Since the inception of the trafficking of enslaved African peoples across global contexts, struggles for emancipation have manifested on the scale of daily insistences of personal autonomy to the building of self-governed nation-states. From the African continent to every locus in the African Diaspora a global struggle for freedom making emerges from the archives and permeates through the lived experiences of the descendants of globally enslaved African peoples. Examining freedom communities from a global perspective, this paper integrates both terrestrial and underwater investigations as well as public interpretation as methods of viewing the lineages of anti-slavery and anti-colonial freedom making practices as concurrent temporalities. Using historical data, oral histories and archival material collected from four continents, this presentation will illustrate how the stories of individuals separated by time and geography actually demonstrate a globally resonant strategy for autonomous community building taking lessons from the past into the future.

St Croix in the USVI has a long history of colonial rule by European nations and their citizens, as well as the enduring impacts of coloniality through to present day. One of the repercussions of this history has been the displacement of many of the archives associated with governmental, religious and institutional organizations from the island to Denmark, the continental US, and beyond, especially escalating in the post Transfer period (1917-). This paper will argue that these displaced archives are importance sources into Black experiences, especially from the relatively under-researched period after colonial transfer, and their removal from the island is an ongoing act of colonial violence. It will use a number of case-studies to show how archives reveal the judgments, insecurities and fears of various white elites and how they resulted in attempts to control Black lives that were met with acts of compliance, resistance and subversion.

This paper challenges the narrative of Canada as a haven for runaway enslaved people via the Underground Railroad by examining how enslaved people in Loyalist New Brunswick (1783-1834) resisted bondage through group fugitivity and maritime marronage. Drawing on fugitive slave advertisements and a desktop survey mapping sites inhabited by the selected enslaved people and their routes to freedom, I explore how enslaved people resisted captivity by creating, navigating, and inhabiting rival geographies that subverted colonial landscapes of surveillance and control. This paper reveals how enslaved families and communities transformed the waterscapes and landscapes of New Brunswick into sites of defiance, mobility, liberation, and reimagined Black livingness. The case studies examined demonstrate how the act of fugitivity in New Brunswick offered not only paths to physical escape but also ontological acts of defiance against the institution of slavery, where the enslaved reclaimed autonomy through kinship ties, embodied knowledge, and contested mobility.

In 1842, Jehu and Dinah Nixon purchased 24 acres of land along Six Penny Creek in Union Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania, USA. Although categorized as “waste” land, the Nixon’s quickly sold parcels to other Black families. Peaking in 1860-1870 with 50 residents, one family remained at the site in 1900. Today, the site is partially owned by a descendant family and partially by the state. Using oral history, historic documents, LiDAR and pedestrian survey, this research highlights the ways the community worked in concert with their surrounding landscape to aid clandestine movement of freedom seekers. Six Penny Creek was surrounded by thousands of acres of forest used to make charcoal for local iron furnaces. Knowledge of these woods, including the location of paths through the “messy” woods and abandoned housing, was key to the survival of the community and to their participation in the Underground Railroad.

In the early 20th century, Daniel and Mamie Williamson established a homestead on land in Wayne County, Mississippi. Daniel came from West Alabama, and Mamie from the country side of Buckatunna, Mississippi. Sitting face to face with Jim Crow, the Williamson homestead became a site of Black prosperity, with census data showcasing that amidst neighbors, Black and White, the Williamsons were the largest land owners in their neighborhood. Moreover, some of the land was seized by the city in order to make roads, with the rest being sold off to craft subdivisions antithetical to the earlier forms of land use.

Utilizing oral histories, pedestrian survey and surface collection, and archival research, this research thinks through a nascent homestead materiality, stakeholders, and Black land ownership in pre-Civil Rights Mississippi. This site, like many freedom colonies and Black settlements, resists archival disappearance through vernacular knowledge and land-based remembrance.

