Welcome to Brazos Matters.

I'm Jay Socol.

Well, you may or may not know that KAMU is one of ten Texas PBS stations.

And, in fact, KAMU, who has been Aggieland's PBS station since 1970 and providing you with programing for children and families and lifelong learners of all ages.

But one of the latest Texas PBS collaborations is with Texas Monthly for a brand new docu series called Texas Monthly Presents.

And it is a visually stunning collection of storytelling from Texas monthly journalists who deliver some unique insights about our state.

And that's exactly what you would expect from Texas Monthly and Texas PBS.

So today we're visiting with one of those writers, Mike Hall, who has a segment in the first episode of Texas Monthly Presents, which is now streaming on PBS Passport.

That segment relates to a location only a few miles west of the Texas A&M campus.

The history in the family is connected to that history and soil.

So I've watched it.

It is captivating.

So first, a quick bit about Mike.

University of Texas graduate who's been with Texas Monthly since 1997.

His other career stops include the Austin American-Statesman, Austin Chronicle, Third Coast Magazine and Trouser Press, which is a name that I love.

His stories have appeared in the best magazine writing The Best American Sportswriting, The New York Times and Men's Journal.

So, Mike, I'm tired of hearing myself talk.

I would love for you to tell us.

First of all, welcome.

Thanks for joining me.

Thank you so much for having me.

You bet.

I would love for you to tell us about the story we will find in this premiere episode of Texas Monthly Presents.

Yeah, this is a story about a woman named Gloria Smith, who is retired, lives in Fort Worth.

And she said when she used to talk about she she talked about how her mother would when Gloria was a little girl growing up in Fort Worth, all of her friends would leave for the summer and they would go what she where they would say they would.

They would go down home.

And she was like, what is down home?

And well, it's where their grandparents lived.

And it was usually someplace in East Texas, out in the rural parts of East Texas, where they would ride horses and and and swim in creeks.

And you couldn't do that in Fort Worth.

And she would ask her mom, where's our down home?

And her mom said, Well, we don't really have a down home.

And so Gloria was like this urban girl.

And one day she had kids, and one day her one of her daughters was interviewing her mother and talking about some of the family history.

And it turned out that they had relatives who grew up somewhere in a place called Burleson County.

Right.

Which she didn't she didn't know anything about.

And she did some research and found that, in fact, she had relatives who had grown up in these little tiny towns called Freedom Colonies, not far from A&M.

And this was in her words, her down home.

And so she spent then the next few years seeking out where her people came from in this little freedom colony.

And that became part of the story.

So the freedom colony is called Dabney Hill.

Correct?

Yes, Dabney Hill.

And I have to tell you, I'm a little ashamed that I wasn't familiar with the Freedom Colony label for these post-Civil War black communities.

And certainly was unaware of Dabney Hill and its proximity to College Station.

But tell me a little bit about Dabney Hill.

Yeah, Dabney Hill was a little community formed by a guy named, I believe, Daniel Dabney, who had been had been born in slavery in somewhere in eastern part of the United States.

They come to Texas.

And after Juneteenth, after the war, and after the enslaved people were freed, many African-Americans would form these communities that became known as freedom colonies, where they would buy land and basically build their own communities and build their churches and build their schools.

Because this was after the Civil War and East Texas.

And if you were an African-American, you weren't going to get a chance to own your own home or send your kids to school or a decent school, or choose your own church.

And so these freedom colonies came about after after that time.

And one of the the men who had come from the who had been freed was Daniel Dabney.

And he started this little community.

He built a church, he built a, a masonic lodge and built this little community.

And it was a thriving community called Dabney Hill.

There were there were other freedom colonies in the area because there were a lot of African-Americans in the area, and they would all found these little communities, these communities where they could worship and live and raise their kids the way they wanted to.

So what has become of Dabney Hill and by the way, for for our listeners and viewers who are local to you, Bryan College Station, Brazos County and so forth, Dabney Hill, I believe as you head west on Highway 60, like towards Snook, it's he's sort of off to the right or to the north, I guess it would be.

And I don't know how much of it is visible from Highway 60, but but what is the state of Dabney Hill now?

Well, it's yeah, it's the closest big city is Snook.

Yeah.

Right up the road from Snook.

And there's not a whole lot there.

I mean, there's basically what.

What Gloria discovered was she found this old Baptist church, and.

But the church was not in very good shape.

And it was.

It was starting to cave in on itself.

There were still people worshiping there as she got involved with.

She she realized she wanted to help save this church, You know, even though she lived in Fort Worth, she was in retirement.

She was looking for a passion project.

