Public History

Hanging onto old files apparently didn't spark joy for long-ago bureaucrats and office holders in charge of Denton County's criminal justice system.

Misdemeanor crime records before 1955? Destroyed. Old Pilot Point city jail records? Water damaged beyond repair. County jail records - or any records at all - from the Denton County Sheriff's Office before 1930? Gone.

I call them citizen watchdogs. They don’t start out that way, but circumstances instill them with courage and the boldness to fight for what they believe is right.

Who were the top citizen watchdogs who fought for their causes in 2019 and worked hard to get the word out about their findings?

When her name was called, Micah Carlson (’18, '20 M.A.) walked quickly to the podium, smoothing her navy blazer and red skirt before opening the three-ring binder she had meticulously prepared. It was the first time the UNT history graduate student had spoken in front of the Pilot Point City Council, and this was not, as she well knew, a low-stakes meeting.

For nearly five years…

A grassroots group has set its sights on the downtown Square for a new monument that would remember residents who were lynched during Denton County’s early history.

About 20 people met Wednesday evening under the umbrella of the Denton County Community Remembrance Project. The local initiative is part of a growing number of communities around the country working with the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, to remember thousands of lives lost to lynching.

Unlike last Monday night, when this Pilot Point City Council had to decide whether to recall its mayor amid infighting, the council dove into a difficult topic going back generations, and handled it with class.

The City Council gave a family and its supporters 90 more days to figure out what to do about the property at 522 E. Burks St., which according to Denton County historians is a vital piece of black history here.

A researcher is in a race against the clock in her efforts to try and save what's believed to have been a one-room school house for African Americans in Pilot Point that dates back more than a century. The building could soon be demolished.

From the outside, it doesn't look like much. The boarded up house is on East Burks Street. The city of Pilot Point wants the house condemned. A sign posted out front calls the structure a safety hazard.

PILOT POINT — It took a white researcher to stop white town officials from demolishing a home that has been in one black family’s lives for decades.

“They take me to be stupid,” Celia Harris said to Micah Carlson about the Pilot Point City Council, after a meeting Monday night.

“One thing leads to another,” sings rock band The Fixx.

That’s what happened when four history students at University of North Texas launched what began as a feel-good school project.

They started researching stories of African-Americans buried in what Denton County folks call the “Old Slave Cemetery” near Pilot Point.

Four history students at UNT are shedding light on a dark part of North Texas history.

What began as quest to find out more about the hundreds of former slaves buried at a freedman's cemetery in Pilot Point led down a path none of them expected.

The wooded lot down a private road in Pilot Point is a forgotten place. Cemetery grave markers serve as the lone connection to a forgotten community. Stories which the students set out to uncover during spring semester last year.

Denton County is moving ever closer toward recognizing its history of racial violence in one rural area of the county.

That showed on Tuesday, when, during Commissioners Court, four researchers from the University of North Texas presented what one official called the fullest accounting of what life and death was like for the many freedmen who lived in the St. John’s community near Pilot Point. The research is being used as county officials apply for official Texas Historical Commission markers.