PEER-REVIEWED
Forthcoming
Andrea Roberts, Valentina Aduen, Jennifer Blanks, Schuyler Carter, Kendall Girault, Digital Juneteenth: Territorializing the Freedom Colony Diaspora. (2022) Public Culture. Abstract: After Juneteenth, formerly enslaved African Americans in Texas founded hundreds of historic Black settlements known as freedom colonies. Later, freedom colonies’ populations dispersed, physical traces disappeared, and memories of locations vanished as descendants passed away. In the absence of buildings and legally recognized borders, intangible heritage—stories, ephemeral traditions—define a sense of place. Betraying the perception that these places have disappeared, founders’ descendants express commitments to freedom colonies by returning periodically to plan commemorative events, rehabilitate historic structures, and steward cemeteries. The Texas Freedom Colonies Project (The TXFC Project), a team of faculty and student researchers, documents settlements while supporting descendant communities’ historic preservation aims. By making diasporic publics legible and increasing the visibility of communities’ settlement patterns and remaining extant features, The TXFC Project elevates stakeholders’ concerns in urban planning domains. In 2020, COVID-19’s social distancing requirements challenged diasporic descendants’ efforts to foster social cohesion. Consequently, The TXFC Project hosted a Facebook Live “talk show,” leveraging social media platforms to amplify freedom colony descendants’ work. The team analyzed event transcripts revealing cultural adaptations to socially restrictive conditions during Juneteenth commemorations and indicating that virtual storytelling helped territorialize widely dispersed, unbounded places for stakeholders facing natural and human-made disruptions.
Published
Melnick, R., Roberts, A., McGilvray, J., (2022). Melnick, R. Z., Roberts, A., & McGilvray, J. Integrity as Process and Feature: Cultural Landscapes of Underrepresented Communities. Change Over Time. Abstract: National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) integrity evaluation is the primary means by which historic resources are documented, designated, managed, and interpreted in the United States, measuring the degree to which a property’s defining features, linked to a specific period of significance, are unchanged. Standard application of this integrity process fails to recognize more complex and layered historic places that often comprise contested spaces with underrepresented histories. The cultural landscape concept can strengthen application of the NRHP integrity evaluation, with an understanding of place and placemaking that is both process and feature based, considering these places as evolving systems with critical inherent change. Case studies illustrate how current applications of integrity lack cultural and environmental literacy and how this practice marginalizes, erases, or ignores minoritized groups’ heritage. The authors argue that resistance to change, including cultural discontinuity or normative processes of change over time, perpetuate assumptions that marginalize lived experience, local constructions of landscape dynamics, and place meaning. Inequalities, misapplication, and erasure perpetuated by the currently accepted approach to assessing “integrity” in historic places is revealed. Recommendations are presented to broaden our thinking and evaluation of integrity with application of the cultural landscape lens to a range of historic resources.
Roberts, A., & Butler, M. L. (2022). “Contending with the Palimpsest: Reading the Land through Black Women’s Emotional Geographies.” Abstract: Public history depicting Southern landscapes subjugates Black lived experience, foregrounding Anglo settlerism and romanticizing antebellum-era spaces. This article engages a novel and digital humanities platform as counternarrative spaces dismantling dominant narratives informing these landscapes. The Cutting Season (2012) depicts a Black woman engaging folklore, archives, and family history; solving a murder on a plantation; and constructing a counternarrative of the landscape. Similarly, The Texas Freedom Colonies Project Atlas crowdsources stories and archival material to document Black settlements where descendants are displaced-in-place. By recording Black women’s embodied place memories, the site helps Black women resist the deliberate forgetting of endangered settlements and reconstruct emotional geographies. Black women’s counternarratives illuminate their emotional geographies, world building, and rebuilding of communities presumed inert or placeless.
