Bricks made, laid by descendants of slaves return to Freedmen’s Town
Pavers, part of bid to be U.N. heritage site, were disturbed last year by construction
Treasured brick street pavers that were disturbed in Houston’s Freedmen’s Town a year ago during underground drainage repairs are being replaced by the city.
The restoration of the centuryold bricks – made and laid by the descendants of formerly enslaved people after the city refused their early 20th century request to pave streets – began just before the end of Black History Month and as the city pursues cultural tourism recognition for the area.
The garnet-hued brick patchwork is believed to be the largest remaining linear architectural footprint of black urban life from the post-slavery Reconstruction era.
“History has been made at the end of Black History Month — our original bricks have been returned to their resting spot,” said Charonda Johnson, 40, a lifelong resident of the community and a construction monitor for the Freedmen’s Town Preservation Coalition. “Freedmen’s Town is a settlement like no other in the United States and we need to protect it.”
The pavers are the basis of a local bid for Freedmen’s Town to become a UNESCO World Heritage site. They remain intact because of the fierce protection of residents and preservationists who have succeeded with shoestring resources and through legal action to halt or redirect city action.
A November 2016 mishap in the early days of the current drainage project inadvertently displaced some bricks, leaving
officials steamed and preservationists alarmed by what they interpreted as continued disrespect of Houston’s early black history. At that time, Mayor Sylvester Turner ordered all disturbed bricks to be preserved.
This week, city contractors began the reinstallation of 3,610 bricks, with a 1-inch leveling pad poured Monday at Genesee and Andrews to ensure the reset bricks will match the level of the street’s existing pavers, according to public works department spokeswoman Alanna Reed.
The two-year project is east of Carnegie Vanguard High School. On Wednesday, most of the sideby-side and diagonal patterns that had been positioned were dusty as crews swept filler sand into the crevices between bricks.
Brian Alcott, the city’s project manager, said the new storm sewer boxes under the bricks will help the area drain to Buffalo Bayou. He expects the final paver to be installed by the end of next week.
Turner released a statement Wednesday explaining that the project – slated for completion by December – was delayed by Harvey and other weather issues.
“We will continue to work with the community to preserve this important historical neighborhood,” the mayor said, noting that the city’s work has had oversight by an archaeologist. “I am pleased we could start this project before the end of February.”
Jane Landers, a UNESCO envoy for the United Nations’ Slave Route Project, visited Houston in October to review Freedmen’s Town as a historically significant site that contributes to the global story of the human labor trade. The scholar of Africans in the Atlantic World said she had never seen anything like the community’s brick streets, which were laid in accordance with West African traditions and connect residents with their ancestral roots.