All in a Summer’s Work

By Evelyn Todd

 
When I first started writing this blog post, I didn’t know what to expect or how much I’d write. I just knew that I would be cracking my chest open and finally applying words to the head-spinning experiences of my summer. Well…Here I am sharing my summer with you in three parts:
My Thoughts, The Work I Did, and Where Am I Now?
I have found that curiosity tends to leave people discovering valuable things about themselves, others, and the world around them. I hope it leaves you with questions and the desire to find out.

My Thoughts Part One

The burden of the Black American historian is painful, birthing weariness and hope simultaneously.

– Evelyn Todd

Evelyn Todd delivering her final presentation on August 8, 2025 [Photo © Brandalyn Thompson 2025]

Final Presentation at the Texas Historical Commission

Evelyn Todd delivering her final presentation on August 8, 2025 [Photo © Brandalyn Thompson 2025]

Every time I tell someone what I did at my internship this summer, I get the same reaction. It’s a mix of shock, intrigue, slight horror, sympathy, and maybe a sprinkle of respect. My summer internship is something I never thought I’d do, but I am, to some degree, not surprised that it happened.

This summer, I had the honor to be a Preservation Scholar Intern for the Friends of the Texas Historical Commission. I was tasked with transcribing the oral histories from the 1980s-1990s of the descendants of the enslaved and other community members. For two and a half months, I lived on site at the Levi Jordan Plantation and worked at the Varner-Hogg (Patton) Plantation in Brazoria County, Texas.  The original goal of my project was to add to the very large catalog of oral history transcriptions. If I found something else that piqued my interest, I was allowed to look into it and possibly create a second project. That is exactly what I did. [A.N.: Moving forwards, I will only refer to the Varner Hogg Plantation as the Patton Plantation because that is the time period I will be writing about, and the legitimate name of the place when people were enslaved on that land.]

Land at Levi Jordan Plantation

Footage captured from my first day at the Levi Jordan Plantation. The objects you see in the second part of the video are two of the original sugar kettles used at their sugar mill during slavery.
This map of the "Antebellum Plantations of Brazoria County" is taken from Altor Platter, "Plantation Culture," Ph.D dissertation, University of Houston, Texas, 1961.
This map of the “Antebellum Plantations of Brazoria County” is taken from Altor Platter, “Plantation Culture,” Ph.D dissertation, University of Houston, Texas, 1961.

Transcribing the histories humbled me and opened my mind to ways of living I had not allowed myself to give much thought. I thought I had a solid grasp on the complex experiences of enslaved Africans in America based on the books, research, museums, movies, and conversations I’ve learned from. However, there is nothing quite like hearing about an enslaved person’s life from a loved one’s lips. Within the first two weeks of my internship, it was as if my entire world had been shifted on its axis. Not only was I listening to the stories, but I was living, walking, and working on the same beautiful land where those arduous and complicated stories lived.

It all became a lot to process, and I know that I still have not mentally unpacked everything. All summer, I lived inside this quote from James Baldwin: “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost, almost all of the time — and in one’s work.” Every weekend, I drove home to give myself some reprieve. I had to come home to my family and friends, to the familiar, to other loving Black faces, to what I inherently know as safety. At my internship, I was the only Black person at both sites which was a Catch-22 within itself. As a brilliant colleague of mine, Maya Ford, described it, “victims rarely go back to the place of their trauma”. So, I understood why I was the only one intentionally spending time on land that was cultivated to destroy people like me. Even in the Commission’s work at the sites to preserve and honor the history and lives of the enslaved and their living descendants, it is hard to be present on land that has been frozen in time.

Just as much as I learned and valued my internship, I questioned and found my rage ignited by the constant reminder of America’s failures from the restrictions placed by historically racist groupthink. I found it hard to accept yet saw the societal accuracy in how the ruins of a slave cabin and sugar mill are left exposed to nature and disobedient visitors while the Hogg family’s [Former Texas Governor, Jim Hogg’s, family owned a portion of the original plantation from 1901 to 1958 – sharecropping and oil boom years] furniture and art collection sits in a secure and climate-controlled warehouse. It bothers me that an entire subdivision backs up to the Patton Plantation on the side where most of the formerly enslaved and their descendants lived and worked. The only evidence of a slave burial site near the plantation exists in oral retellings, while Patton family members have a visible and standing memorial plot on the plantation. I was living in a blatant juxtaposition. 

Do you know what it is like to see the most deprave parts of your cultural existence immortalized and on display in poor condition under the auspices of preserving and teaching history?

 

The Work I Did – Part 2 will be published early October 2025.