This project uses photography to document my family’s ongoing effort to preserve the Garcitas Freedmen Colony/Community in rural South Texas. The community was founded by formerly enslaved Americans of African descent, including my ancestors.
The Garcitas Cemetery, Mt. Pisgah Missionary Baptist Church, and the former Hudler School for Coloreds are central to our family’s lived experiences. Built and maintained by relatives across generations, these sites show how cultural memory survives without institutional support. Across the region, many of these freedmen communities now hold only their cemeteries as evidence of past life. The Garcitas community is one of the few that still retains its school, church, and cemetery, giving me and my family a rare lens on a complete cultural landscape. The project focuses on how photography can make visible the responsibilities families take on to protect their own histories.
