On This Land – Using Historical Markers to Address Forgotten African American Histories: The Genesis and Realization of a Social Impact Project
LEFT: Entrance to Underground Atlanta, an entertainment district in downtown Atlanta and the former site of Crawford & Frazer Co’s auction room and slave pen. Photo courtesy of Aerial Ace Photography (Atlanta, GA; 2023)
RIGHT: Archival photograph of Crawford & Frazer Co’s storefront on Whitehall Street in Atlanta, GA. George N. Barnard, ["Auction & Negro Sales," Whitehall Street], 1864, glass, stereograph, wet collodion, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, https://www.loc.gov/resource/cwpb.03350/#
On This Land is an interdisciplinary project dedicated to creating a new kind of historical marker. The choice to fabricate markers instead of erecting monuments is one born from the social, political, and economic turmoil that erupted during the summer of 2020 – now alternately referred to as the George Floyd Protests or the Summer of Racial Reckoning. Calls to dismantle monuments and memorials that celebrate historical figures who actively participated in racial injustice often exclude historic markers. Inherently fixed and biased, these signposts are essential components of the landscape of public remembrance and equally complicit in acts of racial injustice through the erasure or obfuscation of nuanced historical narratives. On This Land introduces a paradigm shift in the way markers share accurate, comprehensive information and commemorate shared histories.
On This Land is a project that will install interactive markers on eight sites in and around the city of Atlanta, Georgia that possess forgotten, hidden, or ignored histories. Through interactive, engaging markers each site will provide an opportunity for the people of Atlanta to share their stories while promoting a circular model of knowledge building, historic preservation, and information sharing. The markers serve a dual purpose: to physically designate locations pertinent to Atlanta’s history and to provide access to oral histories, government documents, city planning resources, personal stories, and historical accounts. Once installed, any curious user can approach the marker and learn about the relationship between the site that they stand on and its history. Users have the opportunity to engage deeply with archival materials available at the site or on our web-based application; they can also explore a collection of personal narratives gathered from previous users and contribute their own story with respect to the site. The repository of personal narratives that grows from user engagements is the heart and soul of the project. In order to ground ourselves in the realities of the past, we must also understand our collective present.
Genesis and Realization of On This Land
My understanding of the world irrevocably changed in the summer of 2015 when I was a 16-year-old junior in high school. More accurately, my understanding of placemaking, public history, and recognizing marginalized communities irrevocably changed that summer. In June, I began a dual enrollment course titled “Introduction to Black Studies.” My Algebra teacher, Jontha Gillyard, offered students an opportunity to engage with a different version of African American history. His summer course began in modern day Nigeria and led us to our own city of Tampa, Florida. For the first time I learned that Tampa’s historically black neighborhoods, like Dobyville, were dismantled with the advancement of infrastructure, implementation of redlining, and the inevitability of white flight. To my surprise, I also learned that there were no historic markers that recognize the comprehensive history of these neighborhoods.
Five years later, this first encounter was on my mind in the spring of 2020. I was 21 at Spelman College and preparing my final assignment for Dr. Cheryl Finley’s course, “Slavery and Visual Culture.” Dr. Finley is an art historian and curator who in addition to being an Associate Professor in Cornell University’s Department of History of Art & Visual Studies, serves as the Inaugural Distinguished Visiting Director of the Atlanta University Center Collective for the Study of Art History + Curatorial Studies. I was in my third year at Spelman and one of thousands of students sent back home in a world shifting in the wake of COVID-19. Before COVID hit, I remember the giddy anticipation I felt about the upcoming public program for the exhibition Paa Joe: Gates of No Return at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. There were elaborate plans to celebrate Ghana’s Independence Day with artist Paa Joe, who hadn’t visited the United States from his home in Ghana for years. The exhibition presented a series of large-scale, painted wood sculptures representing architectural models of Ghana’s Gold Coast castles and forts, sites where the trafficking of more than six million Africans into slavery in the Americas and the Caribbean took place between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. I spent hours walking through the show’s galleries at varying stages of its installation in my role as a Mellon Undergraduate Curatorial Fellow and alone, as a contemplative viewer. On each of my trips I found myself drawn to a set of iPads lined up against a wall awaiting visitors. Museum employees created three different sets of interpretive materials designed to give visitors a greater understanding of Atlanta’s role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The interactive that I found most thought provoking was graphically, the most simplistic. It was a sparse map of Atlanta covered with blue pointer icons indicating sites around the city with connections to the history of enslavement.
