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Abstract
This dissertation asks: How do Black Geographies coexist with/in white supremacist landscapes? I argue that Black Geographies are trapped in a cycle of destruction, remembering, and rebuilding. My argument builds on the Afropessimism, Critical Race Theory, and Black Geographies literatures. First, I establish the University of Georgia and City of Athens complicit relationship in the building of Athens’ white supremacist landscape that transformed the ancestral lands of the Creek Confederacy to today’s Athens Clarke County. I then use the aforementioned literatures to understand my case study—Linnentown— a 20-acre Black community displaced with the help of federal, state, and local government institutions to make way for University of Georgia’s luxury student dormitories. I use an autoevocative ethnography, archival documents, and semi-structured interviews to show how Linnentown is an example of the cycle in which Black Geographies remain trapped, so long as white supremacist institutions inhibit their building of economic and social power. In chapter three, I examine the ways that the city of Athens and UGA participated in the destruction of Linnentown. In chapter four, I focus on remembering, and I show how Linnentown organizers and supporters made remembering Linnentown into a political project. In chapter five, I focus on rebuilding and discuss how the work of recognition and redress will support the creation of Athens’ Black Geographies. Ultimately, my dissertation shows how Black Geographies are threatened under white supremacist landscapes, but through the political act of remembering we can redress destroyed Black communities by rebuilding Black Geographies.