I completed my internship with McDoux Preservation, LLC. McDoux is based out of Houston, Texas, but has consultants across several states. Their primary clients are municipalities, but they also do work for special interest groups. During my internship, I was responsible for research, producing marketing materials, an oral history project, and portions of many other projects. I attended weekly team meetings (via Microsoft Teams), city meetings where our projects were being discussed (via zoom), and workshops to improve my knowledge base. Below, I outline some of projects completed for or on Austin, TX; Corpus Christi, TX; Conway, AR; and New Orleans, LA.
City of Austin, Texas This project is the one that was outside of original bounds of activities, but I was well suited to. Professionally, I work in marketing and communications. Therefore, I am naturally very comfortable creating campaigns to get information out to the public. The City of Austin contracted McDoux to conduct a survey and report concerning an expansion to their Heritage Grant Program. In order to get a high enough sample size of the community, we needed to encourage as many citizens as possible to participate. I reviewed all of the materials, researched the existing program, and talked to Kelly Little (the lead consultant on this project) about the program and survey. From this information, I wrote a press release for the city’s website and distribution to news outlets (appendix A.3); created images, a timeline for distribution, and text for email blasts (appendix A.1); and images, a timeline for distribution, and text for social media posts. These communications served to tell the community about the opportunity to take the survey and all the options for doing so—online, via mail, phone, or by going to the public library. The survey was also available in Spanish, but I don’t speak Spanish so those communication were translated by a native speaker.
Graphics that accompanied social media, email, and news distribution campaign.
Corpus Christi, Texas McDoux was hired to create a historic preservation plan for the city of Corpus Christi, Texas (CCTX). The last one had been completed in the 1970s and was very outdated. They initially conducted stakeholder interviews to act as a starting point. From there, Steph McDougal, the primary consultant and business owner, designed a survey for the citizens of Corpus Christi to weigh in on their concerns, desires, areas in need, and to tell us what mattered most to them. Once the survey was completed, we divvied up the questions. Survey Monkey is very useful for collecting two types of data, but it can only analyze quantitative questions. For example, things like age range, gender identity, what part of town you live in—demographics can easily use multiple choice answers which are then automatically turned into statistics. Those still need to be analyzed by a person who can understand what they are looking at. You will see in appendix B.2 that I created a graph not only to show the ethnicity/race of respondents, but another that showed the demographics for the city so they data can be understood in context of being racially skewed. This isn’t to say it loses value, but it sheds a different light. I sorted through the second kind of data for two questions—qualitative data in the form of hundreds of open end-ed responses. I lightly edited them for spelling and basic grammar and then organized the responses into usable categories. Question 9 was straightforward, asking, “Do you have a favorite building or place in Corpus Christi that you like to visit?” For this question, I group similar responses by neighborhood, concept, or area such as the waterfront, public parks, or institutions. Question 29 asked, “What else would you like us to know?” This question ranged all over the place, but I learned quite a bit about the opinions of Corpus Christi natives. For some of the more colorful ones, see the area labeled “Misc. subsection” in appendix B.1. Once the survey process and research were complete Steph drafted the historic preservation plan. The staff came back asking for something more visually interesting, so I created graphics for the report, created a formatting design template, and made recommendation about the organization of the document. I think the case studies section particularly benefitted from the addition of color, images, and reformatting (see appendix B.2).
