Between 2020 and 2025, Huston-Tillotson University (Austin, TX), served as a Regional Collaboration Partner in CIC’s Legacies of American Slavery network. Huston-Tillotson is an HBCU located in a city (and neighborhood) with a complicated history of segregation, which is still reflected in health disparities and other inequities. With these legacies in mind, the project team decided to focus on the themes of Race, Health, and Medicine and Environmental Justice. Activities included community-engaged research by students and faculty (usually with a focus on health equity or affordable housing), an annual Building Green Justice Forum, co-curricular programs for students, community-based art projects, and a multifaceted collaboration with the nearby George Washington Carver Museum and Cultural Center.
An overview of activities undertaken by Huston-Tillotson University as part of CIC’s Legacies of American Slavery initiative. The presentation was prerecorded for the Independent Colleges & The Legacies of Slavery conference in Memphis, TN, on September 20, 2024.
Download the presentation slides
Reflections on the Legacies initiative by Amanda Masino
From the project team’s annual reports:
Our Legacies project developed educational resources, research products, and community engagement programs around the race and place connections within Austin and the Central Texas region. Faculty and students conducted research on the history and status of gentrification, environmental health, and health disparities in east Austin, and used these findings to generate educational resources and community engagement events. We also embedded race and health content into our existing coursework, generating sharable curricular resources. Our unifying theme: How have the legacies of American slavery impacted and continue to impact the health of Austin’s Black community?
Racism and the legacies of slavery impact the health of African Americans in myriad ways, directly and indirectly. A full exploration of these impacts, and one that seeks to translate findings into interventions, must examine the significant connections between place and health that contribute to endemic health disparities affecting African Americans. These connections between geography and health can be understood through two nested and complementary frameworks: social determinants of health and environmental justice.
👁This is part of a series of reflections on the Legacies initiative.