Nedra Lee

University of Massachusetts Boston | UMB · Department of Anthropology

Black newspapers are an important yet underused source for historically contextualizing African American sites. The Black press helped shape notions of African American identity and community through philosophies of racial uplift that promoted a vision of Black achievement and citizenship. Although sociologist E. Franklin Frazier criticized the Bla...

There are few studies of post-emancipation-period African American agrarian landowners because their numbers were small in contrast to those African Americans who remained landless. Archaeologists’ emphasis on sharecroppers has overlooked the socioeconomic diversity within the African American community and minimized the importance of land ownershi...

Here we go again. The need to contest and refute biological determinism in archaeology - Volume 27 Issue 1 - Nedra Lee

We participated in the research of a post-emancipation African American site in Texas that involved a community outreach programme with local descendants. We worked with the descendant community in producing knowledge and defining project outcomes, both of which benefitted the research and raised the public visibility of black Texas history and arc...

This article addresses Black women's economic roles in nineteenth‐century Nantucket, Massachusetts, during the island's ascendency as the center of a global whaling industry. Much of the existing scholarship highlights men's participation in the whaling industry, while Black women's contributions remain obscured. I use two main lines of evidence to...

Following emancipation, relatively few African Americans held the status of landowning farmers. Within the context of racial and economic subjugation, these individuals struggled to maintain their land and autonomy as they transitioned into new lives as free citizens and independent farmers. Our research addresses how the household economy, especia...

In conjunction with the proposed construction of the southwest segment of State Highway 45 in southern Travis County, the Texas Department of Transportation sponsored archeological testing and data recovery efforts at the Ransom Williams farmstead. Prewitt and Associates, Inc., conducted an interdisciplinary community-based historic archeological s...

In conjunction with the proposed construction of the southwest segment of State Highway 45 in southern Travis County, the Texas Department of Transportation sponsored archeological testing and data recovery efforts at the Ransom Williams farmstead. Prewitt and Associates, Inc., conducted an interdisciplinary community-based historic archeological s...