Right to the City: Community-Based Urban Archaeology as Abolitionist Geography

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Advocacy in Archaeology: Thoughts from the Urban Frontier" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

This paper sees heritage as a community resource to challenge racist urban planning policies in a historically African American neighborhood of Brooklyn. It examines this case through Ruth Wilson Gilmore's concept of abolitionist geography, which views urban space as an extension of enslavement and confinement. Urban growth witnessed in the US has been built upon forced spatial restrictions and movements dictated by racially motivated policies, leaving little spatial freedom to those affected. Bed-Stuy, built from these exercises of spatial power, is home to the United Order of Tents, the oldest Black women’s benevolent society in the US. In keeping with Gilmore's idea of freedom as a provisional space actively built by people with resources they have, this paper explores how a community-based urban archaeology project at the Tents headquarters provides a space for the community to claim their right to the city offering a space of freedom long been denied.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Advocacy in Archaeology: Thoughts from the Urban Frontier   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 511