Providing Rice students opportunities to conduct research in the Houston community is the hallmark of the Houston Action Research Team (HART) program in the Center for Civic Leadership at Rice University.
Through an interdisciplinary research approach, undergraduate students integrate what they are learning in the classroom with applicable research in the community. In the semesterlong program, students are supported by a network of graduate student advisers, faculty advisers and community partners. HART offers students an opportunity to develop skills around research, community engaged learning and civic professionalism.
The HART program also provides an opportunity to amplify the work of Rice faculty who work with communities and organizations around Houston on social or racial justice endeavors.
Nicole Waligora-Davis, the Alan Dugald McKillip Associate Chair in the Department of English, led two recent HART projects in fall 2022 and spring 2023. Waligora-Davis specializes in African American literature, and after the murder of George Floyd, she set out to enhance opportunities for students to work on racial, social and civic justice.
Waligora-Davis aims to develop a digital map of Freedmen’s Town, which is located in Houston’s Fourth Ward, southwest of downtown. Freedmen’s Town was founded as the first Black settlement in Houston, where free Black people resided before the Civil War and grew in population with formerly enslaved people coming together from Texas and Louisiana.
By partnering with the CCL, the HART projects built upon the multiyear research with the African American Center for Research at The Gregory School on their Freedmen’s Town and Fourth Ward collections.
As a subcomponent of the digital map — Black Life in Houston: An Atlas of Racial Inequity, Displacement, and Integration (Black Atlas) — the two student teams delved into archival work ranging from individuals to institutions in Freedmen’s Town. This research was made possible through the partnership of the African American Center for Research and the repositories it made available to Rice students.
During the first semester, one team of students created podcast scripts about their respective areas. In the second semester, a second team created a slide deck focused on the primary data found for future incorporation into a digital map of Freedmen’s Town.
Both teams also contributed to Waligora-Davis’ Airtable that is being used to build a database to catalog archival materials. These materials will eventually be incorporated into the Black Atlas project, which is an ongoing and multidimensional project with the Spatial Labs at Rice.
In their final presentations, both teams talked about their motivations to create spaces of inclusion and safety in historically excluded areas. They also said that by working on the project they were able to build on their academic interests, which range from archival research of Blacks in Houston to engaging with the Houston community.
The CCL is proud to support faculty engaging in the community while guiding Rice students in ethically responsible research.
— Jessica Khalaf
Director of Operations and Partnerships
Center for Civic Leadership