An Iowan architect, Jobie Hill, is on a mission to find and document every slave residence that is still standing in America.
Since 2012, Hill has surveyed hundreds of structures that she believes once served as a home to enslaved African Americans. More often than not, the buildings bear no visible trace of their past; many have been converted into garages, offices, or sometimes—unnervingly—bed-and-breakfasts. In some cases the structures have fallen into ruin or vanished entirely, leaving behind a depression in the ground.
Hill is determined to build a first-of-its-kind database that honors and preserves these spaces in more than memory, and to unite the houses with the stories of people who once inhabited them. As she sees it, such a repository is long overdue. "There has never been a national survey of slave houses, except for the one I'm trying to do," Hill says.
Read more on Atlas Obscura.
Ms. Hill's Saving Slave Houses website is here.
[H/t Dondi Lyons]
Images: Public Domain
