MTSU archaeology students unearthing history of one of Nashville’s first post-Civil War Black neighborhoods

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — Middle Tennessee State University archaeology students are getting hands-on with history through ongoing research at the site of one of Nashville’s first post-Civil War Black neighborhoods. Led by Department of Sociology and Anthropology professor Andrew Wyatt, the Bass Street Community Archaeology Project provides experiential learning in the basics of fieldwork for students while preserving an important part of Black history. “What we are doing here is very unique in archaeology,” said Wyatt, who has been taking students in his Introduction to Archaeology course to work with upper-level students and MTSU alumni at the site over the past seven years. “Many projects focusing on Black history concentrate on the period of enslavement, but we are looking at the history of Black Nashville from the period of Reconstruction, through to the Civil Rights era.” Bass Street is located at the foot of Fort Negley, a Union Army stronghold built by hundreds of enslaved and freed Black people during the Civil War. Once the war ended, the area developed into a thriving Black community that was demolished and residents forced to relocate to make way for Interstates 65 and 40 In 2017, Vanderbilt University professor and digital archivist Angela Sutton...