Exploring The Texas Freedom Colonies with Dr. Andrea Roberts
In celebration of Black History Month, we sat down with Dr. Andrea Roberts, founder of The Texas Freedom Colonies Project, to discuss her passion for documenting historic Black settlements and the impact this work has had on lives across Black communities in Texas and beyond.
The conversation below is adapted from a recorded interview between Heritage Traveler writer Lance Catchings and Dr. Roberts. The answers are hers, with only minor grammatical edits for clarity and length.
Interviewer: Today we’re joined by Dr. Andrea Roberts, a seventh generation Texan, founder of The Texas Freedom Colonies Project, and professor of urban and environmental planning at the University of Virginia, where she directs the Center for Cultural Landscapes.
Q: For readers who may not know your work, how do you describe who you are and what you do?
Dr. Andrea Roberts: Most of all, I’m committed to making invisible histories and places visible through my teaching, advocacy, and scholarship—especially through The Texas Freedom Colonies Project and, more recently, the Outsider Preservation Initiative, which focus on African American historic settlements founded after the Civil War through the Great Depression.
Q: Can you share the story of how you first became interested in Black settlement landscapes and what led you to create the Texas Freedom Colonies Project?
Roberts: It really began with a visit to a cemetery in Stafford, Texas, where relatives of mine are buried—my aunt, my grandmother, my great grandmother. I hadn’t been there in several years. While I was there, a man approached me and said, “We’re not related through blood, but we’re related through slavery. ”That encounter made me think deeply about kinship, land, and how cemeteries become meeting points—places where you reconnect with kin in the ground and kin who are tied to you through church, settlement, and social relationships that often get lost. As he told me about his family, he also talked about the settlements they all came from.
At the time, I was working for the City of Houston and noticed that planning documents did not show the names of these Black historic settlements, including Riceville, a community my family came from. That disconnect between lived histories and official maps made me ask: How do we ensure that people still connected to these places have a voice in shaping their future?
Q: When you step into these places, what does that connection to the past feel like for you?
Roberts: I think of walking into the Pleasant Hill community and Pleasant Hill CME Church, seeing the graves and these specially constructed boxes placed on top to deal with flooding. You can see the ingenuity—people designing their own solutions to protect loved ones’ resting places.
Those details remind me of a time of self-sufficiency and innovation. Being there makes me proud, excited, and hopeful about what these communities have created and preserved, often with very few resources.
Q: On your site, you talk about the Texas Freedom Colonies Project through the pillars “connect,” “collect,” “counter map,” and “cocreate.” How do those work together?
Roberts: In different ways—digitally, virtually, and through in person events when possible—we connect with descendant communities. Sometimes descendants email us with a specific issue or invite us to talk about the Atlas.
While we’re connecting, we collect: stories, documents, photographs, and other information. Out of what we collect, we co-create. That might mean co-creating solutions, new infrastructure, or new projects that respond to what descendants say they need. Countermapping underlies all of this as we challenge official maps by making these “unmapped” places visible.
Q: You use the term “placekeeping” when talking about Freedom Colonies. What does placekeeping look like and how is it different from how we usually talk about historic preservation?
Roberts: Traditional historic preservation rightly focuses on the built environment, and I have enormous respect for the architectural historians and preservationists I work with. But in many Black settlements, disinvestment, degradation, and migration mean the buildings may be gone or altered, and the population dispersed. If you look only at the built environment, you might conclude that “there’s no heritage left.”
Placekeeping in Freedom Colonies looks like churches that still hold annual homecomings, cemeteries with decoration days, homesteads, and programs where people gather for friends and family days. It looks like reunions where stories are told, songs are sung, and printed programs list the names of attendees and the settlements they represent. That’s where the place is kept and enlivened—through performances of memory, speech, and ritual.
Sometimes that heritage is in funeral programs tucked in plastic bags under someone’s couch, or in the heads and hands of “kin keepers” who know that a road named for a church is actually tied to a whole community of the same name. They are holding critical information that connects landscape, memory, and identity.
Q: You’ve built an interactive Atlas and database as a public tool. How do you envision descendant communities, educators, and local officials using it in their everyday work?
Roberts: We already know cultural resource managers and archaeologists use the Atlas. For example, archaeologists might notice evidence of a historic Black settlement and then consult the Atlas to confirm what they think they’re seeing.
People also use it as a foundation for tours in their regions, or as a starting point for deeper research. County historical commissions, in particular, are using Atlas entries to create local booklets and to launch new surveys. Some commissions that once knew little about Freedom Colonies are now uploading more information and using what they see online to guide additional cultural resource work.
Q: Gentrification, cultural erasure, natural disasters, and urban renewal are forces that contributed to the decline of Freedom Colonies. Which pressures are most intense right now, and how do descendants describe those impacts?