And she and her husband would come down and she started getting these grants to try and build this church back up the church.

Eventually, a big storm came through.

I know you all have some crazy storms there.

Yeah, big storm came through and knocked the whole thing down.

And she had gotten a grant to fix up this church, as you know, an old freedom colony.

However, the conditions of the grant said, well, you this is this is a total loss.

You can't do that.

So she decided to to work on the lodge.

It was called the Ethiopian Star Lodge, which had been used for decades.

And so she started what you have if you go to Dabney Hill now, you will find the the basically the remains of the church, which have caved in on itself.

And then behind it is this lodge, which is still the original foundation, the original walls.

It's like a two story.

It looks like a big garage apartment, pretty old wood.

It's got a bunch of ivy growing up along the sides.

And that is what she's going to use the money to, to renovate and try and turn this into, you know, basically a historical destination and to to, you know, this this freedom colony.

Do you know if there are still descendants of those original families who live in that area?

I don't know that I was not.

There are not a whole lot of people who who do live in that area or if if they do live there, they're not from there.

They've come in and they bought land.

It's very pretty.

Yeah.

There's a you know, there are some developments that are moving.

You know, everything's moving west from from College Station and there's a lot of development going on.

So I, I don't know if there are that many who are actually.

I'm sure there are some.

Yeah.

From.

From the Dabney family.

Yeah, I was looking, I guess Google Earth.

I was taking a look at that area, and I can see rooftops, you know, in proximity of of the old church and in the lodge and so forth.

But, you know, not exactly sure what those rooftops represent.

And you talked about in the story that there is development starting to encroach and.

Right.

You know, I, I don't know if there if there is anybody say with the state of Texas or even with Burleson County in positions of authority who even care to try to help protect and preserve.

Yeah.

I mean, what Gloria Smith was able to do was get a grant and buy the actual land.

She bought an acre where the church and the Masonic Lodge sit.

And so she was able to create this this space which which will be protected.

I mean, she's it's going to she's got a state historical marker and nothing's going to happen with that.

But she's trying to she's trying to turn it into basically, you know, a destination for people to go and appreciate the history there of of Dabney Hill.

And there's an old school across the street and a giant gymnasium from the old segregated high school that was built back in the fifth forties or fifties.

And she's trying to turn that big gym into like a community center and, you know, turn it into a a destination for people to go and and appreciate African-American history in that part of the state.

What kind of help is Gloria getting or is she an army of one in this?

Well, her husband helps her a lot.

Her husband's a pastor.

And, you know, they raised their kids, two of whom went to A&M.

And so they come down and this is kind of like her passion project.

She has gotten several grants which have helped her a lot.

She's found some allies with a group called Preservation Texas.

She's found some some college professors who have helped her, you know, writing the grants and helping her understand the history.

So she's definitely she's she's she's the general of an army of of a handful.

And she's super passionate about it.

And this is what really attracted us to her story was, you know, wasn't just the story of this freedom colony.

It was the story of Gloria Smith and her, you know, passion to save this history, which was related to her family.

But also she wanted to save Texas history.

Yeah.

What are some of the obstacles, the additional obstacles besides the church collapsing from a storm that Gloria Smith described encountering along the way these years?

Well, I mean, part of it is just the the nature of progress.

You know, the fact that development is moving through these areas where this land has basically been abandoned.

I mean, this this land had been owned by these African-American families, but many of them lost title to the land as they moved moved to cities, moved moved to big cities, left, left the rural life behind.

And, you know, a lot of the African-Americans of that time, they many of them weren't literate and they didn't have wills or they weren't particularly in a trusting mood about going down to the courthouse and dealing with the authorities.

And so they didn't do the the the proper things you need to do to make sure that your heirs get the land.

And so a lot of the land was just abandoned.

And so it was very easy to be sold at auction.

And so the you know, the the march of progress, the development.

And because that's an area where a lot of people are wanting to move either because it's beautiful or because of they want to be near Texas A&M and that was a big hindrance was coming up against that.

It wasn't like there were any bad guys in it.

It was just that was just kind of the nature of the last, you know, 100 years of of progress in the area.

So I think that that was a big part of what she's been up against.

Yeah.

So the best outcome for Gloria Smith, it sounds like, would be preserving this lodge, getting that reconstructed and in shape for for gatherings and so forth.

And then in in this gym renovation as well as a community space.

What else does she dream of that whole area of being?

Yeah.

I mean, she would she would really like to, you know, create a museum and have people come and and see the history of Dabney Hill and and, you know, like I say, there are other freedom colonies in the area.

These, these little tiny communities which were thriving, you know, a hundred years ago and no longer are.

