{"id":1365,"date":"2023-04-11T17:20:05","date_gmt":"2023-04-11T21:20:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/?p=1365"},"modified":"2023-04-11T17:20:05","modified_gmt":"2023-04-11T21:20:05","slug":"the-fight-to-stop-the-erasure-of-historic-black-towns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/education\/the-fight-to-stop-the-erasure-of-historic-black-towns\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fight to Stop the Erasure of Historic Black Towns"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Rev. Darryl Johnson<\/a> rejoiced when he received a text message that a deal to sell the remaining 100 acres of the historic Robert Hungerford Preparatory High School property in Eatonville, Florida, fell through a week ago.<\/p>\n

After hearing the news that a developer dropped out of the controversial plan to buy the land, the former mayor of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, immediately texted N.Y. Nathiri, executive director of the Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community Inc., to congratulate her for \u201csticking in there and playing the role they had to play.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson remembers all too well the challenges of keeping a historic Black town afloat. Oftentimes, Black towns \u2014 mostly small, rural, and isolated \u2014 go overlooked, leaving them struggling to get adequate funding<\/a>. This is one of the reasons Johnson and four mayors, including Eatonville\u2019s, created in 2013 the Historic Black Towns and Settlements Alliance<\/a>, a collective of Black leaders nationwide focused on preserving and promoting the history and culture of their towns while creating economic development and enhancing quality of life.<\/p>\n

Eatonville residents\u2019 battle with the Orange County school board represents that the centuries-old fight isn\u2019t over and illustrates the \u201cstrength and pride in the African American community to protect our history.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you just saw out there in Eatonville shows you don\u2019t mess with our towns,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n

Some scholars suggest that between 200<\/a> and 1,200<\/a> historic Black towns were established in the 19th and 20th centuries. There isn\u2019t a comprehensive list of historic Black towns; however, Atyia Martin, a researcher on historic Black towns and executive director of Next Leadership Development, a nonprofit focused on strengthening resilience and leadership in Black communities, created a project<\/a> that hopes to quantify the number of Black towns and settlements in the U.S.<\/p>\n

Only about 30 Black historic towns exist today, according to Martin.<\/p>\n

Racial violence, restrictive laws, and land loss contributed to the decimation of these towns, created as safe havens for formerly enslaved African Americans.<\/p>\n

Read more from Aallyah Wright<\/span><\/a><\/span> of Capital B<\/em>:\u00a0 https:\/\/capitalbnews.org\/historic-black-towns-survival\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Rev. Darryl Johnson rejoiced when he received a text message that a deal to sell the remaining 100 acres of the historic Robert Hungerford Preparatory High School property in Eatonville, Florida, fell through a week ago. After hearing the news that a developer dropped out of the controversial plan to buy the land, the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1865,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1865"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1365"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1366,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1365\/revisions\/1366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/environmental-justice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}