The Parker Academy: A Place of Freedom, A Space of Resistance

Summary

In a time when social and racial justice and collective action is evermore the crux of African American communities, the importance of public engagement and community archaeology and mapping historical activism is evident. This paper will present initial findings of the archaeological and archival research project at the Parker Academy, founded in 1839 in southern Ohio. This Academy was the first school in Ohio, and the country, to house multiracial coeducational classrooms. Importantly, it was also a station on the Underground Railroad, according to several different extant accounts. The multidisciplinary collaboration among historians, geographers, and anthropologists (archaeology and ethnography) provides the opportunity understand how material culture and education influenced identity formation in a multi-racial community and used as a form of anti-racism and gender inequality resistance by individuals at the Parker Academy as a response to social and economic crises prior to, during, and after the Civil War.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• New Considerations in African Diaspora Material Culture and Heritage   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2016

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 387