TX Freedom Colonies Project's Plan to Preserve Endangered Historic Black Settlements & Cemeteries

Abstract

“The Texas Freedom Colonies Project's Plan to Preserve Endangered Historic Black Settlements& Cemeteries” (the Grant) funded through the Trust provided $50,000 to support engagement, mobile cemetery identification and assessment in partnership with descendant communities, and an overall strategic and technical plan to coordinate our online and offline engagement better. We partnered with Newton and Jasper County community descendants active in local preservation from Dixie Community and another community in which a homestead is a National Register site, Shankleville. The grant emerges from The Project team's desire to support local descendants’ efforts to organize other nascent preservation efforts in the region related to cemetery preservation.

This executive summary provides an overview of grant-funded activities. Two documents describe the scope, aims, and goals achieved, “the strategic plan and technical report,” and “field testing report.” 1. The strategic plan and technical report intended to guide web portal platform building, and field data collection infrastructure development includes appendices. Primarily authored by vendor: Root Cause Research Center and subcontractors 2. Field testing report: A guidebook, A cemetery mobile assessment tool and registry entries (https://www.thetexasfreedomcoloniesproject.com/cemetery-registry), and evidence of field testing, and lessons learned from descendants This summary reviews the project’s purpose and scope, core audiences, process, findings and conclusions from our contractors, and our Team research processes.