CAMHLAB artists honor and support Freedmen’s Town through projects this summer

A partnership of Houston Freedmen’s Town Conservancy and Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, CAMHLAB at Freedmen’s Town is a new site-specific iteration of the museum’s CAMHLAB artist residency program—an initiative that grew out of the pandemic, which has previously utilized spaces like CAMH’s Brown Foundation Gallery and Montrose Collective.

Through residencies by four artists and collectives between June – September 2023, CAMHLAB at Freedmen’s Town aims to honor, preserve, and amplify the histories, stories, and experiences of Houston’s oldest Black settlement and its residents.

Situated along Buffalo Bayou in Houston’s Fourth Ward, Freedmen’s Town was settled shortly after June 19, 1865—Juneteenth—when enslaved African Americans were finally granted the freedom that had been legally theirs since the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation 2 ½ years earlier. Eager to begin new lives in a new place as freed people, these men, women, and children from the surrounding rural areas journeyed to Houston, and began creating a community.

In what became known as Freedmen’s Town, they built homes, schools, businesses, churches, and lives. They built a world in which African Americans could prosper and thrive. Freedmen’s Town is where Black Houston took shape … By 1880, Freedmen’s Town was home to 95% of Black Houstonians. By the 1930s, it had produced over 400 Black-owned businesses. It was the “mother ward,” the Harlem of the South.

Houston Freedmen’s Town Conservancy

In March, the mental health and arts nonprofit The Black Man Project, dance company Nia’s Daughters, and interdisciplinary artists Ann ‘Sole Sister’ Johnson and Billion Tekleab were announced as the 2023 CAMHLAB Freedmen’s Town Artists-in-Residence, and they will carry out projects, community activities, and public presentations over the course of this summer and coming months.

Choreographer and dancer Stacey Allen is the founder and Creative Director of Nia’s Daughters, a movement collective whose works aim to incorporate social justice and activism. During their residency, Allen says her company will create a body of work that centers the stories of resilience and resistance of African Americans in Texas—including The Fairytale Project, a dance theater production inspired by the love story of Jim and Winnie Shankle, and Aesthetic Inheritances, a film and exhibit made in collaboration with artists Danielle Mason and Keda Sharber, which highlights the Freedom Colony Barrett Station and explores Black material culture.

“This work in Freedmen’s Town is a beautiful extension of this path of storytelling. We’ve been here and will not allow for our stories to be erased. Our goal is that this work conjures memory and sparks something inside audiences, and they cherish their own histories,” said Allen.

According to Allen, Nia’s Daughters kicked off their CAMHLAB residency by hosting an interactive, yet laidback outdoor Mother’s Day event in May in Freedmen’s Town.

“We engaged residents with storytelling with the elder Sister Mama Sonya, and our company members, Lakendra Howard and Sydney Hart with myself led the children in a movement class,” said Allen. “The rest was a super organic kickback—popcorn, juice, a DJ—you know, feeling the flow of Sundays at Wiley Park.”

Allen says they will return to Wiley Park for another event in coming months, which will include more movement classes, more storytelling, and more kicking back with the community.

“We truly respect the work that Charonda Johnson [Vice President of the Freedmen’s Town Association and a fifth generation Freedmen’s Town resident] has done in her neighborhood and are just honored to be able to build trust with Freedmen’s Town residents and share our movement practice with the youth.”

Allen told Houston Arts Journal that Nia’s Daughters will also present a public program at POST, to be scheduled in the fall, which will include a quilting workshop by Joethella Gipson and the debut of Sister Mama Sonya’s “mahogany messages: poetic melodies,” a new poetry and dance piece with narratives about Freedmen’s Town residents.

This work in Freedmen’s Town is a beautiful extension of this path of storytelling. We’ve been here and will not allow for our stories to be erased. Our goal is that this work conjures memory and sparks something inside audiences, and they cherish their own histories.

Stacey Allen, Nia’s Daughters Movement Collective

These artist residencies point to a community partnership between Contemporary Arts Museum Houston and Houston Freedmen’s Town Conservancy that goes back to 2020, when the two organizations began formal discussions and programming centered around community engagement and empowerment, as well as “the shared belief that arts and culture is an essential catalyst for change.”

Their partnership also supports artists-in-residence at POST, including Freedmen’s Town Lead Research Fellow Amarie Gipson, whose Reading Room is a curated library of books by and about Black artists, and Freedmen’s Town Film Documentarian Nate Edwards, whose works-in-progress can be viewed this summer during open studio hours:

CAMHLAB at Freedmen’s Town is part of Rebirth in Action: Telling the Story of Freedom—a multi-year project of CAMH, HFTC, the City of Houston, and artist Theaster Gates—which was announced in January and funded by a $1.25 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and an NEA “Our Town” grant.

With the goal to “to promote Houston Freedmen’s Town as monument of Black community, agency, and heritage,” according to a press release, Rebirth in Action includes various phases of artist-led, community, and infrastructure projects—including the archaeological preservation of brick streets, laid by formerly enslaved residents, which hold historical, spiritual, and cultural significance.