The Texas Freedom Colonies Project Spring 2020 Newsletter

JUNE 5 2020

VOLUME 1 ISSUE 2

SPRING REVIEW MARCH - MAY 2020

The official newsletter of the Texas Freedom Colonies Project

Pressing On in a Pandemic TXFC Project awarded national grants to save cemeteries and collaborate with black landowners and descendants statewide! We are taking our work virtual!

National Trust for Historic Preservation African American Action Fund Despite facing COVID-19, and social distancing we have continued our research and engagement. In the summer of 2019, we were awarded a $50,000 grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation's African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund for our project: "TX Freedom Colonies Project's Plan to Preserve Endangered Historic Black Settlements and Cemeteries." The grant will fund a strategic plan for expanding the Atlas' capacity to map settlements and serve as a registry for African American burial ground locations and conditions. The grant also funds testing the Atlas' use in the field by descendants trying to preserve cemeteries. We hope to begin testing in the field this summer so that we can start to prevent settlement cemeteries from being lost, forgotten, damaged, etc. The Houston Chronicle published an article about the Pleasant-Green Culbertson cemetery in Houston and how our project is going to assist in similar situations across the state. You can access the article here. This project is intended to create a foundation for platforms, research, and engagement strategies for use by not only grassroots preservationists and professionals in Texas, but in other states. This project is a collaboration between grassroots historical groups and TAMU's Center for Heritage Conservation, Center for Housing and Urban Development, and the Center for Digital Humanities Research.

Photo by Dr. Andrea Roberts, Pine Hill Cemetery

Whiting Foundation Public Engagement Fellowship The Project's founder was awarded a $50,000 Whiting Foundation Public Engagement Fellowship which will fund the Texas Freedom Colonies Storytelling Project. We are partnering with archives across the state in order to record settlement locations and stories as well as educate people on the issues of land retention and archiving strategies. Look to our Facebook page and Instagram to learn more about how descendants can record their memories, stories, and share their photographs and heirlooms from their Freedom Colonies. These items and their

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stories will then fill a digital showcase. Our final goal is to explore the ways that descendants sustain connections to these places through objects and storytelling, as well as to advocate for preserving these important sites of cultural and intergenerational wealth. To find out more about our project under this grant, you can click the link here.

Partnership with Landowners' Association of Texas (LAT) and TAMU School of Law In February, we were awarded a portion of a grant from the Southern Risk Management Education Center (SRMEC), a regional Extension Risk Management Education Center under the USDA, in partnership with the Landowners' Association of Texas and Texas A&M School of Law. We will be developing a survey as well as a series of evidencebased communication workshops for landowners of color and their families. These tools and instruments are meant to identify the areas of concern among communities suffering land loss, as well as recognize and record best practices and family communication around property ownership.

We will also be able to develop trainings and seminars for the Texas Freedom Colonies Atlas and Website, to strengthen connectivity and increase capacity for future projects.

Collaboration between TxFCP, Students, and Preservation Texas Produces New Guidebook for Identifying Freedom Colonies During the spring semester Dr. Roberts taught a class entitled "More than Monuments: Preservation as Social Justice," which gave undergraduate students the opportunity to research freedom colonies and their cemeteries, and included a field trip in February (link to video) to a freedom colony site in Kosse, Texas. The students worked with Preservation Texas to create a guidebook that would assist preservationists as well as the general public in identifying and preserving freedom colonies across the state. This guidebook was shared at the four-day Texas Cultural Landscape Symposium where Dr. Roberts also presented on the panel, "Making the Invisible Visible: Rural Cultural Landscapes." You can access the digital guidebook here - "Saving Texas Freedom Colonies."

Photo by Dr. Roberts, Kosse, Texas

LAT Conference, Houston, TX, Nov. 2019, Billy Lawton and Grace Kelly, Project Policy Analyst and Program Aide

Cultural Landscapes Symposium, Waco, TX From Left to Right - Dr. Perky Beisel (SFA University); Dr. Roberts; Sandro Canovas (Adobero and Activist).

freedomcoloniesproject@gmail.com | www.thetexasfreedomcoloniesproject.com | http://bit.ly/txfcpatlastwo

Spring Events Schuyler Carter Contributes to the Vernacular Architecture Forum Conference 2020 Panel While some conferences were postponed, we were still able to attend some virtually in order to present papers and posters over Zoom. On May 9th, both Dr. Roberts and team member Schuyler Carter, a first year Ph.D. student and our Community Partnership and Research Assistant, contributed to the Vernacular Architecture Forum's 2020 Conference. Carter spoke about the Black Town of Summit, Oklahoma and the historic footprint that its founder, her great-grandfather, and structures made within the community. Dr. Roberts was the panel's chair. Panelists are exploring invitations to publish a special issue or monograph based on the papers presented.

Photo of Black Panther Women from African American Intellectual History Society, Black Perspectives, #AAIHS2020 Conference: The Black Radical Tradition Website.

The Black Conference

Radical

Tradition

Fifth

Annual

Dr. Roberts attended the African American Intellectual History Society's Fifth Annual Conference on the Black Radical Tradition at the University of Texas at Austin from March 6-7th.

She presented as part of a panel on Digital Blackness: Visualizing (Post) Slavery. One notable attendee was Dr. Berry who founded the Texas Domestic Slave Trade Project, which maps Texas Slave Trade Routes through a digital visual history of Matagorda County. You can access the project here.

