Archeological dig in Bronzeville reveals 20th century history

By Aratee Martin

Archaeology students at DePaul University are required to apply their studies to the real world through the university’s annual archaeological field project. Recently, students who participated in the field project dug into the historical backyard of Bronzeville’s Phyllis Wheatley Home for Girls, located on the 5000 block of South Michigan Ave., with the guidance of Anna Agbe-Davies, an assistant professor of anthropology at DePaul.

“The class is part of our requirements for anthropology majors at DePaul,” said Agbe-Davies. “We focus on urban anthropology and community based research. The students were learning archeological techniques. They also learned about the City of Chicago and something about Bronzeville.”

Agbe-Davies contacted Joann Tate, founder and president of Training and Educational Resources for Children (TERC), for access to the Wheatley Home because of Agbe-Davies’s interest in the African diaspora—the movement of Africans and their descendants.

The Wheatley Home was created for African-American women who moved here from the South and served as a powerful education center during the early and middle 20th century, according to Tate. It remains an educational hot spot, as DePaul students participating in the dig learned about the lives of African-Americans during the Great Migration from World War I to the 1950s.

“People were living there for short periods of time,” said Agbe-Davies. “There were mainly young single women living in this home. I was wondering what kind of archaeological remains they would leave as opposed to other types of households. Many of these women had come primarily from the South and from rural towns.”

In an era marked by few retail chains and an abundance of independently owned shops, people from larger municipalities purchased different items than people from rural areas. Agbe-Davies wanted to discover what the Wheatley women felt was important enough to spend money on. She believed this data would teach her class a history lesson different from lessons taught in history books, and she wanted her students to look at new facts and analyze them first-hand.

“My first major artifact was a black men’s shoe, which was ridiculously exciting,” said Elizabeth Boden, a DePaul student who participated in the dig. “At first, my partner and I thought that it was an electrical wire, but as we dug further we realized that it was bigger and then we thought it might be a tire. We only realized that it was a shoe when we pulled it out. Finding it definitely made my week.”

Students in Agbe-Davies’s class learned archaeological methods such as how to dig, which tools to use, how to screen dirt for artifacts, and how to clean what they found. They applied these techniques while completing their dig, making their learning experience more efficient.

“I learned a lot about Bronzeville,” said Boden. “What struck me most was the demographics of Bronzeville during the early 1900s when there was a large migration of African-Americans to Chicago. Because of housing laws in Chicago that said African-Americans could only live in certain parts of the city, Bronzeville became a city within a city. Someone could live there without going into the Loop at all. Also, rich and poor African-Americans lived in very close proximity, which probably doesn’t happen much today with any ethnic group.”

Tate joined the DePaul students in their studies to ensure were contemplated what their findings meant. Tate wanted this particular group of students to realize they were finding items that would be recognized for much longer than the duration of their semester.

“Joann Tate, the owner of the property, was constantly asking questions and observing our work,” said Emily Homa, a senior anthropology major at DePaul who participated in the dig. “Neighbors walked by and wondered what we were doing. We needed to come up with answers on the spot to explain why we were digging in Ms. Tate’s yard. It gave us the opportunity to instantly see how our work was impacting the greater community.”

Homa’s first finding was a camera she dated to 1945, although knowledge of archaeology kept her from jumping to conclusions. The camera could have been a remnant from the property’s past—or a more recent deposit from a passerby who had finally updated to digital.

Other students found pieces of the building such as window glass and nails and items used to furnish the house such as dish fragments and furniture keys. Among the other artifacts were consumer goods, glass bottles for soda and medicine, coins, shoes, buttons, and hairpins. All pointed to the types of goods women at the house bought during that time and the kind of foods they enjoyed, according to Agbe-Davies.

The Archaeological Field Project course is available to DePaul students every summer, and locations have varied over the years. Past sites have included the Field Museum and Pullman neighborhoods. Agbe-Davies and Tate are working to bring DePaul students back to the Wheatley Home in summer 2009. Tate also hopes to open the basement of her home to TERC in the future as a location to guide and educate children.