Stepping into freedom.

In March 2020, I attended a press conference about a proposed National Emancipation Heritage Trail study. The trail would go from Galveston, where on June 19, 1865, General Granger, along with hundreds of colored troops were sent to force Texas the state to abide the national law that freed all slaves, an order that was signed almost two years prior. The trail would continue from Galveston to Houston. Growing up in the Midwest, my U.S. History classes never touched on Juneteenth. It seems we were taught that the Civil War ended, slaves were free and then Martin Luther King Jr., came onto the scene, somehow skipping over 100 years of contributions. So many stories have been lost or buried, by neglect or by design, along the proposed Emancipation Heritage Trail tracing the journey of Texas freedmen from Galveston to Houston. But many are still there, waiting to be explored. I decided to explore the trail: the myths and history along the way of it with an 8x10 camera, without sensor or filters — just wood, cloth bellows and glass. It’s similar to the cameras that were in use in the 1800s