A new formation of Black spaces emerged on the post-Civil War landscape in the United States. These spaces embodied the precarity of Black life in a time of intense violence characterized by logics underpinned by racial, gender, and spatial difference. Simultaneously, they represented the transformative nature of Blackness and constituted overwhelming aspirations for liberation and imagined possibilities. I situate these realities within the Badlands District, a majority Black enclave, destroyed during the 1908 race massacre in Springfield, IL. I center the belongings of Bessie Black, a Black woman who lived in the neighborhood, but whose life became untraceable after the massacre. Therefore, this presentation asks, how do we become attuned to the legibility of Black life given unimaginable violence, and how can we articulate a world in which Black women’s lives do not merely orbit our articulation of space but are firmly rooted in what was there.

This paper highlights the work of archaeologists uncovering overlooked stories of Black life, labor, and legacy across the American West. Drawing on artifacts, archival records, oral histories, heritage trees, and cultural landscapes, it explores how Black cowboys and families forged paths of freedom and prosperity—often founding towns alongside or within Sovereign land. Key sites include the 1867 Settlement in Texas, the Boston Saloon in Nevada, and Boley, Oklahoma—home to the oldest Black rodeo in the U.S. These towns reveal Black people as foundational to the shaping of the West: as trail riders, soldiers, teachers, and entrepreneurs. Today, Black rodeos and historic Black Towns continue this legacy, actively challenging systemic erasure and redefining Western heritage. Blending insights from archaeology, history, Black geographies, and multivocal storytelling, this paper underscores the importance of Black perspectives in building a more inclusive understanding of the American West for future generations.

Black Spaces: Reclaim & Remain is an exhibition at the Oakland Museum of California that explores the histories of displacement, resistance, and resilience within Black American communities in the Bay Area, set against the backdrop of Black migration. The exhibition examines the lasting impact of urban policies, land use decisions, and systemic inequities affecting historically marginalized communities across the Bay Area and beyond.

Three thematic zones—Homeplace, Social Fabric, and Dispossession and Repair—anchor the exhibition, immersing visitors in the histories of Black life in West Oakland and Russell City. These sections address discriminatory practices such as redlining, eminent domain, and urban renewal, while highlighting community responses through self-determined spaces and networks of care.

The exhibition also features contributions from artist Adrian Burrell, architect June Grant of blink!LAB architecture, and a collaborative archive—The Archive of Urban Futures and Moms 4 Housing—offering distinct visions of Black spatial reclamation, belonging, and collective futures.

From Yreka to El Dorado, from the 49ers’ mascot to county seals, the dominant and enduring image of California’s Gold Rush remains that of a lone white mine,pan in hand, bent over in search of gold. This narrow portrayal, upheld by historical organizations and cultural institutions, has largely erased the significant contributions of Black Americans. Submerged beneath the high-water mark of Folsom Lake lies Negro Hill, a once thriving community founded by Black miners. This paper examines Negro Hill as both a literal and symbolic refuge for Black Americans, some of whom were labeled fugitives for escaping slavery. Black Pioneers came to California seeking not only material wealth but also autonomy and dignity. Towns like Negro Hill offered more than the promise of gold; they represented a chance to stake a claim in freedom itself.

Although a mid-20th century temporary military town, consider the Company B, 97th Regiment Army Corps of Engineers, 1942-1943 winter cantonment as a community. A segregated community of approximately 175 African American soldiers who built the Pioneer Road, the Alaskan portion of the Alaska-Canada Highway, while experiencing structural racism. During the 2025 University of Alaska Fairbanks Anthropology Department summer archaeological field school, historical archaeologists investigated the 49-TNX-00252 historic district near the Robertson River Bridge and Tanacross, Alaska using archival data, remote sensing, pedestrian survey, surface mapping and historical archaeological excavation methods identified the cantonment's geospatial layout, barracks, tents, mess hall, hospital, motor pool, sawmill and a latrine adjacent to a segregated outhouse. The findings speak volumes about how the soldiers survived one of the harshest winters in Alaska's recorded history during the Jim Crow era.