• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content

DataWorks NC

Serving neighbors and neighborhoods, nonprofits, and local governments. Our mission is to democratize data to facilitate an empowered, productive, and equitable community

  • About Us
    • Engage Communities
    • Data Tools
  • Work With Us
  • News
  • Reports & Presentations
  • Evictions in Durham
  • Contact
  • Support Our Work
  • Show Search
Hide Search

Claiming History, Space and the Future: This is Bragtown

John Killeen · Dec 2, 2019 · 4 Comments

The Bragtown Community Association’s boundary: This area is inclusive of several important locations: the crossroads of Old Oxford Highway and Roxboro Road, which was called “Bragtown” on maps as old as 1887; the area surrounding the rail line, which soon after enslaved people were freed from the Cameron Plantation became a primary route from Stagville to the newly-free Black community; and the historic business district of Bragtown anchored at Roxboro Road and Club Boulevard.

*

In 2018 when the Bragtown Community Association had been actively organizing around new bylaws, the group came to DataWorks with the request to map the community boundary. For us, this was an effort to understand what space the community members identify with, but we also needed to make a correction. For several years the public maps describing the extent of Bragtown looked like this:

Durhamhoods.com Bragtown boundaries. These reflect the City of Durham’s Economic Development corridor boundary, centering Braggtown along Roxboro Road. Source: Durham Hoods.

Durham Hoods, a community-responsive website managed by a private individual, incorporates only the properties facing Roxboro and Avondale Drive. This is the area included in the City of Durham’s Economic Development Corridors and on one hand it properly anchors the community at the intersections of Roxboro Street with Club Boulevard and Old Oxford Highway. But it includes no residential properties.

Along with missing the residents of Bragtown, there is a long history not accounted for in the Durham Hoods boundary. The oldest available detailed map of the area is from 1887 and it features Bragtown (one “g”) at the intersection of what is now Roxboro Road and Old Oxford Highway. The Stagville Plantation is also featured on this map (with two “g”s).

1887 map of Durham County from the Tobacco Leaf newspaper. Stagville. Cameron Lands. Freedom and a free community. (Source: Digital Durham)

The story of Bragtown shared by neighborhood elders is of an unincorporated community that had its own mayor; a self-reliant Black community that created its own library when a Fence Road neighbor dedicated their home for a community collection; a free community of families that left the Cameron plantation lands, walking the rail road tracks to a fresh start during Reconstruction. This history needed to be referenced in the map as well.

DataWorks joined with members of the community in August 2018, and began the process of crafting this map. Participants included residents whose families have been in Bragtown for generations, since long before 1865. Each contributor circled their home on a large printed map and marked the edges of the neighborhood as they have known them. The map came to each community meeting over the following year.

In February of 2019 Ricky Hart – whose family were enslaved at and later farming on the lands of Stagville – came to review this work at the Lakeview School. He visited DataWorks later that month and revised the northern extent of the boundary to include the areas marked here in red. The revisions were reviewed in community meetings that followed during 2019.

The area does include other self-identified communities, some established earlier in the 20th century and some subdivided in recent years. What unites them is their origin in the broader Bragtown community which long precedes the area’s annexation by the City of Durham in the late 1950s.

Going forward, the Bragtown Community Association will use this boundary in its work, organizing to preserve the past and determine the future. Concerns the group is working on right now include the preservation of community and family history in the face of rapid gentrification; improvement to park facilities and housing; and continued development of gardens and food production in Bragtown. To learn more about their work or to reach out, visit their webpage.

DataWorks will incorporate this boundary in its work, and continue collaborating with Bragtown Community Association. Starting in 2020, this boundary will also be included in the Neighborhood Compass.

*

John Killeen is the executive director of DataWorks NC. Credit for this writing and the process it describes is shared with Vannessa Mason Evans, the Bragtown Community Association, and Ricky Hart.

News

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Dr. Janet Barber says

    August 20, 2020 at 1:03 am

    I have always loved history and place. One supportive place for me has always been Braggtown. I loved Lakeview Elementary School! Keep up the good work, Vanessa and Rick.
    Dr. Janet Barber

    Reply
  2. Karen Baldwin says

    February 22, 2021 at 9:20 pm

    I was wondering if there was a neighborhood association in the Lawndale Acres section of Bragtown. I can’t seem to find one online but I am interested in either joining one or starting one. Does anyone have information on Lawndale Acres community advocacy?

    Reply
  3. Vannessa Mason Evans says

    March 11, 2021 at 10:24 am

    You are welcome to join the Bragtown Community Association please following and sign up to be a member on our Bragtown Community Association Face Book Page.

    Reply
  4. Constance Wright says

    March 11, 2021 at 12:53 pm

    Hi Karen,
    We do have a Bragtown Community Association of which Vannessa Mason Evans is Chair and I, Constance /wright, am vice-chair. We would be happy for you to join our Association so that you can become informed of things going on in Bragtown.

    All you need to do is give us you email address and we will add you to our email You can go to our Facebook page, Bragtown Community Association. There is a form that you can complete and send it in. Or you can submit your email address to: mggerald60@gmail.com.

    We look forward to hearing from you.

    Constance Wright, Vice-chair
    Bragtown Community Association

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

twitter icon

latest tweets

@planning_troll There's also this one in the NC legislature now too, that would block purchases for owners of 100 or more homes. ncleg.gov/Sessions/2…

RT @GeogSara Folks! Since fall @daniellepurifoy & I have been working to launch a UNC Landback Abolition Project. Join us! Our classes are doing research for justice in service to those in relation to UNC near & far. We are soliciting community-driven questions: docs.google.com/form… pic.twitter.com/Beut…

RT @mcclure_libby Two panels on environmental justice struggles in Badin, NC March 9 registration link: bit.ly/3Yiou9p March 20 registration link: bit.ly/3JtQHWw pic.twitter.com/q8YN…

"We cannot expect anyone – students or ourselves – to understand problems we are no longer permitted to name or to prepare for a future we cannot imagine." Join DataWorks on this petition to the College Board bit.ly/NoErasure theguardian.com/comm…

RT @MarcusSouthern1 “This redevelopment has to create connection for the community and that starts with people being able to afford to live here,” Williams said. Stay connected at Walltown.net cbs17.com/news/local…

Follow @DataWorks_NC

Copyright © 2023 DataWorks NC · All Rights Reserved · Website by Code the Dream & Tomatillo Design