The African American Experience in Louisiana

preserving the history of this remote and independent African American place. 272 Today, the
settlement remains, but there is no apparent evidence of its early-twentieth century buildings.
Most buildings in the area have been elevated to protect them from the inevitable flooding of this
watery southern tip of Terrebonne Parish. The Bobtown cemetery, which is still in use, and
archaeological remains may be the only surviving material fabric from the historic period.
The precarious condition of what remains of late nineteenth century African American
settlements and the need to address their documentation is gaining recognition in many parts of
the country. Of the significance of even just traces of late nineteenth century African American
settlements, the Multiple Property Documentation Form for the African American Historic
Resources of Prince George’s County Maryland states:
The situation and form of these settlements, their relations to the roads and waterways,
and their location with respect to large, white-owned farms provides important
information about the transition from bondage to freedom. . . . their surviving elements –
churches, cemeteries, or road junctions – can provide potentially important information
about the web of kinship and interrelationships within the African American
community. 273
In the article “Race, the National Register, and Cultural Resource Management: Creating an
Historic Context for Postbellum Sites,” based on a study focusing on archaeology in Texas, the
author asserts that multidisciplinary research is essential for identifying significant postbellum
African American sites and concludes that:
If steps are not taken soon to eradicate this problem [of disregarding context], the result
will be that few late-19 th –century African American sites will be federally or locally
protected. This era, and those who experienced it and their descendents will remain
274
“without history” indefinitely.
And in North Carolina, residents’ concerns over threatened demolitions prompted diligent study
of land records, oral histories, and private family documents that constructed a clear and
compelling history of a settlement of freed people that could not be determined through standard
architectural survey methods. 275
The common consensus of these independent studies is that late nineteenth century settlements
may not be easily recognizable architecturally as distinctive historic places, but are worthy of the
intensive research their identification requires because of their significance to the patterns of the
African American experience and hence to the broader American experience. This should also
be considered true for earlier and later settlements. Rural settlements are particularly ephemeral
parts of our cultural landscape as people are increasingly drawn out of historic rural communities
to education and jobs elsewhere. The rural landscape had changed significantly over the past
272 Roland Charles, “Bobtown: The Legacy of Robert Celestin,” The Crisis 104, no. 2 (October, 1997): 46-47.
273 Bird, 58.
274 Kerri S. Barile, “Race, the National Register, and Cultural Resource Management: Creating an Historic Context
for Postbellum Sites,” Historical Archaeology 38, no. 1 (2004), 98.
275 Heather Fearnbach, “From Farm to Factory: Continuity and Change in the Bethania Freedmen’s Community”
(paper presented at the 29 th Annual Meeting of the Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians,
Charleston, SC, October 27, 2011).
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