Page 86 - 2021 Sustainability Report

COMMUNITY WELL-BEING

Southwest Division Team Shows Continuing Support
for Residents of Historic Freedmen’s Community

From left: Randy Rutledge, Shalondria Galimore
and Bradley Jackson providing assistance and
support to the families of Joppa, Texas

In 2020, Rail Operations Manager Bradley Jackson first better schools, the installation of street lights, and sewer
worked with Production Supervisor Randy Rutledge, line extensions.
Management Associate Ashley Trappe and Executive
Administrative Assistant Nancee Trinh and Dallas’ South In 2021, Martin Marietta’s Southwest Division team again
Central Civic League to source, package and deliver worked with South Central Civic League president
backpacks filled with school supplies, along with hand Shalondria Galimore to help improve the Joppa
sanitizer and face coverings, to the children of Joppa, an community. This year, the Company donated $5,000 to
historic Dallas neighborhood near the Company’s Miller the Melissa Pierce Project, a local non-profit Galimore
Rail Yard in southeast Dallas. helped start which seeks to turn the former Melissa Pierce
school into a multipurpose center whose aim is “to help
Joppa, occasionally spelled Joppee, Joppie or Joppy, was educate, elevate and empower Joppa residents.”
first settled by formerly enslaved people from a nearby
plantation shortly after the Civil War. It is said to be one of The Melissa Pierce School was a segregated school that
three Freedmen’s Communities remaining in Texas and one was built in Joppa in 1953. It was part of the former
of the best preserved in the country. The South Central Wilmer-Hutchins Independent School District, south of
Civic League, whose main goal is to improve living Dallas. Melissa Pierce School was a little bit different than
conditions for local families, was founded in 1948 by Mrs. many other segregated schools of the era because the land
Laurabelle Foster and has been instrumental in the for the school was actually given by a resident of Joppa,
completion of many projects that benefited the Joppa Melissa Pierce. Known as Auntie Melissa, Pierce was was a
neighborhood, including the addition of paved streets, benefactor and a pillar of the community.

84 2021 SUSTAINABILITY REPORT