The Black Radical Tradition Conference, UT-Austin, (left to right), Dr. Coles, Dr. Roberts, Dr. Moody-Turner, Dr. Berry, and Dr. Foreman.

Photo from Schuyler Carter, St. Thomas Primitive Baptist Church, Summit, Oklahoma

Emerging Scholar Alert!

Photo by TAMU, 2nd year Ph.D. student Schuyler Carter, Community Partnership and Research Assistant (left), Rev. L.W. Thomas (right).

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Emerging Scholar Alert!

"The pandemic amplifies the need to concurrently address health care access and internet connectivity in Texas, particularly within rural areas. These are planning equity issues. The inability to telecommute and a lack of access to hospitals with intensive care units challenge freedom colony descendants’ efforts to revitalize economically depressed settlements and mean the difference between life and death during a pandemic. Our research brings attention to the need to expand broadband access and expose freedom colonies’ infrastructure equity issues."

Photo by TAMU, 3rd year Ph.D. student Jennifer Blanks, Project Atlas Coordinator. The Climate Change Debate" by Newton (Google Books).

Jennifer Blanks Publishes Essay in Climate Change Book We began May by celebrating a successful publication from our own Jennifer Blanks, second year Ph.D. student and Atlas Coordinator, who wrote the essay "Cemetery Management Today or Reinternment Management Tomorrow" in the book Climate Change Debate: A Reference Guide by Dr. David Newton, Ed.D. (2020). In her essay Blanks argues that cemeteries connect people to loved ones across time, and that as climate change issues progress then the risk to vulnerable cemeteries also increases. Many freedom colony cemeteries are located in bottom lands and coastal areas that are prone to flooding. The current methods of cemetery management are inadequate to address these issues and Blanks proposes the development and use of strategic mitigation planning that will identify, protect, and preserve these sacred spaces for generations to come.

TAMU Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center. ((2020).

HHRConversation. You can access the issue here,

Upcoming Event! freedomcoloniesproject@gmail.com | www.thetexasfreedomcoloniesproject.com | http://bit.ly/txfcpatlastwo

News Publications Houston Chronicle. (Jan 2020). "Houston's Pleasant Green-Culbertson cemetery is like many AfricanAmerican graveyards - rundown and blocked off."

San Antonio Express-News. (Jan 2020).

"Conservationists and Descendants Explore Forgotten San Antonio African American Cemetery."

Austin-American Statesman. (Mar 2020). "Project seeks to memorialize Freedom Colonies in Bastrop County."

Texas A&M University. (May 2020). "Texas A&M Names 10 Arts and Humanities Fellows for 2020."

Academic Publications Dr. Roberts published a chapter in "Issues in Preservation Policy," entitled "The End of Bootstraps and Good Masters: Fostering Social Inclusion by Creating Counternarratives."(2020) She provides insight on building agency, claiming space, challenging materiality, and internalizing change. You can access the complete book here.

Dr. Roberts won the Catherine W. Bishir Prize at the Vernacular Architecture Forum, for "Until the Lord Come Get Me, It Burn Down, Or the Next Storm Blow it Away": The Aesthetics of Freedom in African American Vernacular Homestead Preservation" in Buildings and Landscapes 26(2) (2019): 73-97 (May 2020).

Cited in Haltom, M. (Mar 2020).

Empowering Resident Leaders: Lessons from NeighborWorks' Community Leadership Institute.

Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.

Project Goals Recording and safeguarding stories and materials associated with freedom colonies' origins and decline.

Hosting and maintaining an interactive, publicly accessible Atlas and Database of freedom colony locations including GIS layers indicating development and ecological threats.

Identifying resources for and codeveloping community resilience strategies and policies with freedom colonies descendants using the contents of the Atlas and Database.

freedomcoloniesproject@gmail.com | www.thetexasfreedomcoloniesproject.com | http://bit.ly/txfcpatlastwo

Take Action!

What is the Texas Freedom Colonies Project?

The Texas Freedom Colonies Project is an educational, social justice initiative dedicated to preserving the heritage of Texas' historic African American settlements, and the planners and preservationists that made them possible. We are researchers who map disappearing places and cocreate resilience strategies with endangered communities.

How can you help us?

Send us information about your events, FB pages or websites!

DONATE!

https://give.am/TexasFreedomColoniesProject

Submit a Survey Submit a freedom colony or memory by accessing our surveys either on paper or online here. Use the "Share your story" tab on the Atlas to access the survey where you can input your story, information, photos, videos, and locations. If you have issues using our tools, you can send us an email or access our instructional YouTube here.

Spread the Word Follow us on all our social media channel and share our information with friends, family, and colleagues.

Join our Advisory Board The board is a group of volunteers with expertise that can help descendants and the Project do its work. You must send a resume and 2-3 paragraphs explaining why you think you should be considered.

Want to use our logo or our research?

If you are an affiliate site or project and would like to use our Atlas, its images, or our logo - please contact us for permission or cite us.

Fill out a request form Due to the large volume of requests we receive, we have created a form that will allow us to prioritize opportunities as well as allocate resources and womanpower towards tasks. When you email us at our email address, you will automatically get an email with the request form attached.

You can now send us donations electronically through the Texas A&M Foundation portal!

Scan the QR code above or click on the link!

Newsletter Edited by Grace Kelly, Program Aide

freedomcoloniesproject@gmail.com | www.thetexasfreedomcoloniesproject.com | http://bit.ly/txfcpatlastwo