AFT members preserve history through community service project

AFT members gathered this morning to preserve history at Freedmen’s Town, a once-thriving community in Houston’s Fourth Ward founded by formerly enslaved families that has faced decades of deterioration.

“We’re doing this community service project because not only is it important as educators and union members to teach the ABCs and the 123s but also to ensure that students have the wealth of knowledge and history necessary to become critically thinking citizens,” said Zeph Capo, president of Texas AFT. “It's important that we teach where we are and how we got here, and that’s been cut out of our history books. We’re coming into this community to maintain, restore and preserve historic treasures that are right here in our backyard.”

Members shoveled dirt, hauled gravel and pulled weeds at a prayer labyrinth that sits on the former site of Mt. Carmel Missionary Baptist Church, built in 1915 and razed by the city in 2008. They also helped in the town’s archaeological lab and covered a historic home with primer paint to signal to the city that the house had not been abandoned and should be saved from demolition.

“These homes have been standing since I can remember, and I’m on the other side of 65,” said Dr. Sally Wickers, who was raised in Freedmen’s Town. “My great-grandmother lived in this house. I just remember coming over here all the time. To have them restored is just something we have been praying for.”

[Melanie Boyer]