{"id":158486,"date":"2026-02-10T15:30:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T15:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/158486\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T15:30:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T15:30:07","slug":"austin-black-freedom-communities-highlighted-in-documentary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/158486\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin Black freedom communities highlighted in documentary"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>AUSTIN, Texas \u2014\u00a0There are Black freedom communities throughout <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetexasfreedomcoloniesproject.com\/atlas\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">many cities across Texas<\/a>, like Austin, Dallas and Houston. These communities were formed by formerly enslaved people after the Civil War.<\/p>\n<p>The history of Austin\u2019s Black freedom communities are stories that have often been overlooked as the neighborhoods continue to transform. People with a passion for preserving that history are doing everything they can to shed light on it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOftentimes in these communities and colonies, you saw churches, schools and homes, and oftentimes the churches were really the cornerstone of the community,\u201d said Funmi Ogunro, a film editor from Austin.<\/p>\n<p>Stephanie L. Lang grew up in East Austin, and her family\u2019s ties to the area stretch back several generations.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy great-grandmother lived here, and my grandmother was born just down this street,\u201d said Lang as she drove Spectrum News through the streets of East Austin.<\/p>\n<p>Lang explains the significance of Robertson Hill, a neighborhood she grew up around and one of Austin\u2019s many historic Black freedom communities.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis neighborhood, I would say arguably, is the core of East Austin,\u201d Lang said. \u201cThe first kind of freedom community where a lot of these other communities came from.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She and Ogunro share a passion for explaining the importance of these communities and have been working on a documentary called \u201cRise\u201d to bring Austin\u2019s Black history to the forefront and preserve it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt started off as a documentary where we were interviewing descendants from these different communities, and then it evolved into not only a film but also a community archive,\u201d Ogunro said.<\/p>\n<p>Given the current political landscape and many historians\u2019 concerns about the erasure of Black history, the filmmaking duo feels it\u2019s an important time to continue educating people.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s even more important for us to claim it, reclaim it, take it back, contextualize it ourselves, and we can\u2019t stop,\u201d Lang said. \u201cWe can\u2019t stop doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN, Texas \u2014\u00a0There are Black freedom communities throughout many cities across Texas, like Austin, Dallas and Houston. These&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":158487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[14209,65180,132,134,133,5604,56124,63052,1570,102,138,6364,14210,223,82,26986,1569,835],"class_list":["post-158486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-app-human-interest","tag-app-latest-human-interest-stories","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-austin-what-you-need-to-know","tag-black-history-month","tag-black-history-month-2026","tag-ctv","tag-dallas","tag-el-paso","tag-geraldine-torrellas","tag-human-interest","tag-news","tag-san-antonio","tag-texas-editors-picks","tag-texas-what-you-need-to-know","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}