And I think she would like to see the same kind of passion that she brought to it, see if other folks would start bringing these other places back, because they're they're everywhere.

There's a there's an organized organization run by a former A&M professor named Dr.

Andrea Roberts called the Texas Freedom Colonies Project.

And they found more than 500 freedom colonies in East Texas.

You know, many of these they actually have actually found the actual the ruins of these places, but many other ones are still around.

There are still communities that survived all these years.

And so, I mean, I live in Austin.

There are like a a dozen freedom colonies in Austin that grew up and got integrated into the main city.

You still see this in in a lot of East Texas, too.

These little communities that that are just waiting to be discovered.

And I think Gloria would love it if other people would, you know, do what she did, which is, you know, get super passionate about something and go make it happen.

I spent a little time on the Texas Freedom Colonies Project website because I wondered, like, how many of these things are even around here?

And if you go to the map and zoom in to this area, the little dots are all around us and yeah, and not necessarily out in rural areas, you know, there's some much closer in to Bryan College Station and so forth.

And there's, varying levels of information available.

But there, there are some archival photos and other documents.

I mean, it was it was a fascinating repository for information about these.

Yeah, there are a bunch around, like the one that originally got Gloria going near Snook was called Old Bethlehem, But then there are others called like Saint Lincoln and Pleasant Grove and the Center Line.

And you can just picture these folks, you know, back in 1875 or whenever saying, what are we going to call this place?

We'll call it Henry Hill.

You know, we'll call it Dabney Hill.

And, you know, you can just see you can you can just picture this history taking place.

It's just totally fascinating.

We'll do a quick reset here if you just tuned in.

I'm Jay Socol.

You're listening to Brazos Matters.

We're visiting with Texas monthly writer Mike Hall about the Dabney Hill Freedom colony.

It's located just a few miles west of the Texas A&M campus and the fight to preserve part of the history from the post-Civil War black community located there.

If you would like, talk to me about how you how you turned this story into one with a visual component.

Was it always intended to have a visual element or was this, did this start out as just a print story?

You know, actually, this one started out as a visual story.

Usually it's the other way around.

But I know of a Schwartzbarg, who was our video guy, had found this story and had actually done some filming on it and met Gloria Smith and he showed showed it to me, showed some of his footage to me.

And it just had all the earmarks of a great Texas Monthly story where you had this, you know, one person who was you know, there's nothing nothing like a obsessiveness for a magazine story.

And here was, you know, Gloria was so obsessed and she was obsessed because it had something to do with who she was and and her past.

But also, the more she did it, it became an obsession of hers because she wanted to preserve history, Texas history.

And those are the kinds of stories that if you're a journalist, you're like, wow, this is something that that I want to I'm really glad we're doing a video component, but we really need to write about this as well and put it in the magazine.

And so that was the start of that.

It really has a beautiful feel to it and I really hope people go to to PBS's Passport and Stream this because it does it has it has a feeling and a vibe to it.

Can you kind of put it into better words than I can what people will experience?

Well, it's it's got this kind of elegiac feel about the past.

You know, about these these communities that are long gone.

But the way Owen shot it, you know, we've got drone footage going on over the the church in the lodge and it's the way that it's shot and the way the story is told, it's told through, you know, through Gloria's words more than anybody's.

It's just got this, you know, just like the best history when you can feel the life and the history where you can feel the life of those people.

And they're not just, you know, like black and white caricatures from the past, but when you can see them as real life people, that to me is is really good history telling because it makes you know, it makes you can feel the connection in inside you.

You can see Gloria feeling that connection and and then when she tells the story, we can feel it too and just I don't know, just the way it's shot and it's just a very, very, very beautifully shot, very elegiac, but also, you know, kind of hopeful in the way that Gloria has devoted her life to doing this thing.

She's found her passion and she wants to spread this passion to other people, too.

And you hope other people will pick up the ball and do this for some of these other places.

Henly Hill and these other, you know, little, little communities.

How much influence did you have on the way this story looked?

Were you sort of helping direct shots and providing that kind of feedback, or did you kind of stand back a little bit and let the the videographer do his work?

no.

It was all I mean, you know, when you're it to me it was kind of like being a writer and having a really good editor.

A lot of times when you're a journalist, you're going out and you're reporting and you're bringing all this information back and then you're putting the story together based on your reporting.

So in for and in the video, I was just I was just another part of the puzzle for him to tell this story.

It's kind of a way to have the journalistic voice along with the voice of the the hero of the story, who is who is Gloria.

So, yeah, I was just I was just waiting to be told what to do.

Do you have previous experience with video story telling as well, or have you just always been a print guy?