Graphics created for the Corpus Christi Historic Preservation Plan
Old Bayview Cemetery at Corpus Christi, TX While this project is centered on Corpus Christi, it is a passion project and stems from a different client. The Friends of Old Bayview Cemetery is a local historic preservation group in CCTX who is trying to raise funds and get the proper work done to preserve the oldest known (non-indigenous burial place) cemetery in the city. It was created during the Mexican American War. Some of the first interred there died on September 12, 1845, when the steamship U.S.S. Dayton exploded killing 10 immediately, and at least three died at a later date for a total between 11–13 according to my research. The reports widely vary. One of the dead was only listed as an “unidentified colored deckhand” in the news reports that were known at the time. My task was to uncover the young man’s identity so he may be properly memorialized at Old Bayview where he rests. I dove in doing primary source research and was able to find previously untapped sources by searching further out in Texas. One report revealed that not one, but two enslaved boys had died. While the Texas National Register did not name them, it did give their enslavers names. They were listed only by ranks, initials, and surnames—Capt. Tichenor and Gen. G. H. Harrison. I was unable to find any documents leading to Gen. G.H. Harrison, but I found several documents that align a specific birth, military, and death record. I believe the Capt. Tichenor listed in the Texas National Register is William Tichenor, born June 13, 1813 in Newark, New Jersey. His age, rank, and occupations align with the Capt. Tichenor listed, whereas no others by that name do. He went on to found Port Orford, Oregon. A collection of his “ledgers of personal accounts, lists of property owners at Port Orford, Michael Fox estate records, and materials relating to various ships…papers concerning the seizure of Tichenor at Port Orford at the order of General Irwin McDowell, 1864; description of the Port Orford fire of 1868; donation land claim records; and certificate of nomination for Frank B. Tichenor as representative of Curry County, Oregon, 1916” is in the archives at the Oregon Historical Society (closed for covid at the time of research). This collection likely contains the names of individuals enslaved by Tichenor. He has descendants who might be contacted through the find a grave web page listed below. I reached out, without response. They may be reluctant to talk about a great great grandparent owning slaves. The next step in research should be to contact the Oregon Historical Society or someone in the area willing to do the archival research to comb the collection.
Conway, Arkansas My favorite project by far was the African American Historic Context Study for Conway, Arkansas. This project was very close to my heart since Conway is my birthplace and where my grandparents have lived since the 1960s. My late grandfather opened a tire store/mechanic shop in the historic African American district that we surveyed, which serviced the community. At the onset of the project I researched sources to serve as the basis for the context and found examples of well done African American historic context studies from other places. I visited and met up with Kelly Little (the first time I met a McDoux coworker in person) Conway in March (after I had been vaccinated) and met with individuals who had lived in the Pine Street Community. They narrated a variety of topics as I conducted focused oral history interviews. I wrote the consent forms, took videos, and photographed. I assisted Kelly with the windshield survey of the neighborhood, which consisted of driving and walking around to see the extant structures and their conditions. We documented and photographed as we went. While we were out surveying, we met a few more individuals with whom we had informal conversations. One elderly woman named Elvira had memories of some locations which the city officials had lost track of. After Kelly and I parted for the day, I drove out toward Mayflower (just south of Conway) and between following the landmarks (curve in the road by the river) and talking to current residents, I was able to find and document where the buildings for the Lollie Bottoms plantation had stood. Theodis and Elvira had also mentioned an African American graveyard near there, that the city officials didn’t know where it was either. After driving around looking for a while, I stopped to talk to some farmers who gave me a vague area. I turned on to a small country lane and noticed a piece of wood nailed to a tree. When I slowed to look more closely, I could see daffodils blooming in the overgrown woods. One of the great things about daffodils is that they can often tell you where destroyed structures like walkways or fences previous stood. They are also not indigenous to Arkansas. When I got out of my car, I could also see tulip leaves, neither flower is found in the region without having been intentionally planted at some point. I followed the flowers and was able to find several graves in the woods, both those marked with headstones and those with simple uninscribed stones.
Lollie Bottoms area
African American cemetery near Mayflower, Tennessee
New Orleans, Louisiana I took what I learned about administering surveys to create one on a subject of my scholarship that can be used by McDoux in the future when discussing potential opportunities for tourism in client cities. I started by finding every list of New Orleans tours I could, both from the NOLA department of tourism and private or commercial lists. From these lists, I created a spreadsheet of all of the tour services I could find. After writing a survey, I reached out with several rounds of attempts to contact individuals (just like we had done in Austin), and finally got enough answers to prove statistically useful. I took all of the information I was able to glean from the results and wrote a report on the practices, content, and offerings of New Orleans tours. Some of the findings were fascinating to me. For example, only 28.5% self-identified as including dark history offerings, even though over 90% of respondents indicated an inclusion of some facet of dark tourism content as traditionally defined. Likewise, the most puzzling finding of the tour survey responses was that while 66.67% of respondents said their tours included the topic of slavery, but only 47.62% selected Black History as a topic. This indicates that 4 of the tour guides don’t view slavery as a part of Black History. As a part of this project, I also put together data on the number of applications for tour licenses each year. This revealed that Hurricane Katrina brought in droves of tourists. There is a marked spike in the applications for tour guide licenses in 2005. The following years while the city was rebuilding go back to the previous lower numbers and then begin to climb again in 2012, peaking in 2019 and dropping again in 2020, likely due to the Coronavirus pandemic.