HISTORY & CULTURE

How has Texas changed in 20 years? She went home to find out.

After decades as a photojournalist in the Middle East, Tanya Habjouqa turns her lens to the place of her youth, where she says, “If you weren’t part of the privileged few, you were forgotten.”

Captain Tom Hicks, 53, a former U.S. Army pilot, stands in the back of his pickup truck dressed in a George Washington costume in Fort Worth, Texas, in July 2022. A father to three children, he comes from a close-knit family connected with his community. His family had joined their neighborhood’s Independence Day parade days earlier, installing a swimming pool in the back of the truck from which the children spritzed onlookers with water guns.

Serving in the Army for 20 years, Hicks deployed to Iraq twice and Afghanistan three times where he says he flew Blackhawk helicopters, reconnaissance airplanes, and drones. When his second son was born in 2003, he was stationed in Iraq. “I spent most of my adult life defending our country. I love our country.…. We just need to make it a better place. Whether we take a right or left turn, let’s just be adults and be respectful.”

I’ve known Tom since I was a teenager; he’s married to my best friend’s sister. We lost touch, though we were in Iraq at same time experiencing two very different realities.

Photographs byTanya Habjouqa

Text byAmy McKeever

July 18, 2023

9 min read

This is one of eight stories from The Past Is Present project, a collaboration between National Geographic and For Freedoms.

Tanya Habjouqa experienced one of the first great ruptures of her life when she was four years old. While the family was living in Jordan, her parents divorced—and in the wake of the breach, her American mother brought Tanya and her brother back home to live in Fort Worth, Texas.

It wasn’t easy for a young multicultural girl to grow up in the heart of Texas in the 1980s and 1990s. She witnessed systemic racism against her Black classmates, and she couldn’t participate in activities like yearbook and photography that seemed to be the sole domain of blonde cheerleaders with wealthy PTA moms.

“If you weren’t part of the privileged few, you were forgotten,” she says.

Tanya left Texas in 2002 and returned to the Middle East, where she spent the next 20 years living in Jordan and Palestine as a photojournalist. While documenting the violence dividing that region, she watched in horror as hierarchies of class and race seemed to become even more entrenched in the U.S. Would she even be able to recognize the Texas of her youth?

She would soon find out: In this photo essay, Tanya reflects on the two months that she spent reconnecting with old friends in Fort Worth and examining the racial and economic fault lines of a place that she had once called home.

girl in quinceañera gown dances in front of her friends — Emma Barberena, a junior at Arlington Heights High School, was given a choice for her 15th birthday: Her family could buy her a car or she could have a quinceañera, a traditional party that celebrates a girl’s transition to adulthood.

Barberena chose an elaborate quince—replete with costume changes and group dancing that she choreographed herself with friends from school. Led by a high-energy DJ, her party was attended by a wide variety of students from various ethnicities and cliques dancing together to everything from country and Latin music to reggaeton.

A fan of musical theatre, Barberena dreams of studying forensic psychology at Columbia University. She said she cares deeply about social justice issues—including the rise in threats to the rights of LGBTQ people and communities of color in Texas. “Our main issue is ignorance causing a huge division in our society,” she says. “My goal is to little by little share the spark in speaking out to my fellow youth community.”

I, too, attended Arlington Heights High School. As a rebellious teenager, I did not find my place at that school—save for Ms. Marion, the speech teacher who lovingly called me her “quasi-militant feminist.” She was the only person who took an interest and nurtured me in what was not at the time a political environment.

Vivian Hicks, right, and her best friend, Georgia Brown, stand for a portrait on the “pipe.” Tucked away behind the most prominent mansions in Fort Worth along the Trinity River, the pipe was the spot for drinking, kissing, and sometimes just being in nature in my youth. To most locals, it remains a mysterious entity.

Vivian and Georgia both graduated a few months ago and are headed off to college. Georgia will be attending Stephen F. Austin State University to study wildlife management, while Vivian will attend Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas.

