The Texas Freedom Colonies Storyteller Project
Following the Civil War, formerly enslaved African Americans created their own separate, self-sufficient communities. Freedman’s settlements, also called freedom colonies, offered African Americans a place to live, worship, and get an education away from the violence and discrimination they faced in the Jim Crow South.
Dr. Andrea Roberts of Texas A&M University started The Texas Freedom Colonies Project in 2014 to document the histories of these communities and map their locations. This year the Bullock Museum partnered with Dr. Roberts on The Texas Freedom Colonies Storyteller Project, a digital photo archive where users explore and submit photographs of artifacts from Texas freedom colonies.
We asked Dr. Roberts to share her thoughts on the importance of collecting, preserving, and sharing these stories to enrich our understanding of history.
Q: The Texas Freedom Colonies Storyteller Project focuses on Black settlement history. Can you tell us more about the grassroots efforts and outreach and why you founded this project?
DR. ROBERTS: Grassroots collaboration and public education are at the core of The Texas Freedom Colonies Storyteller Project’s mission. Our Atlas, our crowdsourced digital humanities and research project, hosts a database and map of locations and information about each freedom colony. It is publicly available and always growing–anyone can add to it. Usually, our outreach has meant a physical presence in communities. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic we have been focusing on digital outreach. In person or virtually, the project thrives through the efforts of our volunteers, our research team, and the people who take the time to share with us and trust us as a place to keep their stories, memories, and current preservation activities.
Freedom colonies counter the narrative that the lives of Black people after enslavement were all lives led either in cities or in the sharecropping system. I founded the project out of a deep interest in how and where they carved out spaces of freedom and the importance of those places today. I am also the descendant of several freedom colonies. Many freedom colonies were unmapped, absent from public record, or were damaged or destroyed by natural disasters, gentrification, and land dispossession — but freedom colonies are not just in the past, there are people still living there and engaged in these places.
Q: The historical relevance of freedom colonies in Texas is profound, with freedom colonies dating back to the end of the Civil War. In your opinion and experience, what is the impact on historical preservation that this project serves?
DR. ROBERTS: The preservation impact of The Texas Freedom Colonies Storyteller Project is furthering the goal that freedom colonies are understood, considered in planning and development, and that the communities have a chance to survive and thrive. We do this primarily by helping visualize freedom colonies for a broad audience because these settlements are almost everywhere in Texas. Visualizing the breadth of freedom colonies can have many applications in preservation and advocacy and visualizing the depth of freedom colonies through the always-accumulating contributions of descendants connects people to the importance of these places and even to each other.
Q: We have been fortunate to partner with you on a new digital collection called The Texas Freedom Colonies Storyteller Project. What is the goal of this new collection and how might photography inform the history of freedom colonies?
DR. ROBERTS: I’ve found that people often initially doubt the amount or importance of the information they have, but that once they get to talking or writing, details pour out about the history, the families, and the lived experiences of freedom colony residents and descendants. The objects families consider worth saving and sharing can give us a window not only into the history of these places but what these places still mean to them. We are always looking for new ways to engage freedom colony descendants, which is why we are so excited about our partnership with the Bullock Texas State History Museum on the Storyteller Project. The goal is that the images and information people share can become connected to place in a new way and create a richer understanding of places often documented primarily in family archives.
Q: How does oral history play a role in community development for descendants of Black settlements?
DR. ROBERTS: Oral history plays an important role for the descendants of Black settlements in connecting descendants to each other but also connecting them to place. An example is the foundation story of Shankleville (Newton County). The story is re-enacted each year at the spring where the community was founded when descendants return for homecoming — they enjoy song and food and raise money for the next homecoming and to fund the maintenance and stewardship of the cemetery. The way stories are passed on and found by the diaspora of freedom colony descendants opens possibilities for new connection to be made and new traditions to be forged around sustaining stories and the places to which they are connected.
Q: As a scholar and founder of multiple efforts related to Texas freedom colonies, how might the stories and photos we are gathering change the understood narrative of Texas history?
DR. ROBERTS: The stories and photos from the Storyteller Project will help descendants record parts of their unrecorded past and enrich the understanding of Black history in Texas as being a story not only of struggle but also a story of self-determination and joy.
Be part of The Texas Freedom Colonies Storyteller Project and share your own photos and stories!
Dr. Andrea Roberts is an Assistant Professor of Urban Planning and an Associate Director of the Center for Housing & Urban Development at Texas A&M University and a Center for Heritage Conservation Fellow.
This post is contributed by Mel Tamporello, Web & Digital Media Manager, at the Bullock Texas State History Museum.
Support for the Bullock Museum’s exhibitions and education programs is provided by the Texas State History Museum Foundation.
The Texas Freedom Colonies Storyteller Project is a collaboration between The Texas Freedom Colonies Project and the Bullock Texas State History Museum.
