About Dr. Andrea Roberts

WPPB Image Addons    Dr. Andrea Roberts is an Associate Professor of Urban + Environmental Planning at the University of Virginia’s School of Architecture and has been appointed Co-Director of the School’s  Center for Cultural Landscapes. She is a scholar-activist who brings 12 years of experience in community development, nonprofit administration, and advocacy to her

PUB: African American Planning, Cooperative Economics, & Community Building Minus the Respectability Politics.

Looking for examples of anti-banking system, anti-respectability, pro-cooperative Black planning &community building? Try 19th Century Texas History. I recently published an article on race gender, planning, and mutual aid called “The Farmers’ Improvement Society and the Women’s Barnyard Auxiliary of Texas: African American Community Building in the Progressive Era,” in the Journal of Planning History.

Am I A Scholar? Knowing Your Intellectual Value Before Entering Academia

Pursing a graduate degree requires discipline and confidence. It is a process that also requires commitment and sustained interest. Doctoral degrees in particular, demand something more than an interest in attaining another credential. You need to be personally invested in the new knowledge you create. Creating new knowledge is a process that simultaneously exposes us

Ava DuVernay: Filmmaker as Griot

I have a lot to say about the movie Selma, but I frankly feel like I’ll need to see it again before I play armchair filmmaker. What I do feel confident talking about is Selma as a storytelling enterprise. Storytelling is on my mind a lot lately. Mostly because it is a large part of

What the “Fire Next Time” Should Look Like: From Rage to Revelation after Ferguson

“Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity” ― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time For Benicio I awoke this morning feeling a little weary. Groggy, and frankly disappointed. But I felt compelled to

Dead Assets: Endangered Cemeteries, Sacred Spaces of African America

By Andrea Roberts* I spoke yesterday with Jeremy Nelloms, descendant of Nancy Bradshaw. Nancy Bradshaw was a former slave who attained an impressive 300 acres of land after emancipation located in today’s northeast Houston, Texas.  The land is located a few blocks off I-10 East. Her family still owns the land, and the historic African

Andrea’s Throw Back Thursday: My Family & Houston’s Long Forgotten All-Black Rodeo Arena

I grew up going to rodeos. Yes, this little black girl went to rodeos. They were all-Black  and held in Richmond and Rosenberg. Sometimes they had a little chittlin’ circuit show associated with them, but mostly, it was just lots of Black cowboys and cowgirls doing their thing. Apparently, the lowest and highest caliber of

Pelham, Texas’ “Guardians of Memory” in one of the State’s Last Active Freedom Colonies

“At her kitchen table she pulls out an old map from the Navarro County Historical Society and traces her finger from one town name to the next, including several old black communities. “These communities don’t exist no more,” she says. “Babylon, no more. Bethel, no more. Round Prairie’s about gone. Porter’s Bluff, it’s gone.” From

On the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington, Remember Ft. Bend County’s Voting Rights Heroes

Fort Bend County’s little known African American history is in danger of being forgotten. Especially as it relates to struggles around voting rights in areas like Stafford and Fifth Street. The west end of the County commemorates the Terry V. Adams, which ended whites only primaries in Texas. See ceremony below: Terry v. Adams Marker