I was seeking hints of my old self while photographing these high school settings. But I found no angry quasi-militant feminist. Things were subverted—in a good way. I found Black cheerleaders, a Black prom queen, blonde cheerleaders who questioned their privilege, and female students who were worried about their rights being taken away with the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Children of all economic classes could access dance, photography, art—things had improved.

two girls float in the water of a lake — Lola Carter, right, and her friend Lexi McGoodwin, left, float together in Eagle Mountain Lake on a summer day. Lola, now entering her sophomore year at the University of Montana, is studying literature and wants to be a teacher. Both girls had lead roles as cheerleaders in their high school theatrical adaptation of *Bring it On*—and both were also on their high school cheer team, which Lola co-captained.

As I danced between characters and locations for this project, I noticed a connecting thread: The kids who seemed healthier and happier had access to nature.

A billboard off the I-35W highway in Burleson, seeming to mock transgender people, reading,“Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and other genders are from Uranus.” This sign reminded me of the Texas I knew too well when I left.

There was some light online petitioning to have it removed, but the sign was still up as of April 2023. More recently, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed into law a bill that bars transgender kids from getting puberty blockers and hormone therapies—a law that could face legal challenges before it takes effect on September 1.

One of the topics discussed at this Fort Worth school board meeting on July 26, 2022, was the possibility of dismantling the Independent School District’s racial equity committee. People with conservative viewpoints held the most signs—and were the loudest—arguing that the commitment to equity was akin to indoctrination.

However, another parent shared why she was passionately in favor of keeping the committee in place. As she had explained to her five-year-old before the meeting, she said, “An equity committee is a group of people that try to make sure every child has what they need to learn.”

Twins Raylee, left, and Lauren Strong, center, stand for a portrait with friend and fellow cheer team member Lola Carter. Lauren and Lola were best friends while attending Arlington Heights High School, despite their differing political beliefs. “She’s red and I’m blue,” Lola says, adding, “I am actually more green.”

But they both acknowledge the complexity of certain issues—and talk openly about them. While discussing the Black Lives Matter movement, Lauren told me she didn’t feel it was her place to post about Black Lives Matter on social media—and Lola jumped in to explain why she did. Here’s their exchange:

*Lola*: I understand her. I reposted it in support of my friends that it does affect, because I am white, I am blonde, I am a skinny cheerleader, and I try to break the stereotype. I am not Black and I do not fully understand what people of color go through, but we have people on the team and that is a big part of the reason that I posted about it. They do talk about it, comfortably and openly.

*Lauren*: My thought about it is that I was raised in a household where skin complexion did not matter—shitty people are going to be shitty people no matter what their skin color is.

*Lola*: I found it better to educate myself on the matter. I recognize that there is a problem, and I needed to show my support. A church was having a Black Lives Matter activity, and I went with my mother, my sister and my grandmother. We were the only white people in the crowd, and we felt welcomed, and every single person there was being like “Thank you for being here.”

Kenneth “Wolf” Sanson stands with his daughter Zakera, 8, on his small horse farm in the Como neighborhood of Fort Worth, which is 46 percent Black and more than 30 percent Hispanic. Sanson says he graduated from his Fort Worth’s Western Hills High School without knowing how to read or write, and that other members of the school rodeo team resented his presence. He rents the land but wishes he owned it so he could make a petting zoo for kids in the neighborhood. He says he holds onto it for his daughter to be healthy and to know nature.

Zion Carr, right, 11, poses for a portrait with his brother, Zayden, 6, in a family member’s home. Zion witnessed a Fort Worth police officer fatally shoot his aunt, Atatiana Jefferson, in her home in the early morning hours of October 12, 2019. A neighbor had called the city to conduct a wellness check because Atatiana’s front door was open. She and Zion had been up late playing video games and had opened the door to vent the home after burning some hamburgers.

Aaron Dean, who resigned from the police force two days after the shooting, was the first officer to face a murder charge in Tarrant County for a shooting committed while on duty. On December 19, 2022, Dean was sentenced to 11 years, 10 months, and 12 days in prison for the killing.

I found Spirit Atkins, 11, to be an incredibly empathic soul beyond her years. Her mother is an artist and a teacher, and her family deeply believes in God and the church.

