If you missed “Searching for Black Ancestors in the American West” on Feb. 18, you should consider watching the recording. Even if you were there, this is one President’s Lecture you probably want to revisit!
Completely engaging from beginning to end, African diaspora archeologist and UH professor Alicia Odewale, Ph.D., proposed a series of questions for her audience, creating suspense as her listeners joined in as would-be archeological sleuths uncovering the hidden histories of Black communities in the West.
“The search for Black ancestors requires unearthing buried histories, reclaiming what Toni Morrison described as the ‘disremembered past,’ and seeing with new eyes the complex landscapes of Black heritage that have been erased from the map,” said Odewale. Explaining that Black towns and freedom colonies have been lost, burned down, abandoned, or built over and forgotten, she asked, “How can we use archaeology as a tool to help us find Black ancestors in the American West?”
She then she asked, “How did Black families arrive in the West in the first place?” The answer was multipronged, and, in some cases, surprising:
- Underground Railroad (1800-1865)
- Force removal to Indian Territory via “Trail of Tears” (1830-1850)
- Compromise of 1850 with California a free state
- Gold Rush of the 1850s
- Pony Express (1860)
- Escaping from the South, Civil War
- The Exoduster Movement to Kansas (1879)
- Transcontinental Railroads, starting in 1869
- Land Runs in Oklahoma in 1889
- Fleeing to Old Mexico
- First Great Migration (1910-1940)
Drawing on her own experiences as an archaeologist and her personal search for her ancestors, she then gave examples of uncovering hidden or lost communities, such as Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Greenwood district, home to “Black Wall Street” before the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre; the Black-owned Boston Saloon in Nevada from 1860s-1870s; and Texas Black Heritage Trees, like the Freedom Tree in Missouri City, Texas. “No one tool, website, or methodology will ever be enough,” said Odewale. “Our methods for searching for our ancestors are just as diverse as pathways of Black freedom.”
Her lecture was based in part on her latest research grant, The Black Heritage Tree Project, sponsored by National Geographic Society, and her two new courses at the University of Houston—"Before Cowboy Carter: Black Towns, Black Freedom” and “Finding Black Ancestors.”