Uncovering Nashville’s African-American Heritage: The Bass Street Community Archaeology Project

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Since 2017, the Bass Street Community Archaeology Project has been conducting excavations at the site of one of the earliest African American neighborhoods in post-Civil War Nashville. The Bass Street Community was located on the north side of Saint Cloud Hill, the site of Fort Negley, a Civil War era fort constructed by the Union forces in Nashville. Formerly enslaved persons who joined with Union forces were pressed into service to construct the fort, forming settlements on the slopes of Saint Cloud Hill that developed into permanent neighborhoods following the end of the Civil War.

The neighborhood at Bass Street was a thriving yet marginalized community up until the 1960’s when it was demolished and the people relocated for the construction of the interstate system. In this presentation, we will be discussing how residents of the Bass Street Community constructed and maintained their collective identity within the Jim Crow Era South and through the Civil Rights Era. We will also be discussing the difficulties as well as the implications of conducting archaeological research on a politically contentious topic.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37453.0