NBC 5 DFW did a great story on Freedman Town 2.0, an interactive augmented reality documentary that chronicles the history of one north Texas town. 

“It makes me feel like I’m leaving something for the ones coming behind me. It’s something they can look back on and realize it was real. It’s history,” Marjorie Young said....

The stories showcased in Freedmantown 2.0 focus on the African American community of Quakertown, which was founded in Denton in the 1880s and forcibly relocated in 1921 to southeast Denton, or Freedmantown, when the city voted to disband the community in favor of creating a park. 

News story about Freedman Town 2.0 with student, Okoye Anderson. 

“I feel like this project opened my eyes to what it truly means to be a part of something that can reach and affect an entire community,” media arts senior Okoye Anderson said.

Anderson was a part of the group whose task was to find more about the history of Quakertown. Anderson said they tried to seek out a new perspective by challenging the master narrative found in previous documents about the town.

“I’m going to walk away from this knowing that we gave a lot of people in the community fresh content about the story of Quakertown and historical black Denton,” Anderson said.

“Once all this is finalized,” he said, “I will be grateful that I can do this for the younger generation. It was great to get to know people who know about this community. And I think it’s good to be able to get this out there to people who don’t know about it, and might not be able to find this history.” Student Quote

Many of the residents we interviewed had stories of community activism and told us tales of how they stood together to get roads paved, build a community center and senior center, and to integrate the schools."

Students from Twinsburg High School were part of the creative process and researched, interviewed, and filmed elders in the neighborhood.

Teaching these students and watching them develop their skills is “something magical” that Carter-Bishop loves to witness.

The FAMe model will be used to accomplish the Twinsburg Heights documentary. Four college students from Twinsburg, including two from the Heights, taught a recent two-week-long workshop attended by 15 students from all over Twinsburg. Students learned the basics of using cameras, editing and interviewing skills, and were also provided guidance on ACT prep, college applications and applying for financial aid.

Avaughn Lardell, a sophomore at THS, handled the audio and the boom microphone for the interviews. “It started as a community service project, but that changed when I realized that there was so much history to learn,” he said. “It was a lot of fun. Carla taught me what I needed to know, and now this may be something I want to do when I grow up. I feel that the film was a good thing. There was a community center that was torn down, and now I think we need to get it rebuilt.”

“I think this is important to youth for so many reasons other than just creating a film, but in helping them to find their own voice, build self-esteem and confidence and to be able to engage with their audiences in dialogues about topics important in their lives,” Carter said.

Dee Perry welcomes filmmaker Carla LynDale Carter to spotlight her documentary Voices of the Hill filmed by area youth starring members of the Twinsburg Heights community which