Roberts: What I hear most often is about sprawl and encroaching development. People may have heard that their family still owns land in a particular area, but now there’s a proposed project—say, a wastewater plant in a place like Littig, which we know was once a prosperous Black town—and officials may even question whether it’s a historic community.
Descendants often don’t live in the community anymore, so they face the challenge of reconstituting themselves and organizing in the face of new infrastructure driven by regional growth. Closely tied to that is the issue of land ownership: clear title, evidence of ownership, and widespread heir property. I’m frequently contacted by people asking for help to prove that land is theirs, and I point them to legal aid resources or appraisal district records so they can begin that investigative work. Encroachment and the difficulty of substantiating ownership are two of the most common issues.
Q: One of the project’s goals is to put Freedom Colonies on the map, on policy agendas, and at the center of Texas history. When you speak with policymakers or institutions, what tends to shift their understanding the most?
Roberts: Policymakers are often struck by the fact that institutions in these places—churches, cemeteries, community organizations—still exist, and that there is an active constituency attached to them. As elected officials, they want to know who they are responsible to, and when they realize there is a community that cares, their ears perk up.
Some see a “diamond in the rough,” a tourism or cultural opportunity around a historic place. Others recognize that they are now stewards of something of real value that is at risk. Learning that there is a constituency makes them feel accountable—and that accountability can change how they think about planning, investment, and protection.
Q: You invite people to join a community of practice for the Atlas and to contribute to the cemetery registry. What does that community look like today?
Roberts: On our website, we have an “Adopt-a-County” volunteer page that offers guidance on how to conduct research to help complete information about places listed as “not located” in the Atlas. Those are settlements for which we may know only a name and county, often found in sources like the book Texas Freedom Colonies or other histories, but have no additional data.
We invite volunteers to adopt a county, visit potential sites, take photographs, and upload them to the Atlas. Descendants can add information if they or their relatives once lived in or led those communities. We are looking for people willing to do that detective work and help fill in the gaps.
Q: From a heritage tourism perspective, what do you recommend to communities planning tours, programs, or educational content around Freedom Colonies? What are some key do’s and don’ts?
Roberts: Through our Mellon Foundation-funded Outsider Preservation Initiative, which supports Freedom Colony descendants working on preservation projects, we’re developing guidance on how to create tours responsibly. One of the first things I tell people is to prepare for what it means to invite strangers into your community.
You have to ask: Where will visitors go and park? When will they be there, and who will meet and guide them? Who is responsible for fact-checking information, and are all guides sharing consistent stories? These are the same questions you would ask at any historic site, but they’re especially vital in descendant communities that don’t want to be treated like exhibits viewed from a bus window. It’s also important to think about protocols: Are there expectations around dress, behavior, or participation that show respect for the community and its sacred spaces? Thinking carefully through these questions can be the difference between shallow voyeurism and meaningful, reciprocal engagement.
Q: If you could speak directly to a young descendant who is just beginning to discover their connection to a Freedom Colony, what would you want them to hear from you?
Roberts: Find an elder and listen. That’s the most important step. Then document—take lots of photos of the place, the gatherings, and the material you encounter.
Finally, find other people who have knowledge of the place. The elder will often point you toward them. But elders will not always be with us, so there is urgency in seeking them out and recording what they share.
Q: What are the most meaningful ways people can get involved—whether they’re descendants, scholars, officials, or everyday Texans? And what do you hope to see for this work in the next five to ten years?
Roberts: Right now, there are many ways to interact with the Atlas. My students and research team are working on new ways to search and navigate the crowdsourced information we’ve gathered, including better ways to highlight attachments like photos and documents. Over the next two years, we’re building a new web portal that will feature Texas Freedom Colonies, the work of our grantees, and dedicated spaces for descendants and researchers.
We envision a descendant-only space for knowledge exchange, alongside a researcher portal, and we’re expanding beyond Texas. The Outsider Preservation Initiative supports work not only in Texas but also in Louisiana, California, Virginia, and even Nova Scotia, Canada—places where intentional Black placemaking and descendant-led preservation are unfolding.
Q: Is there anything else you’d like readers to know?
Roberts: I want people to explore the Atlas—and to understand that if they don’t see their settlement, it may be because we’re waiting for them to add it. Sometimes people say, “Mine isn’t there, so I guess it’s not a Freedom Colony,” but that’s not the case at all.
We need people to contribute information and do research. Even if your settlement is already listed, you can add your story. We don’t believe in a single definitive narrative; multiple stories about the same place are a strength. We hope people will keep engaging with the Atlas as we develop new ways to showcase and share this work. For more information on The Texas Freedom Colonies Project, visit the website.
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