Family history plays an important role in the research of Andrea Roberts, the founder of The Texas Freedom Colonies Project. She started the project as a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin in 2014 to study the towns founded by freed Black families and friends after emancipation, including Houston-area Riceville, where Roberts’ family are long-time residents.
“Freedom colonies were intentional Black community creations, not where people were pushed to live by default,” says Roberts, who holds a PhD in community and regional planning.
Her project includes an interactive map of freedom colony locations in Texas. So far, 557 names of towns founded between 1866 and 1930 have been identified through archival research. Of those, 489 have been verified as having existed, though only 10% were ever incorporated as legal towns.