Sitton, T. Revised by Roberts, A., Kelly, G., and Carter, S. (2022). “Freedmen’s Settlements”
Blanks, J., Abuabara, A., Roberts, A., & Semien, J. (2021). “Preservation at the Intersections:
Patterns of Disproportionate Multihazard Risk and Vulnerability in Louisiana’s Historic African
American Cemeteries.” Abstract: Cancer Alley is an 136,794 meters stretch of chemical and industrial plants along the Mississippi River between New Orleans, Louisiana, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Since 2005, the area has experienced more than two dozen hurricanes with major rainstorms in between. Cemeteries, although just as vulnerable to storms and cancer-causing chemicals as the local population and natural environment, are overlooked casualties of frequent hurricanes and plant siting. During hurricanes and annual flooding, cemeteries in South Louisiana sustain significant damage such as dislodged coffins, difficult to reintern remains, and burial records damaged or destroyed. African American cemeteries are vulnerable to climate change impacts such as flooding, are often inaccessible, undocumented, and rarely recognized as environmental justice concerns, until now. Recently, environmental justice activists have mobilized to resist a Formosa plant’s siting close to a historic black cemetery in St James Parish. The authors hypothesized that the Formosa siting is not an isolated case but instead reflects a pattern of racialized multihazard exposure of African American people and cemeteries. They created a database of cemetery locations—many of which were previously unmapped—based on the race or ethnicity of those interred in two parishes. Then, they performed a spatial analysis comparing cemeteries’ exposure to flood hazards and proximity to hazardous chemical sites based on racial makeup. Findings show that black cemeteries have more multihazard exposure than other cemeteries due to accessibility and flooding. Results indicate that racialized multihazard exposure of cemeteries should be an emerging concern of Gulf Coast disaster recovery planners and researchers.
Andrea Roberts (2020). “Preservation without Representation: Making CLG Programs Vehicles for Inclusive Leadership, Historic Preservation, and Engagement.” Abstract: This article examines public historic preservation agencies’ ability to support social inclusion aims within the context of the Certified Local Government (CLG) program. Though administered by the Texas Historical Commission, Texas’ State CLG program is federally-funded and makes available special access to technical assistance, grants, and loans to qualifying communities contingent on compliance. Program surveys the state staff administered to city and county historical commissions with the CLG designation indicate challenges around diversifying their leadership and identifying training opportunities. This article reviews those surveys to detect insights into how the state CLG program can create spaces in which local commissions can increase their “representativeness” through changes in assessment and training content. Specifically, I analyze two government assessment tools used to evaluate local CLGs’ ability to meet federal and state training and participation expectations. I compare these survey results to self-assessment activities and questionnaires collected during a pilot training on implicit bias, outreach, and cultural resource surveying I conducted with multiple CLGs in Gonzales, Texas. Findings suggest more creatively designed training and capacity building is necessary around inclusion, identifying structural barriers to participation, and foundational knowledge of historic preservation and planning practice, and ethics.
Andrea Roberts (2020). “The End of Bootstraps and Good Masters: Fostering Social Inclusion through Counternarrative Creation.” Abstract: “Andrea Roberts explains how the Texas Freedom Colonies Atlas, another online mapping tool, serves as a platform for collaborators to collect and store data about Black settlements. But as Roberts asserts, rendering such places visible and geographic requires spaces for cocreation with those whose stories have been omitted, annulled, or deliberately forgotten. Her work with East Texas freedom colony descendants to record the origin stories of Black communities critically illustrates how dominant white constructions of place and public history obscure past and present Black agency in place-keeping and preservation. While the archival void of Black histories and places complicates this disremembering, Roberts explores new ways of listening for and documenting the “null value.” She describes place-based activities of storytelling, stewardship, and annual commemorative events, which at once reproduce cultural knowledge about freedom colonies and create spaces of counternarrative. Settlements like the freedom colonies are becoming increasingly invisible with the loss of populations and buildings, especially as access to traditional preservation tools—like designation of historic districts— has been limited due to structural barriers and bias. But the persistent relationship between people and place, even if largely dependent on oral traditions rather than historic buildings, speaks to the power of space and spatial encounters for memory, recognition, and the decentering of dominant narratives.”
