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HISTORY · Vertical

HISTORY

Documenting Black history and American history the textbooks erased.

A city seen from a rooftop in haze. In the middle distance a row of downtown towers fades into grey sky. Below, a two-storey brick building with arched doorway stands across a wide empty street from a wooden house with a steep gabled roof and a side porch. Between them a broken picket fence leans over a pile of splintered boards and debris. The negative is marked OWI-16706-C.

HISTORY is the civic archive of place and displacement — the communities demolished, the records buried, the patterns that repeat because they were never named. Its casefiles trace the procedural mechanics by which a Black community is removed from the public record.

5 essays published

ERASED 20 min SUBSIDIZED A sign painted on the wall says MOUND BAYOU FOUNDATION. The federal caption gave the founding to a railroad.
ERASED 13 min BLIGHT Blight is how a city converts engineered neglect into legal permission.
ERASED 17 min REDLINE They colored your neighborhood red. The map is still on file.
ERASED 20 min CLEARANCE Detroit didn't demolish a slum. It demolished a community, then built a highway through the memory.
ERASED 7 min DENIED They filed $4 million in claims. Every single one was denied.

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NEW UNASKED RECOGNIZED CONSENTED SUBSIDIZED TRANSFER STATION CLANDESTINE PROMISED UNSEARCHABLE RESTORED BORROWED THE COUNTED CROWD BARRIER THE CONCESSION COMPROMISE ORIGIN OF THE SEARCH TERMS OUTSIDER WITHIN ABANDONED COURTESY DIGITAL USER ACCOUNT REFUSE UNNECESSARY PREDICTIVE Ellora Derenoncourt and Her Co-Authors Built the Line DESIGNATED SUBSTANTIAL AND EFFECTIVE COMPLIANCE ACTION PLAN POSTPONED RECARVED ROBESON Without a Word for It What Was Buried, Not Broken Money's A Loan Before It's A Thing NAMING MACHINE BLIGHT REDLINE CLEARANCE DENIED