Texas Freedom Colonies Erased by Design

After the Civil War, thousands of newly freed Black people built their own

towns—places where they could own land, run businesses, and walk down the street without asking

a white man’s permission. In Texas, these were called “freedom colonies,” and they were acts

of quiet rebellion against a state literally founded on profiting from enslaved Black bodies.

White folks didn’t just watch that happen. Some Black towns were flooded by

“public works” dams, pushed off maps, or slowly starved of investment until the school closed,

the post office vanished, and the land got scooped up cheap. Today,

a lot of descendants only find out their grandparents’ town even existed when they stumble across