Quakertown Stories

FAIN: AKB-279445-21

Texas Woman's University (Denton, TX 76204-5589)
Gretchen Busl (Project Director: September 2020 to present)
Danielle Taylor Phillips-Cunningham (Co Project Director: April 2021 to present)

The development of interdisciplinary courses and civic engagement activities focused on the history of the African American community of Quakertown.

Quakertown Stories is an interdisciplinary curricular project with three major goals: 1) To foster civic engagement by creating a series of courses that implement place-based research assignments focused on Quakertown, a displaced freedmen community in Denton, TX; 2) To facilitate dialogue between the university and Denton community about Quakertown and how it has shaped present day Denton through panel discussions and a student-led public Town Hall; 3) To build on previous programs to establish an ongoing working group to support faculty in designing courses that integrate place-based research and other experiential learning opportunities into their classes.

Associated Products

Part 1: Juneteenth started in Texas. So did this Black town. Whites destroyed it. (Article)
Title: Part 1: Juneteenth started in Texas. So did this Black town. Whites destroyed it.
Author: Danielle Phillips-Cunningham
Author: Alma Clark
Author: Betty Kimble
Abstract: The article centers the family stories of Alma Clark and Betty Kimble to detail how Quakertown was established as well as the life of the community until the 1921 city bond vote that removed them. Alma Clark's husband owned property in Quakertown and lived in the community from a young child until a young adult. Betty Kimble's grandparents and great uncle migrated to Quakertown and bought property and raised their children in the community.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/18/juneteenth-quakertown-texas-black-race-white-supremacy/
Primary URL Description: Link to part 1 of a 2-part Washington Post article.
Access Model: Open access
Format: Newspaper
Periodical Title: The Washington Post
Publisher: The Washington Post

Part 2: White racism brought down a Black community. Will there be reparations? (Article)
Title: Part 2: White racism brought down a Black community. Will there be reparations?
Author: Danielle Phillips-Cunningham
Author: Alma Clark
Author: Betty Kimble
Abstract: The article centers Alma Clark's and Betty Kimble's stories to detail how and why Quakertown was demolished by the city of Denton in 1922.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/18/juneteenth-quakertown-texas-black-race-riot-white-violence/
Primary URL Description: Part 1 of a 2-part article detailing the establishment of Quakertown and the bond vote that removed the community.
Format: Newspaper
Periodical Title: The Washington Post
Publisher: The Washington Post

Student Showcase and Town Hall (Exhibition)
Title: Student Showcase and Town Hall
Curator: Gretchen Busl
Curator: Danielle Phillips-Cunningham
Curator: Julie Libersat
Curator: David Gardner
Curator: Sarah Gamblin
Abstract: Quakertown Stories is an interdisciplinary and experiential learning initiative that aims to integrate the history of Quakertown into courses at Texas Woman’s University. With support from a major grant from the National Endowment for Humanities, Quakertown Stories has sponsored public lectures by local and national historians, and hosted a roundtable event featuring descendants of Quakertown residents. TWU students from a variety of disciplines have been learning about Quakertown and producing creative projects and scholarly research inspired by the stories of former residents of Quakertown.
Year: 2022

Quakertown Stories (Web Resource)
Title: Quakertown Stories
Author: Julie Libersat
Abstract: A public website dedicated to the Quakertown Stories project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The website provides an overview of the interdisciplinary and experiential learning initiative aimed at integrating the history of Quakertown into courses at Texas Woman's University. The website provides information about the faculty development workshop, the history of Quakertown, and promotion for public events.
Year: 2021
Primary URL: https://sites.google.com/twu.edu/quakertownstories/home

Transdisciplinary Feminist Research Methods (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: Transdisciplinary Feminist Research Methods
Author: Danielle Phillips-Cunningham
Abstract: Transdisciplinary Feminist Research Methods was an introductory course to feminist methodological approaches to research. It was designed for graduate students across academic disciplines who are developing research projects that address social justice issues. In this course, students learned feminist research methods that were developed by scholars, literary writers, artists, and community activists to address a range of problems from systemic racism to gender discrimination to labor exploitation. Students used multimedia texts to explore transdisciplinary approaches to research through film, maps, oral interviews, videos, books, and articles. A portion of the course was dedicated to researching injustices in TWU's own “backyard.” Specifically, they engaged in archival and community research to explore the removal of Quakertown, a thriving African American community who lived across the street from present day TWU.
Year: 2022
Audience: Graduate

Love, Community, and Quakertown: Guidance from bell hooks on Teaching Counterstories (Article)
Title: Love, Community, and Quakertown: Guidance from bell hooks on Teaching Counterstories
Author: Jackie Hoermann-Elliott
Abstract: In this article, I examine how hooksian pedagogy helped me understand my positionality as a white, tenure-track faculty member teaching a course on the displacement of people of color by former leaders of my now majority-minority institution. In particular, I describe the geographically related educational sites buried beneath institutionalized, majoritarian narratives in North Texas to contextualize my retelling of the history of Quakertown, a community of free Black citizens who were forcibly removed from their homes and relocated farther away from my campus, Texas Woman’s University, at a point in the twentieth century when Ku Klux Klan activity was on the rise. The history of this community is one of many compelling counterstories, to use Aja Y. Martinez’s term, and one running counter to the dominant narratives formerly espoused by my institution. By sharing vulnerable moments from my teaching of Quakertown, I hope to demonstrate how the antiracist pedagogical development of other white academics is well steered by hooks.
Year: 2023
Primary URL: https://library-ncte-org.ezp.twu.edu/journals/ce/issues/v85-3/32382
Access Model: Subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: College English
Publisher: National Council of Teachers of English

---