Field School in Focus
Help preserve a part of Houston's heritage as the Rutherford B. H. Yates Museum Community Archaeology Project (YCAP) explores the Freedmen's Town National Historic District.Houston's Freedman's Town is regarded to be the last African American "Freedmen's Town" community extant in the United States that continues to be occupied, at least in part, by descendants of the original emancipated founders. Freedman's Town emerged post-Civil War when freed African Americans settled in the area known as the Fourth Ward after emancipation. Freedman's Town has been characterized as Houston's most prominent African American neighborhood.
Built on ground reclaimed from the flood-prone area south of the Buffalo Bayou, the site which was to become Freedmen's Town was included in the area designated as the Fourth Ward in 1839, only a few years after the founding of the city by the Allen Brothers. After 1865, the area came to be known as Freedmen's Town when freed African-Americans, leaving behind the oppression of the plantations where they had been enslaved and forced to labor for the benefit of others, were drawn to the opportunities for community and employment offered in Houston.
YCAP is a collaborative, community-centered project with participants from all ethnicities and classes. It seeks to understand the impact of the African Diaspora on both sides of the Atlantic, and on all of our fellow citizens, and to do so through an African-centered lens of history, culture and understanding. By working collaboratively, the participants in the YCAP are attempting to build bridges between people of different race and class – bridges which, over time, may be able to destroy the barriers built by our shared and bloodstained histories.
The class (Anthropology 4392 and 4393 - Research Practicum I & II at the University of Houston), runs Fridays and/or Saturdays from 8:00 to 3:30 between January 19/20 and April 28/29, 2007. You may register for one or both courses. Receive hands-on training in archaeological excavation, artifact analysis and preservation, archival research, and public archaeology research and outreach. Open to students of any major, no previous experience required. For more information contact Carol McDavid, Ph.D. (mcdavid@publicarchaeology.org) or David Bruner, M.A. (Davearch@houston.rr.com) or visit the Yates Museum Community Archaeology Project website. The photograph of laboratory work in progress was provided courtesy the Rutherford B. H. Yates Museum Community Archaeology Project.
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