The first free Black town in
the American South
Historic Mitchelville
an “experiment in freedom”
In 2017, archaeology at Mitchelville began
Mitchelville was once the home of the first free, Black town in the American south. Established in 1862, months before the Emancipation Proclamation, Mitchelville was an “experiment in freedom”.
Few written records exist to tells us about the daily lives of the trailblazing Mitchelville citizens, and none of them were written by residents themselves. Archaeology has been the backbone of research about Mitchelville since it was first excavated in the 1980s.
This video is a crew of four archaeologists, Caleb Hutson, Shawn Johns, Amelia Hessey, and Benjamin Heckman. They are collecting data with a machine reading the subsurface. They are working at the Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park.
Beginning in 2017, Katherine Seeber has been leading archaeological work at Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park. Her work has been driven by the Mitchelville descendant community needs and desires. Thus far, she has located dozens of Mitchelville era homes, yards, artifacts, and ancestor hotspots (places where Mitchelville people spent their time doing the work of living). Her dissertation work, the Connecting the Dots Project (funded by the African American Cultural Heritage Action Grant) spent years surveying the entire park area for archaeology in preparation for park development. The newest exhibit, the “Ghosted Structures” is a direct result of her research and development. She is continuously developing and facilitating the archaeology at Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park.
