Mapping The Black Commons Space

Kofi Boone, FASLA, Professor and University Faculty Scholar at NC State University, is the faculty partner for this effort and will be engaging his graduate seminar, Environmental Social Equity and Design, in creating the story maps. Kofi Boone is a leading thought leader when it comes to Black Commons. In the book Sacred Civics Kofi Boone and Julian Agyeman co-wrote a chapter called – The Black Commons: A Framework for Recognition, Reconciliation, and Reparations, where they offer ideas as a means to overcome “current racial justice challenges including the need for recognition of previous harms done, reconciliation with affected groups, and eventually reparations to compensate Black communities seeking to be made whole and sustainable.”

Agyeman and Boone see that Black communities have the opportunity to build new ecosystems that are fertile ground to create new kinds of wealth and wellbeing that enhance our ability to thrive.  They argued that “pooling individual resources into a common resource, a commons, was a strategy deployed by Black communities in the USA historically” and that Black & Black-serving Cooperatives & Community Land Trusts, the historic precedents to the Black Commons, provide a strong foundation for sustainability building community and mutual aid. In the United States, the Black Commons have been seen as a way to dismantle barriers to Black land ownership and the “creation of a just and regenerative economy (Witt 2018).