ABSTRACT
After Juneteenth, 1865, formerly enslaved Texans founded more than 500 freedom colonies in the state. Recently emancipated people seeking refuge from political repression and violence created these communities through intentional and tactical design. However, most freedom colonies were founded in ecologically vulnerable landscapes, making them disproportionately susceptible to flooding and other natural disasters in the present day. Further, these places; secluded nature and lack of documentation led to contemporary invisibility and land loss, leading to displacement from public history and planning. The essay tracks the history of displacement and dispossession that has led to the destruction, neglect, or dismantling of communities initially designed to protect African Americans from structural racism. Then the author explains how these communities’ unique challenges require new planning and design tools to detect the interplay of historical and contemporary conditions contributing to the cultural erasure of African American placemaking. The author’s Texas Freedom Colonies Project Atlas maps and aggregates sociocultural emplaced data, creating a collective memory of Black placemaking that is then described. The Atlas enables advocates to argue that these historically significant places are worthy of preservation stories, images, and documents about these disappearing landscapes.
