A memorial designed to educate and heal is closer to becoming a reality.
In 2017, Chancellor Carine Feyten formed a committee representing TWU faculty, staff, students and alumni to begin work on a way to acknowledge the university’s past role in the forced relocation of Quaker, a community of Black-owned homes and businesses located just south of what then was the College of Industrial Arts.
In the early 1920s, Denton city leaders developed a plan to forcibly remove the nearly 60 Quakertown families and relocate them to an undeveloped area at the southeastern edge of town. F.M. Bralley, then president of the college, was among those calling for the community’s removal. He delivered a speech to the Denton Chamber of Commerce in which he said neighborhood Blacks posed a threat to the all-white-girls college.
Christopher Johnson, a committee member as well as the chancellor’s chief of staff, said the committee was charged with developing recommendations that allow TWU to acknowledge its past role in a way that promotes better racial unity today. To that end, he said, committee members consulted reference materials related to Quakertown history and sought input from key community groups, including the Denton Together Coalition as well as residents of Southeast Denton.
HKS, the architectural firm that created the master plan for Texas Woman’s Denton campus, is designing the memorial, which includes an amphitheater, a walking path, and an augmented reality exhibit that recounts the period’s historical events and social environments. A location has not been finalized.
The memorial is expected to be completed in 2022, in time for the 100th anniversary of the relocation of Quakertown residents. A new Quakertown website provides additional details on the history of Quakertown, the committee members, and the planned memorial.