Sletto, B., Stiphany, K., Futrell Winslow, J., Roberts, A., Torrado, M., Reyes, A., Reyes, A., Yunda, J., Wirsching, C., Choi, K. and Tajchman, K., 2020. Demystifying Academic Writing in the Doctoral Program: Writing Workshops, Peer Reviews, and Scholarly Identities.
Andrea Roberts. 2020. “Haunting As Agency” Abstract: This paper contextualizes the most recent discovery of 95 forgotten graves of incarcerated laborers at a public school construction site within ongoing tensions around public history, race, and development in Sugar Land, Texas, a Houston-area bedroom community. Unearthed along with the graves is the state’s long history of Black labor exploitation, from enslavement to convict leasing to employment with Imperial Sugar. In this article, I engage the haunting of Black laboring bodies in the landscape from the perspective of both that of a researcher and former resident of Fort Bend County confronted with the purposeful forgetting of Black geographies, bodies, and lives. I expose through critical analysis of government documents, online digital exhibits, maps, photos, and autoethnographic recollection of the area, the haunting of Black laboring bodies in not only the site of burial discovery but also two sites within the Sugar Land cultural landscape: Mayfield Park and the Imperial Sugar Refinery. I argue developers and government agencies perpetuate a mythic local history that, until the discovery of the 95, allowed them to disassociate itself from Sugar Land’s history of Black labor exploitation before its incorporation as a city. The 95’s haunting allows for an inventive awareness of the Black laboring bodies and thus redefines the cultural landscape rooted in plantation logics as a Black geography. I conclude with a discussion of the ways Black laboring bodies’ haunting creates a space for a critical cultural landscape solution.
A. Roberts & M. Matos (2020). “Adaptive liminality: Bridging and bonding social capital between urban and rural Black meccas.” Abstract: African Americans’ memories of the Great Migration and urban displacement surface in popular film and culture as a desire to return to rural homeplaces while retaining access to opportunity in urban meccas. The author argues that real examples of this “limbo imaginary” are relevant to research on Black meccas. Findings from the author’s ethnographic study of rural Freedom Colonies (settlements Black Texans founded 1865–1920) showed that, for African Americans, embodying urban-rural liminality is an existential space of opportunity and ingenuity. Urban baby boomers in the study call Houston and rural Black meccas (Freedom Colonies) home, holding dual senses of belonging and commitments to place preservation. These baby boomers performed liminality during homecoming celebrations where they commemorated ancestors and reconnected descendants’ ties to settlements severed during the Great Migration. The article recommends that researchers and urban planners help communities identify liminal spaces appropriate for catalyzing inter-generational bridging and bonding of urban-rural social capital to preserve endangered communities of color.
Andrea Roberts (2020). “Count the Outside Children! Kinkeeping as Preservation Practice Among Descendants of Texas’ Freedom Colonies” Abstract: Andrea Roberts, PH.D., assistant professor of urban planning and Faculty Fellow with the Center for Heritage Conservation at Texas A&M University, explores the intangible heritage of Texas Freedom Colonies. Though some buildings that were located in these freedom colonies remain, the names of the towns and settlements themselves have been changed, and there is no formal history of these places. Descendents of freedom colony residents keep the history alive through genealogy (kinkeeping) and family histories that, together, validate the significance of Freedom Colonies during the years immediately after emancipation.
