The Story of freedom

"John Boston escaped to Maryland in 1862 where he encamped with a Union regiment. In a letter to his wife, he wrote, 'This day I can address you, thank God, as a free man. [A]s the Lord led the children of Israel to the land of Canaan, so he led me to a land where freedom reigns.' John Boston was one of thousands of enslaved men and women who fled slavery in search of freedom and refuge. Their lives, along with the service of the U.S. Colored Troops, represent the true story of Fort Negley and other UNESCO Sites of Memory. This project represents an effort to preserve and protect these sites and stories and to ensure a 'land where freedom reigns.'"

"My interest in Ft. Negley dates back to 1994 when a star student in my African History class, Eleanor Fleming, wrote an essay about her descendants who helped build the fort. Ft. Negley later became a regular site visit for the Historic Black Nashville class I created with my colleague, Dan Sharfstein of Vanderbilt's Law School. In 2015 I was named the U.S Member of UNESCO's International Scientific Committee for the Slave Route charged with identifying and promoting important sites of historical memory of slavery. When Ft. Negley was threatened by a proposed devlopment project, I made a presentation to the Metro Historical Commission that stopped it and then worked with my graduate student, Angela Sutton, Krista Castillo, Museum Coordinator at Ft. Negley Visitors Center, Clay Bailey, then president of the Friends of Ft. Negley, and John Cooper, to successfully nominate Ft. Negley for UNESCO's important Site of Memory designation."

"The Fort Negley Descendants Project is a way for people who have a connection to the enslaved and free people who worked on all the defenses of Nashville, as well as who were soldiers in the segregated regiments of our military, to share their stories- it's a gift to the community. I got involved because when I heard they were going to put condos on the Sounds stadium, it made me livid because there are bodies buried there. It's public land that belongs to all of us, and we wanted to give people a microphone so their voices are heard."

"As a historian of African American and Public History, I have been involved with several sites of public memory, ranging from well-known historic spaces such as the Gullah Geechee Corridor that runs from North Florida to North Carolina to lesser-known spaces such as Promise Land, Tennessee, an African American community that was established shortly after the Civil War. Much of my work since 2003 has involved studying and writing about the transition of Black Americans from enslaved to freed persons. That is I look at how they defined their new freedom, what they did in the immediate aftermath of emancipation, and the institutions they created. Fort Negley is the intersection of all these areas of inquiry."