A Guide to Historic African American Communities in Burleson County
What are Texas Freedom Colonies?
Freedom Colonies are places that were settled by formerly enslaved people during the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras in Texas following Emancipation. From 1865-1930, African Americans accumulated land and founded 557 historic black settlements or Freedom Colonies. Freedom Colonies were intentional communities created largely in response to political and economic repression by mainstream white society.​ In these places, Black Texans could much better avoid the perils of debt bondage, sharecropping, and racialized violence from white communities, and live largely self-sustaining, independent lives on their own property. (Sitton, T., & Conrad, J.H. 2005) Since their founding, Freedom Colony descendants have dispersed, and hundreds of settlements’ status and locations are unknown. Gentrification, cultural erasure, natural disasters, resource extraction, population loss, urban renewal, and land dispossession have all contributed to their decline. Freedom Colony descendants’ lack of access to technical assistance, ecological and economic vulnerability, and invisibility in public records has quickened the disappearance of these historic Texas communities.​ To learn more about Texas Freedom Colonies, please explore The Texas Freedom Colonies Project website and The Atlas.
Freedom Colonies as Cultural Landscape
A majority of known Freedom Colonies are located in the eastern half of Texas. Why? The eastern half of the state contained a majority of the farmland and plantations on which the formerly enslaved once worked. Further, these coastal and flood-prone areas were some of the few areas in which African Americans could obtain land through adverse possession or squatting. In other cases, though rare, former plantation owners willed land to their Black offspring. Though originally concentrated in rural areas, Freedom Colonies emerged on the edges of major cities. Due to urbanization and sprawl, today’s suburbs and major cities are founded atop Freedom Colonies. Common elements and characteristics of Texas Freedom Colonies’ cultural landscapes are their anchor institutions: schools, cemeteries, lodges, and churches. Cemeteries and churches are the most persistent elements in these landscapes. Often several Freedom Colonies accessed the same churches and schools. That is why clusters of homesteads usually best define the Freedom Colony settlement pattern. Finally, the shared belief or knowledge of a community having once existed in a specific area is passed on through storytelling and commemorative events.
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Freedom colonies are not, however, static landscapes, but active communities composed of dispersed yet committed social and kinship networks who return to preserve historic churches, homesteads, Rosenwald Schools, and cemeteries. Gatherings for festivals, funerals, church services, homecomings and family reunions are times during which descendants of Freedom Colony founders celebrate their successes and plan for the future of the settlements’’ remaining extant features.
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Learn more about Texas Freedom Colonies on The Texas Freedom Colonies Project website
Freedom Colonies in Burleson County
Belltown
Birch Creek
Clay Station
Dabney Hill
Fort Oldham
Teal's Prairie
Tunis
Yellow Prairie
All information on Texas Freedom Colonies in this section has been taken from The Texas Freedom Colonies Project