Andrea Roberts (2019). “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.” Abstract: Angel David Nieves and Leslie M. Alexander’s We Shall Independent Be (2008), which contemplated the relationship between American ideals such as freedom and black space creation, advanced the validity of vernacular African American placemaking and architecture as a by-product of protest, cultural expression, and intentional design. Despite this, few scholars have focused on related rural African American building and preservation practices as expressions of a continuous freedom struggle and diasporic search for home. Through observation of African American grassroots preservationists, this essay argues for increased attention to rural grassroots homestead preservation. From 1865 to 1920, former slaves founded more than 557 “freedom colonies” across Texas. Ethnographic and archival research conducted within Newton County freedom colonies demonstrates that descendants, regardless of residency status, have sustained place attachments and nurtured stewardship of homesteads through heritage conservation, rehabilitation, and family property retention. Rehabilitation activities in two settlements, Shankleville and Pleasant Hill, show the relationship between intangible heritage and descendants’ landscape stewardship practices. The concept, called here the homeplace aesthetic, illuminates descendants’ preservation methods, resilience strategies, and stylistic preferences as unrecognized dimensions of significance and integrity. The concept of a homeplace aesthetic also explains descendants’ concurrent negotiation—through subversion and assimilation—of the racialized landscape and regulatory environment, with important implications for preservation documentation and legal regulations.
A. Roberts, & M. J. Biazar (2018). “Black Placemaking in Texas: Sonic and Social Histories of Newton and Jasper County Freedom Colonies”
A. Roberts & G. Kelly (2018). “Remixing as Praxis: Arnstein’s Ladder through the Grassroots Preservationist’s Lens.” Abstract: Problem, research strategy, and findings: When Arnstein created the ladder of participation, local governments engaged predominately urban African-American neighborhoods through federally funded programs. Fifty years later, preservationists and heritage conservationists pursuing participatory engagement models in these communities find sustaining interest difficult. Absent from planning literature is guidance on how to ensure grassroots preservationists of color retain control during engagement. In this study we ask practitioners and scholars to consider the optimum approach to researching or preservation planning in this context. Through participatory action and ethnographic research, one of us (Roberts) helped design a hybrid forum-style symposium dedicated to preserving historic Black settlement heritage. As a researcher and symposium co-planner, I documented local preservation knowledge using questionnaires and performative storytelling while helping descendants of historic African-American settlements identify shared priorities and challenges. Findings suggest action researchers and preservationists must “remix” roles and the rungs of Arnstein’s ladder of participation to sustain and center stakeholder involvement when planning with marginalized communities. Remixing consists of strategically sampling, looping, and layering promising local knowledge with that of experts to support citizen-centered preservation planning. By centering culturally informed planning approaches and negotiating with stakeholders, professionals can create the conditions for participation that support sustained involvement. Symposium co-organizing and data collection catalyzed the ethical coproduction of knowledge and fostered ongoing research and collaborative projects after study completion. Takeaway for practice: Remixing as praxis offers a framework for engaged preservation and heritage conservation that reinforces citizen empowerment through identification and application of innovative practices rooted in local knowledge. Identifying local practices that foster attachment and break down the hierarchy between expert and grassroots practitioners is essential to achieving praxis.
Andrea Roberts (2018). “Interpretations & Imaginaries: Toward an Instrumental Black Planning History”
Publisher’s website
Andrea Roberts (2018). “Performance as place preservation: The role of storytelling in the formation of Shankleville Community’s Black counterpublics.” Abstract: From 1870 to 1920, previously enslaved Texans founded more than 540 ‘freedom colonies.’ Since then, descendants left behind seemingly intangible Black geographies where evidence of their placemaking has disappeared. However, in Shankleville, Texas, settlement founder descendants sustained attachments to, and stewardship of, their communities, even as the population decreased and physical manifestations of place dissipated. To understand how place attachments are sustained in Shankleville, I analyze descendants’ stories, storytelling practices, and the spaces in which these performances take place. In these counterpublic spaces, descendants reproduce an identity rooted in a foundational story about their freedom-seeking, fugitive slave founders. Their ritual performances of these stories at a sacred spring in Shankleville cement attachments and catalyze descendants’ involvement in heritage conservation and preservation projects. The meanings and values informing these commemorative practices disrupt commonly held assumptions about Black community formation, Black heritage, and what constitutes legitimate preservation practice.
