Countering Displacement through Collective Memory with Andrea Roberts

Cities@Tufts Lectures

In the decades following the Civil War, recently emancipated people created freedom colonies through intentional and tactical design, ensuring refuge from political repression and violence. However, most freedom colonies were founded in ecologically vulnerable landscapes, making them disproportionately susceptible to flooding and other natural disasters in the present day. This talk tracks the history of displacement and dispossession that has led to the destruction, neglect, or dismantling of communities initially designed to protect African Americans from structural racism. Then the author explains how these communities’ unique challenges require new planning and design tools to detect the interplay of historical and contemporary conditions contributing to the cultural erasure of African American placemaking. The Texas Freedom Colonies Project Atlas, the platform the author has developed to map and aggregate sociocultural emplaced data about these disappearing landscapes and crowdsources and spatializes intangible heritage on a publicly available map. The Atlas provides a mechanism by which the public can search, add, and view database contents that make visible previously unmapped or undocumented settlements. The Atlas’ stories, images, and documents constitute a collective memory of Black placemaking that enables advocates to argue that these historically significant places are worthy of preservation.

In addition to this audio, you can watch the video and read the full transcript of their conversation on Shareable.net – while you’re there get caught up on past lectures.

Cities@Tufts Lectures explores the impact of urban planning on our communities and the opportunities to design for greater equity and justice with professor Julian Agyeman and host Tom Llewellyn.

Cities@Tufts Lectures is produced by Tufts University and Shareable.net with support from The Kresge Foundation, Barr Foundation and SHIFT Foundation.

Lectures are moderated by Professor Julian Agyeman and organized in partnership with research assistants Perri Sheinbaum and Caitlin McLennon. Robert Raymond is our audio editor, Zanetta Jones manages communications, Alison Huff manages operations, and the series is produced and hosted by Tom Llewellyn.

“Light Without Dark” by Cultivate Beats is our theme song and Caitlin McLennon created this episode's graphic.