Walter Hood - Black Landscapes Matter

EDITED BY

Walter Hood

AND

Grace Mitchell Tada

University of Virginia Press

C HARLOTTESVILLE AND L ONDON

University of Virginia Press

2020 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia

All rights reserved

First published 2020

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hood, Walter, editor. | Tada, Grace Mitchell, editor.

Title: Black landscapes matter / edited by Walter Hood and Grace Mitchell Tada.

Description: Charlottesville : University of Virginia Press, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020020084 (print) | LCCN 2020020085 (ebook) | ISBN 9780813944852 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780813944869 (paperback) | ISBN 9780813944876 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH : African AmericansSocial conditions. | Cultural landscapesUnited States. | LandscapesSymbolic aspectsUnited States. | Collective memory and city planningUnited States. | United StatesRace relations.

Classification: LCC E 185.86 . B 52559 2020 (print) | LCC E 185.86 (ebook) | DDC 305.896/073dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020020084

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020020085

Publication of this volume was assisted by a grant from Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund.

Cover art:Redemption Mile, Rosa Parks,Detroit, Michigan, 2018. (Courtesy of Hood Design Studio)

Walter Hood

Richard L. Hindle

Louise A. Mozingo

Anna Livia Brand

Kofi Boone

Walter Hood

Maurice Cox

Austin Allen

Lewis Watts with Walter Hood

Sara Daleiden

Walter Hood

Walter Hood

Traditional Africans did not look forward to radical change or to a messianic age, but rather they remembered the homes of their forefathers, reestablished after death by their spirits and awaiting the souls of the living.... In this traditional African sacred cosmos, time was viewed as having scale of value. There were good times and bad times, times that were favorable for an activity and times that were inauspicious for that special action. These particular events that were tied to time were also tied further to place. Events should and have occurred at particular places on the earth, places that were auspicious for and tied to the event.

Mechel Sobel, The World They Made Together

Black landscapes matter because they are prophetic. They tell the truth of the struggles and the victories of African Americans in North America. The landscape bears the detritus of diverse origins: from the plantation landscape of slavery, to freedman villages and new towns, to agrarian indentured servitude.