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Jennifer Minner, Andrea Roberts, Michael Holleran & Joshua Conrad (2018). “A Smart City Remembers its Past: Citizens as Sensors in Survey and Mapping of Historic Places”
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Andrea Roberts (2017). “The Farmers’ Improvement Society and the Women’s Barnyard Auxiliary of Texas: African American Community Building in the Progressive Era.”
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Andrea Roberts (2016). “What’s Missing from Black Counternarratives to Donald Trump”
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Jennifer Minner, Michael Holleran, Andrea Roberts & Joshua Conrad (2015). “Capturing Volunteered Historical Information: Lessons from Development of a Local Government Crowdsourcing Tool.”
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PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP: ESSAYS, OPINIONS, FEATURE
Brandi T. Summers, Jeremy Till, Peggy Deamer, Jeffrey Hou, Daniel A. Barber, Dahlia Nduom, James Graham, Nora Wendl, Cassim Shepard, Andrea Roberts, Sara Jensen Carr, David Theodore, “Field Notes on Design Activism: 2,” Places Journal, November 2022. Publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.22269/221103
Andrea Roberts (2018). “A city in Texas discovered a mass grave of prison laborers. So what should it do with the bodies?”
Andrea Roberts (2018). “Sugar Land: Treat the mass grave of black prisoners discovered in Texas with respect”
Andrea Roberts (2018). ” Land Mass Grave: Texas City Finds Burial Site of Black Prison Laborers”
Publisher’s website
Andrea Roberts (2018). “A Texas city discovered a mass grave of prison laborers. What should it do with the bodies?”
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Andrea Roberts (2018). “Analysis: Why Texas should brace to hear about more mass graves”
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Andrea Roberts (2018). “The Mass Grave Beneath a Texas Suburb”
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Andrea Roberts (2018). THE TEXAS FREEDOM COLONIES PROJECT ATLAS & STUDY.
Andrea Roberts (2018). “Portals to Freedom, or Researching in Limbo Time,” Platform: Convergent Voices, A Journal of the UT Austin School of Architecture’, Ed. Nichole Wiedemann and Charlton Lewis
Brand, A., Brown, Davis, L, Ford, M., Hood, W., Lopez, S., Roberts, A., Robles Jr., J. (2017). “Conversation 030317” Platform: Convergent Voices, A Journal of the UT Austin School of Architecture’, Ed. Nichole Wiedemann and Charlton Lewis
Andrea Roberts (2017). “When Does It Become Social Justice? Thoughts on Intersectional Preservation Practice”
Publisher’s website
Andrea Roberts (2017). “Documenting and Preserving Texas Freedom Colonies”
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Anna Brand & Andrea Roberts (2016). “Commentary: Better Communities Require Better-Educated Planners”
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Andrea Roberts (2017). “Homeplace: Identity, Place, and Planning”. Reading List
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BOOK REVIEW
Andrea Roberts (2017). “Book Review: Black Georgetown remembered: A history of its black community from the founding of “The Town of George” in 1751 to 4 the present day”
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CREATIVE NON-FICTION
Andrea Roberts (2018). “Arrivals: 1930, 1964” from What’s the New News, Issue 1
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Andrea Roberts (2018). “The Poetics of Black Imagination” from What’s the New News, Issue 2
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Andrea Roberts (2017). “Old Developments: Sovereign Spaces Reclaimed”
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Andrea Roberts (2015). “Sacred Forest, Piney Veil: Black Landscapes of Deep Texas”
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Andrea Roberts (2015). “Critical Sankofa Planning-Mobilizing Texas Freedom Colony Memories”
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Andrea Roberts. (2009) “An Epistle to the Revolutionary Bible,” from Medina, T., & Rivera, L. R. (Eds.). Bum rush the page: A def poetry jam. Broadway Books.