African American Community Building on Mulberry Island, Virginia during the “Jim Crow” Era

Summary

This is an abstract from the "MARS General Military CRM Poster Session" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In 1918 the US Army purchased all 3,238 ha (8,000 acres) of Mulberry Island, Virginia to create Camp Eustis, now the Fort Eustis portion of Joint Base Langley-Eustis. English colonizers and enslaved African laborers had occupied Mulberry Island since the seventeenth century. At the time of the Army’s purchase, a significant African American community lived on Mulberry Island. There were African American social and fraternal organizations, financial organizations, and a church founded in 1867. Most of the landowners who sold land to the Army were African American. The Fort Eustis Cultural Resources Management Program has been examining sites from the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras to better understand the process involved in the creation of a free and vibrant community in the aftermath of enslavement and the increasingly restrictive Jim Crow era.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• MARS General Military CRM Poster Session   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38396.0