scholars and policymakers, and by bringing the perspectives of actual residents into the picture we can help to better assess the importance of long-standing institutions to our lives and the lives of those who came before us. When told through the eyes and memories of Dean Highland’s residents, we can better gauge just how important these institutions of religion, government, and medicine are (or were) to the people who actually live in Dean Highland.

3) The third purpose is more quixotic than realistic, but there may be policy implications for this interview series. As the world continues to urbanize, city governance is necessarily going to have to become more complex and sophisticated. In a society such as ours, where self-government is the stated aim, neighborhood associations and universities are going to have to step up and take a hands-on approach in how policy is decided and executed. This interview series could thus be considered a form of policy experimentation and, as such, we are grateful for your involvement.