2023- Present, Principal Investigator (PI), Outsider Preservation Initiative, Presidential Initiative of the Andrew Mellon Foundation. A four-year program investing in commemorative practices and storytelling projects. I manage research and program staff to create a web portal, community of practice, host symposia, develop new pedagogy, and make grants to descendant-led place preservation projects. Commemorating Black place preservation and persistence…
Chronicling the stories and resilience of Texas freedom colonies facing erasure, and of the efforts of descendant community members to safeguard them. Since Emancipation, Deep East Texas has been a place where Black Texans have experienced oppression yet also have created free Black communities. Well into the Jim Crow era, the area was home to…
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…
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS/SCHOLARSHIP (* denotes students) Forthcoming 2026-27 Book Roberts, A. Never Sell the Land! Freedom Colonies, Black Storytelling, and Keeping Home. In copy editing, the University of Texas Press (2026). Book Book Chapter Roberts, A. “The Black Parti: Reinterpreting African American Placemaking as Design Ideation,” Rewriting American Architecture, Edited by Charles L. Davis II, Kathryn…
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.…
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…
I will be posting National Register of Historic Places Property Nominations from now through Black History Month (trying to get a full month in). These nominations are detailed descriptions of places of national, state, and cultural significance. The nomination below was composed by Karen Riles, formerly of the Austin History Center. Why does the National…
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…
“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…
