The Mission

Raise Your Head Up aims to fill blank spaces in our awareness of what some emancipated slaves did with their freedom.  Not all of them became share croppers or domestics or depended in other ways on whites for employment.  Some of them started their own communities… away from whites. 

A few of these places were incorporated towns, but many of them were unincorporated communities known as “freedom colonies”.  To date Texas and American history books tell us nothing of their existence… nothing about this evidence of African American agency immediately after Emancipation. 

Our film aims to correct this historical error and injustice. What did it take for newly emancipated blacks to negotiate the problems associated with creating their own places fresh out of slavery? What was it like for a black child to grow up in a relatively autonomous community of black people in the time of Jim Crow as compared to a black child growing up among whites at the same time? Who are the descendants of these pioneers? Are these places worth preserving and, if so, how? 

The Film

Raise Your Head Up is a feature length documentary that aims to educate and entertain.  

We’ll begin with definitions, origins, and what freedom colonies represent historically.  Following that… early subsistence and community building.  We will explore the real world they inhabited from the end of Reconstruction through Jim Crow, the Great Migration, and the Civil Rights Movement.  We will conclude with a look at their present condition and their possible futures including preserving a sense of place, making their children aware of their heritage, and creating a formal history.