By: Shelley McKinley
Kristi Rangel, the 2025 Buffalo Bayou Partner- ship Artist in Residence, has expanded the Witness Series in green spaces from four parts that occurred in 2024 to an eight-part series for 2025 that will explore the many profound experiences that people of color have in Southeast Texas and along Houston’s Buffalo Bayou. Rangel created the Witness Series in partnership with Jaime González, a Houston- based conservationist and storyteller because of their shared belief that environmental equity is a basic human right.
To kick off the 2025 Witness Series: ‘Grow with Grace’, Kristi Rangel recently facilitated the ‘Part 1: Empowered by Flowers’ panel discussion at Pilgrim Church Community Center which happens to sit alongside a portion of the Columbia Tap Trail, that was once a railroad line built by enslaved Black people to transport cotton and sugar. After Emancipation, the line was used to transport Black convict lease laborers to work plantations. Today it is a paved four-mile trail that connects neighborhoods in Third Ward.
The event opened with welcoming words from Michelle Barnes, the Executive Director and co-founder of the Community Artists’ Collective and a member of the 120-year-old Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ. “We have a very rich history that started in Freed- man’s Town in Fourth Ward before moving to Third Ward,” shared Barnes.
Every ‘Witness’ en- counter, such as Part 1, is designed to provide attendees with a participatory public art experience centered around green spaces and environmental equity. The panelists for Part 1 were Naomi Carrier, founder of Texas Center for African American Living History; Erandi Treviño, Co-founder of the Raices Collab Project; and Brittney Mayfield, an individual flora artist. Rangel facilitated the discussion among the panelists, that centered on the intersections of land, labor, transportation, and flora.
“The so what of ‘Witness’ is to practice a concept of radical joy, and its radical because you are having joy while reclaiming green spaces inside of our Black and Brown communities even if they are neglected, underused, and not programmed. We are inviting people into spaces that they drive through or around, and asking them to go bare witness to others. Witness is a high-touch, low-tech experience,” explained Rangel. Naomi Carrier ex- plained, “Texas’ economic development involves five independent variables: land, water, agriculture, labor, and the transportation. The Columbia Tap Trail provided the transportation. I want you to know the importance of African American re- sources and labor in the development of Texas, generating millions and billions of dollars related to the transport- ing of sugar and cotton, and the building of railroads.” Later she used her story telling narration of a first-person account from a former convict lease laborer’s experience dreaming to escape from prison by hopping on a moving train.
‘Witness’ looks at what is harmful as well as what is beautiful and builds on the resilience found within the communities. As Erandi Treviño explained, “Even though I am an immigrant this is my ancestral land, and I am hyper aware of industrial activity and pollution. That is true for many people who are low-in- come and many people of color who are living within miles of oil and gas operations. It affects our lives. It makes us sick. Yet, flowers and nature are beautiful.”
Brittney Mayfield led the participants through a flower workshop after the panel discussion. As she explained, flowers are given for births, deaths, graduations, church services, and other occasions. Flowers symbolize sentiments. “After my last pregnancy, flowers kept me alive, essentially,” shared Mayfield. During the flower workshop, attendees had the opportunity to choose three types of flowers among roses, eucalyptus, asparagus fern, chamomiles, and baby’s breath to build their own bouquets.
The bouquets could be left at the memorial placard for Kirk Jackson, who transformed a vacant lot across from Texas Southern University into the Blodgett Urban Garden. As it is stated on the placard, his commitment to equitable access for urban farm- ing and fresh produce reflflected his ancestral roots in sharecropping and sugarcane farming. Attendees could also choose to leave them along the Columbia Tap Trail or take them home. Additionally, members of the Houston Audubon provided binoculars for attendees to view common birds found during the spring migration while walking the Columbia Tap Trail.
