The Role of Infrastructures in the Production of Multigenerational Inequality in a Historic Black Community: The case of North Brentwood, Maryland

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Unsettling Infrastructure: Theorizing Infrastructure and Bio-Political Ecologies in a More-Than-Human World" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

North Brentwood is a historic Black community on the outskirts of Washington, DC. It is the second Black town incorporated in Maryland, and the first suburban one in the state. Its founding is steeped in the exploitation of social and environmental infrastructures to turn a profit on precarious lands that could not be sold to White residents. The mitigation of these risks is still the paramount concern of community members, who continue to face catastrophic damage and loss, despite the construction of infrastructure intended to mitigate it. The North Brentwood Digital Heritage Project was started in 2021 to document the built environment of the town and preserve its legacy in the face of climate change and gentrification. The North Brentwood Archaeological Project was started in 2022 to collect evidence of the town’s development, the flood-prone legacy buried in its soils, and the cultural materials of its residents, who have persevered, despite the new and recurrent challenges they face each generation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Unsettling Infrastructure: Theorizing Infrastructure and Bio-Political Ecologies in a More-Than-Human World   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37687.0