Intersecting race, space, and place through community gardens

Abstract

In this article, we examine the structure and meaning of community gardens in Florida's most cohesive and oldest African American community of Frenchtown in Tallahassee. Here, residents reclaim and transform empty spaces into places of engagement and empowerment, effectively resisting systemic racism. Using a mixed methods approach during a 5-week NSF-funded ethnographic field school with the Health Equity Alliance of Tallahassee, we counter the prevailing stigma of Frenchtown that perpetuates its continued marginalization. We argue that community gardens are expressions of social resistance. Through garden activities, residents transcend race, culture, income, and neighborhoods, while also promoting health, heritage, place-making, and economic opportunities. Place is constituted by spatial politics in a cultural milieu, evident in the community's ability to intersect diverse institutional boundaries via gardens. This research contextualizes how a community-based participatory research project successfully resists violent environments through spatial transformation.