UC Berkeley

My dissertation examines the historical and archaeological traces of the rural Black farmsteads we call our Homeplace, from approximately 1840 to the 1920. In it, I argue that these archaeological, architectural, and textual material resonances make visible the actions of resistance in Black communities by signifying the labor of persistence. Displacement and disenfranchisement are unfortunately a consistent and threatening theme in the history of the African-American experience in the United States. As such, holding on to and securing private space is a difficult and often futile process. In a society that systematically displaces people of color, persistence through land ownership and rural self-sufficient farming allows for the occupation and cultivation of the Homeplace; a private, decolonized space which becomes a quintessential site of resistance for Black Americans in the nineteenth century.

To illustrate these points, I draw on theories of memory and materiality to examine the ways in which racialization is itself a dimension of materiality. I argue that this means racialization has a physical reality that is socially constituted, historically contingent, embodied and yet dispersed in its enforcement. At the same time, I examine my positionality as a Black descendant of these farmsteaders and as a member of the community undertaking a community-centered archaeological project. I explore the process of excavation as an act of historical resistance and empowerment, creating a moment for community members, stakeholders, and descendants to re-remember and memorialize pasts that are discursively recorded only in our memories and these materials. I assert that our best understanding of disenfranchised pasts must come from an engagement not only with African Diaspora scholarship, but also with the stakeholders and communities who are the stewards of these pasts.