As I clicked on each of the icons, I realized that many of them were marking locations I had seen, stood on, or driven past countless times. There was a site on Georgia Technical University’s Campus that was the home of Ephraim Ponder, a notorious enslaver in Atlanta. Another was at the Underground Atlanta – a shopping center located in Midtown – and another on Whitehall Street just a short distance away from Spelman’s campus. Both the Underground and Whitehall Street locations served as auction houses that sold enslaved people. The shock of learning about the history of these sites was soon surpassed by the even more shocking realization that most of them were unmarked.
Part of my deep love of Atlanta is rooted in the city’s proud proclamations about its ties to the past. It’s common knowledge that you can hardly walk a few feet without seeing a historical marker extolling information about the Civil War or the Civil Rights Movement. I discovered the unfortunate reality that the city’s public remembrance of enslavement was virtually invisible. In fact, out of the 217 markers erected throughout Fulton County by the Georgia Historical Society, only 5 mention the enslavement or emancipation of African Americans in Georgia.
While I mulled over my discovery and transitioned to virtual classes from the comfort of my family’s dining room table in Tampa, I could feel the beginnings of an idea forming. There had to be a way to let people know about the history of these sites – histories rooted in enslavement, dispossession, and other acts of colonial and racial violence that took place on the land beneath their feet. The solution, I realized, could be workshopped through my final assignment for Dr. Finley’s course. Tasked with creating a comprehensive exhibition proposal and inspired by the intersection of community activism and photography central to Jessica Ingram’s Road Through Midnight – a nearly decade long artistic and research endeavor that illuminates sites of racial violence in the American South – I arrived at the first iteration of On This Land.
In the early days of the project’s conception, I had grand visions of inviting some of the most thought-provoking and socially engaged contemporary artists to create commissioned artworks at the eight selected sites. The dossier that I submitted for final grading included theoretical wall texts, a site map, labels for each of the imagined commissions, and a detailed budget. Time would soon make clear the effectiveness of my dossier and the urgency of this project.
A few weeks after receiving my diploma in May of 2021, I received an email from Dr. Finley and Susan de Menil. Mrs. de Menil, co-founder of the Art and Antiquities Blockchain Consortium, served as an adjunct professor and consultant for courses considering the intersection of art and technology at Spelman. Our collaborative efforts to better my final assignment and the concept’s strength were part of the pair’s consideration when they approached me with an astounding offer to help make my project a reality. On This Land connected to Mrs. de Menil’s interest in innovative uses of diverse technologies to support cultural heritage and paralleled Dr. Finley’s work on the visual and material culture of enslavement. My project was a natural fit for collaboration with them. Their investment in the project was rooted not only in a desire to support the success of a former student, but also in furthering the state of their respective fields.
Over the last few years, we have collaborated to distill the vision and mission of On This Land. Through this work we realized that, at its core, On This Land is a project about memory and place. We considered the past and present landscapes of public remembrance in the United States. Then, we conceived of a new kind of historical marker to illuminate untold or forgotten histories on the grounds on which they were formed. These markers will serve as technologically innovative repositories that provide broad public access to archival materials, store personal historical narratives from community members, and stand as a testimony of our investment in engaging with the past.
In 2021 I settled into my new life as a Mellon Curatorial Fellow at the Williams College Museum of Art. Throughout this time, Dr. Finley and Mrs. de Menil continued to patiently and persistently support the development of my project. On my behalf, they discussed the project with trusted colleagues and connected me to thought leaders like the photographer Jessica Ingram and New York University’s Associate Professor of Visual Arts Administration Amy Whitaker who became advisors and advocates for the progression of the project.
