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…
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.…
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…
“The standard image of Southern slavery is that of a large plantation with hundreds of slaves. In fact, such situations were rare. Fully 3/4 of Southern whites did not even own slaves; of those who did, 88% owned twenty or fewer. Whites who did not own slaves were primarily yeoman farmers. Practically speaking, the institution…
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…
As much as I would love to let sleeping dogs lie, I had to post this to reiterate what i see as the significances of the Paula Deen case. This is indeed not a matter of deciding whether what a celebrity says matters or not, or whether we should forgive. This must be lifted from…