I've mostly been a print guy.

I mean, we've.

Texas Monthly has experimented with video in the past, but and you know, now we work with Texas country reporter and we have a great partnership doing that.

But I mean, we have over the last year because of Texas Country Reporter But also now our partnership with pbs.

We're trying to find other ways of telling stories.

You know, I mean, for years Texas monthly was just on paper and then the Internet came along and we have had to figure out a way to be online and on paper.

And now this is a whole new way of telling stories.

It's it's it's kind of like podcasts in its own way, but of course, with a visual element.

And when you tell a story visually, it's very different from telling it on the page.

And, you know, for one thing, there are a lot fewer words.

And you you can use a lot of what I do as a journalist is try and create a visual image in a reader's head.

Well, when you got a very talented videographer like, and that's already being done and so it's it's just it's a different way of telling a story.

And it's it's it's kind of fun for someone like me who's told stories a certain way for years and years and then to all of a sudden have this opportunity where you're using drones and you're using these really cool new cameras and music and it's it it opens up storytelling in a way that I hadn't really thought of.

Yeah.

Looking a little bit at your at your bio information, it looks like you're you're a versatile writer.

You've had experience writing about a lot of different kinds of topics, whether it's sports or it's sitting in a courtroom covering cases and so forth.

Where's the sweet spot for you?

Where do you where do you do your best work?

boy, that's a good question.

I mean, I do a lot of stories, legal stories do a lot of music stories and I mean, for me, you're trying to find the stories where you like I said a little bit earlier, you're trying to find stories about passion, obsession, whether it's I've done a lot of stories on innocent men and women in prison.

And the passion that they have to be freed is, you know, I mean, none of us wants to be so misunderstood that we're thrown in prison for something we didn't do.

Boy, when you talk with somebody who is an innocent person who's been in prison for 20 years, that passion to get out and to clear their name and, you know, I mean, it's a similar kind of passion with with some of the musicians I've I've profiled the passion to play their music, to tell their stories.

You know, you look for that that that thing at at the heart of a story, whether it's a legal story or a music story or a history story.

Yeah, you know, those terms sound kind of dry until you until you connect with the person at the heart of it.

Like Gloria Smith, You know, And all of a sudden, this story, it's not just a history story.

It's it's a history story, if you know what I mean.

Yeah.

Well, so after doing this story with with Gloria and about Dabney Hill, has it made you kind of curious about, you know what?

On my own time, let me go explore some other freedom colony locations because they are all around.

there.

You know, like I say, I live in Austin.

I used to work at a place called Reidsville Co-op.

Well, we'd still used to be called Wheat Ville, and it was an African-American freedom colony founded right after right after the Civil War there.

And so they're all around us.

And it's once you open your eyes to that and you open your eyes to this living history all around us.

Yeah, you can't help but but want to know more of their they're all over East Texas.

I mean, it's one of the reasons why I love East Texas.

East Texas has so much history.

It has so, so much conflict.

It has so much tension.

But man, when you when you get below a lot of the a lot of that, it's got all this this life and just great stories.

Yeah.

Mike, can you tell us what maybe a next story is that you're working on?

We might be able to read from you or.

Whoa, boy, I'm working.

I'm working on a story right now about, you know, Texas has a school for the blind in there since the 1850s.

Well, I have been following a group of kids there who play synthesizers and have a band and put out CDs and play shows.

And they're some of the most inspirational kids I've ever met in my life.

They're age 12 to 19, and so I've been following them all year.

And we're going to have a story coming out at some point this summer on them.

And again, it's a story about incredible passion, incredible obsession.

The teacher who gets these kids together shows them how to do it and then kind of leads them to make this incredible music on synthesizers, you know, not on.

But most Texas music is made on guitars and fiddles and pianos.

no, these are synthesizers.

It's just totally fascinating.

These kids are just the bravest, most creative and fun kids.

And I'm very excited about that story.

So the band is called the Semi Modular Bleus, and hopefully this story will come out later this summer.

That sounds amazing.

Well, Texas Monthly Presents is streaming now on PBS.

Passport, by the way, is available to KAMU supporters for $60 a year in donation.

You can go to our website for that.

Mike, thanks so much for your time and for telling this story.

We appreciate it very much.

Thank you very much for having me.

You bet.

Brazos Matters is a production of Aggieland's Public Radio 90.9 KAMU FM, a member of Texas A&M Division of Community Engagement.

Our show is engineered and edited by Matt Dittman.

All Brazos Matters episodes are available on YouTube and your favorite podcast platform.

Thanks so much for listening and for watching.

We appreciate your time.

I'm Jay Socol.

Have a great day.