As our team grew, I knew we were quickly approaching a critical moment where funding would be necessary for our continued growth. Although my advisors were all more than willing to contribute to this project pro-bono, it became very clear that we needed to hire designers, technologists, photographers, and a research assistant to continue moving forward. After unsuccessfully pursuing a few potential funding leads, a single introduction changed the course of our campaign. During the fall of 2022, a beloved professor introduced me to a contact that they had at the Ford Foundation. After an energizing first call, we saw an opportunity to synergize interests and began the grant application process. Once again, Mrs. de Menil , Dr. Finley, and I worked remotely to compose a compelling application that adequately expressed our journey and the project’s potential for expansion. On April 4, 2023, we received notice that our grant was approved – an affirmation that our work over the previous two years was well worth it.
Soon after receiving the funds, our team exploded in size. Eddie Opara and Duncan Cock Foster, who have become crucial members of our team, each respectively lead the design and technological development of the project. Eddie is a designer and partner at Pentagram, an internationally renowned design consultancy firm whose interest in strategy, design, and technology closely aligns with the mission and goals of On This Land. Duncan, who co-founded Nifty Gateway, a digital art online auction platform for non-fungible token art, was attracted to the project due to its interdisciplinary nature and, as a graduate of Emory University, its connection to Atlanta. Several other essential team members were brought on to contribute to the overall success of the project. Tempe Stewart, an emerging archivist and museum professional, has scoured over a dozen archival collections to collect relevant materials for each site. Lees Romano, a gallerist and subject enthusiast of the erasure and reclamation of the Black cowboy in visual art, manages the project’s digital presence through our website.
Community support is essential to On This Land's mission to designate and commemorate each site. Most recently, Ann Hill Bond, an Atlanta-based journalist, preservationist, and community liaison at the Atlanta Preservation Center and the Fulton County Remembrance Coalition, has joined our team as the Liaison for Community Outreach. She will help foster connections and collaboration with community stakeholders. Ann’s experience as an organizer will help build on the team’s existing relationships with key stakeholders, including the Atlanta Mayor’s office, community supporters, and faculty at Spelman College, as well as local and national media outlets and preservation societies. The generous support from the Ford Foundation enabled the growth of our team and plans for the development of our first prototype, two major achievements at a critical moment in the project’s lifespan.
Presently, our team is developing both a technical sketch for the marker’s prototype and a website that shares the project’s progress alongside a site-specific case study. In the future, we look forward to convening in Atlanta with community stakeholders, activists, historians, and others interested in discussing the future of public history. Following this event and continued development, we look forward to installing the markers at the eight selected sites telling a more fulsome version of Atlanta’s African American history.
By connecting the land, physical markers, historical collections, and technology, we envision On This Land as scalable at other historical sites across the United States and beyond. Through its unique approach and methodology, On This Landhas the potential to make accessible the histories and voices of community members, past and present. On This Land seeks to engage a racially, geographically, and generationally diverse audience in the construction of a new understanding of historical sites. By marking a physical place on the land for these unremembered individuals, we create a space of public remembrance for all.
About the Author:
Destinee Filmore is a curator, art historian, and writer from Tampa, Florida working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City as an Assistant Curator in the Modern and Contemporary Art Department. As an emerging museum professional with a vested interest in telling a more complex history of art in the United States, Destinee’s research centers women and historically marginalized makers while focusing on topics such as vernacular African American artistic traditions, the reception history of identity-based exhibitions, and the visual and material culture of Afro-Cosmopolitanisms. In addition to her work as a curator, Destinee leads a team of technologists, designers, and researchers as the Project Director of On This Land, a Ford Foundation-funded project dedicated to using technology and archival research to transform the landscape of public remembrance in Atlanta.
Destinee graduated from Spelman College with a B.A. in Art History and received an M.A. from the Graduate Program in the History of Art at Williams College. She holds a wealth of museum experience from fellowships and internships at the High Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, and Crystal Bridges Museum of Art. Destinee has led a variety of exhibition project such as Remixing the Hall: WCMA’s Collection in Perpetual Transition (2022), Frantz Zéphirin: Selected Works (2022), and the Williams College Museum of Art’s presentation of Emancipation: The Unfinished Project of Liberation (2024) and worked on others including Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe (2021), Color Field (2019), Patterns in Abstraction: Aesthetic Innovation in African American Quilts (2024).