Spirit asked me geographical and political questions about the Middle East and what it was like for my children to live there. She has been accepted this September into the sixth-grade class of the Young Women’s Leadership Academy, a high performing school in Fort Worth.

A cadet and an off-duty officer at the Fort Worth Police Department headquarters participate in “scenario-based training” on what to do when someone is evading arrest. The police department has been subject to two high-profile investigations in the last few years for the murder of 28-year-old Atatiana Jefferson in her home by an officer and the brutal arrest of Jaqueline Craig and her daughter.

Beyond the standard training pictured here, the police department says it has created a training scenario similar to the circumstances of Craig’s arrest to better equip their future cadets to handle calls that are stressful while still ensuring maximum safety.

“We acknowledged what we have contributed to the community,” police chief Neil Noakes told me in an interview. He said that the department is moving away from over-policing and attempting to build peaceful relationships with communities—which he acknowledges “need a lot more resources than what they are getting.”

“My favorite James Baldwin quote is, ‘Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it’s faced,’” he added. “I would say across the country that people point at the murder of George Floyd as the cause. It was not the cause; it was a spark, and it’s been brewing for generations… It was hard to gain that trust with the police back, and we started from scratch.”

Jim Austin, owns a commercial real estate company and, along with his wife Gloria, is co-founder of the National Multicultural Western Heritage Foundation. Rather than focus on the stereotypical narrative of the white cowboy, the museum at the Fort Worth Stockyards offers what it calls “a true and complete historical perspective of the people and activities that built the unique culture of the American West”—including the contributions of people of Hispanic, Native, African, and Asian descent.

female students stand in line inside a gymnasium waiting to get fitted — A squad of cheerleaders at Arlington Heights High School try on uniforms for the upcoming year. I had many irreverent conversations with the people I met while reporting this project, including with subversive blonde cheerleaders and Black cheerleaders, who were unlike the cheer squad I remember from my youth.

A squad of cheerleaders at Arlington Heights High School try on uniforms for the upcoming year. I had many irreverent conversations with the people I met while reporting this project, including with subversive blonde cheerleaders and Black cheerleaders, who were unlike the cheer squad I remember from my youth.

Myster Alston, 7, sits in his sister’s lap. The Alston family lives in Las Vegas Trail Neighborhood, a community filled with large apartment complexes, and pools that are either empty or closed—even in the raging Texas summer heat. The economically distressed area has long been considered dangerous.

Millicent Allen says she named her son Myster knowing that he’s going to go through tough situations as a Black man. “ They have no other choice but to call him Myster. They have to respect him.”

When I was a kid, I witnessed my first incident of racism in an apartment complex down the street from where Myster lives. A small black child, just a few years older than I was at the time, was surrounded by white preteens rhythmically chanting the “N” word. I did not know what it meant, but I stood in frozen horror as I saw the way his head was downcast and the meanness on their faces.

I often felt like an awkward extra even then. I really did not know what I would feel about returning—or refocusing my journalistic lens from the Middle East to Texas. What I did not expect was that the very approach I finessed while photographing people coping with trauma in the Middle East would prove useful in Texas—a traumatized kid is a traumatized kid.

I can say now that people are talking. Really talking. And communities are forming to hold up a wide range of voices. Exploring my frayed family ties and friendships in a post-Trump America yielded a lot of dialogue. What took my breath away was the younger generation—singing, dancing, and protesting, eloquently articulating their pain and awareness of tumultuous political changes that were eroding their rights in clear distinct dialogue. Whether anyone will listen remains to be seen.

Tanya Habjouqa is a visual journalist, artist, and educator based in East Jerusalem in the Middle East. Trained in anthropology and journalism, with an MA in Global Media and emphasis on Middle East Politics, her work focuses on gender, representations of otherness, dispossession, resettlement, and human rights. With close to 20 years experience, Habjouqa has become a leading voice in the advancement of new documentary practices which seek to reframe news and politics through a more nuanced, culturally literate lens. She lived in the Dallas-Fort Worth area between the age of four to 25. Follow her on Instagram @habjouqa.

This is one of eight stories from The Past Is Present project, a collaboration between National Geographic and For Freedoms.