Black Heritage Tree Map

Earl Jones is one of the most significant tree sculptors in Galveston and the Gulf Coast—an artist whose chainsaw transformed storm‑damaged trees into living monuments of community memory. His work appears across Galveston Island and beyond, forming a constellation of sculptures that locals and visitors alike encounter as part of…

The Kapok Tree at Estate Mount Victory served as a historic herbal shrine and was tended by local medicine man John Dubois during the 1940s and 1950s. He was said to dispense herbs and performed cures at the base of the tree. After Dubois’ time, the shrine fell into disrepair…

The Greenwood Legacy Tree is one of Tulsa’s most important living witnesses to the past. Located in the Historic Greenwood District on the grounds of Carver Middle School, this American Elm tree has stood for over a century, weathering fire, ice, storms, disease, and even violence. We believe that, contrary…

The Grove Place Baobab on the island of St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. This is no ordinary tree—it’s a living monument that has witnessed nearly three centuries of Virgin Islands history. Planted around 1750 this majestic baobab has stood through slavery in the Danish West Indies, the 1848…

On September 13, 2008, Hurricane Ike slammed into Galveston Island as a Category 4 storm—covering most of the island in 15 feet of saltwater, claiming at least 59 lives, causing $29 billion in damage, and destroying 40,000 trees. In Galveston’s predominantly Black Historic East End, many of the surviving trees…

The Kapok or Silk Cotton Tree has a long history across the Global African Diaspora, known for its buttressed wall-like roots, lightweight wood, fluffy pods, and fibrous healing leaves, standing as a living symbol of Black ancestral knowledge and spiritual connection. Kapok Trees are commonly called Jumbie Trees in St….

This tree, the baobab tree, originates from Africa. It symbolizes community and the African roots of the Virgin Islands.  This centuries-old baobab tree stands in front of a building where secret meetings were organized by leaders of the 1848 emancipation like Moses Robert, George William, Morse Henry, John “Buddhoe” Gotlieff…

The Oklahoma City Survivor Tree stands at the heart of the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum, rooted in the very landscape where the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building once stood. On April 19, 1995, this American elm witnessed and endured the bombing that claimed 168 lives and reshaped the…

The “Wisdom Tree” at McLeod Plantation is one of South Carolina’s many Black heritage trees rooted on former plantation land. Said to predate the plantation itself—which was formally established in 1851—the tree stands as an elder presence on the property. Long before colonization reshaped the landscape, this tree likely witnessed…

Across the Prairie View A&M University campus stand trees that once shaded the grounds of the Alta Vista Plantation. Their roots reach into soil shaped by enslavement, Reconstruction, and Black educational triumph. These trees bore silent witness to the plantation’s transformation in 1876 and still mark the boundaries of one…

The Angel Oak Tree on Johns Island is one of South Carolina’s most significant living witnesses to the intertwined histories of Native peoples, enslaved Africans, and Black Lowcountry communities. Estimated to be between 400 and 500 years old, this southern live oak has endured centuries of environmental stressors, colonization, plantation…

THE BEULAHLAND GUARDIAN TREE At the edge of a sacred burial ground called Beulahland founded in 1891, a massive Cottonwood tree bore witness to the earliest days of Langston, the Oklahoma Land Runs, and even statehood in 1907. In this cemetery you can find town founders, freedmen, lawmen, cowboys, business…

THE BRITTON OAKS & THE 1867 SETTLEMENT  The Britton Oaks stand as a living testament to strength, resilience, and survival rooted in the founding of The Settlement in Texas City—the only land designated for purchase by freedmen after slavery in Galveston County, Texas. These oaks rise on land once owned…

In 1865, there was an old live oak tree growing on the Patton Plantation near Varner Creek just up from its mouth on the Brazos River, deep in the heart of Texas’s Low Country in Brazoria County, where Sugar Cane grew twenty feet tall. This plantation is now called Varner-Hogg….

Did you know the oldest public park in Houston — and possibly the oldest in Texas — was founded in 1872 by newly freed Black men? This land, now known as @emancipationprkhou @epconservancy, was purchased to be a permanent home for Juneteenth celebrations just 7 years after freedom finally reached Texas. And…

Out of this list of 500, one of the oldest trees nominated as a centennial witness tree was the “Creek Hanging Tree” located on North Lawton Avenue in Downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma. This twisted bur oak tree that stands at least 6 stories tall has been estimated to be 235 years…

Across Prairie View A&M University’s campus stand a collection of trees that carry a legacy of pride, community, and tradition. Known collectively as the Divine Nine Trees, these trees honor the historically Black Greek‑letter organizations whose chapters have shaped generations of PVAMU students and leaders. For decades, Black Greek organizations…

Domino tree at the corner of Bell and Mentor in Galveston county in the 1867 Settlement. Under this tree older Black men in the community have been gathering for generations to play games, talk, laugh, make deals, discuss neighborhood issues, and experience joy often denied to Black men as they…

We came across a beautiful American Elm tree outside the historic Eldorado Ballroom in Houston Texas in 3rd ward. This historic ballroom in 3rd ward has been home to so many major artists in Black history including performers such as Ray Charles, Etta James, Jimmy Reed, Guitar Slim Eddie Jones,…

The Bethlehem Tamarind tree is believed to date back to the era slavery and marks a historic cemetery that marks the burial plots of those once enslaved on the plantation. Preliminary survey of the Tamarind Tree conducted in 1997 revealed several potential archaeological features, prompting archaeologists to revisit the site….

The Freedom Tree in Missouri City, Texas. It was under this live oak tree that General Gordon Granger’s troops (most of whom were mounted Black Union soldiers) rode into Galveston to announce and enforce General Order #3. This order was issued by Union General Gordon Granger, on June 19, 1865…

Most people in the U.S. use the term “witness tree” to describe centuries old trees rooted in battlefield sites related to Revolutionary War or Civil War era landscapes such as the infamous Valley Forge “Pawling Sycamore” Tree. But our team at the Black Heritage Tree Project uses the term witness…

At the old entrance gates of Langston University stands a towering American Elm known as the Langston Gateway Tree. Believed to predate the University’s founding in 1897, the tree marks not only the threshold of Oklahoma’s only Historically Black College/University (HBCU) but also the gateway into Langston City itself. Rooted…

TRIGGER WARNING In the dense, green thickets of Locust Grove, Oklahoma, there stands a tree that once held a terrible truth. Locust Grove was home to Camp Scott, a summer retreat where Girl Scouts from across the region came each year to learn, explore, and sleep under the stars. But…

On Market Street in Christiansted, there stands a baobab whose roots reach deeper than the soil beneath it. Its trunk is thick with memory — a living archive of everything this narrow stretch of street has held. Long before the island knew freedom, this was one of the places where…

THE MELVIN TOLSON TREE Beside the home of poet, professor, and civil rights leader Melvin B. Tolson—stands a resilient Hackberry tree. Tolson made history in 1935 when he led the @wileycollege1873 College debate team over 15 years losing only 1 out of 75 debates (including USC and Harvard). His legacy was later…

For generations, oral histories in Greenwood told us the truth: many of the people murdered during the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre were buried in mass graves…and the largest of which was located beneath an oak tree in Oaklawn Cemetery. That story led us here. Beneath an old oak tree standing…

Sandra Annette Bland, a 28‑year‑old Black woman from Chicago, spent some of her last moments on the road now renamed Sandra Bland Parkway in her honor. After being stopped for a minor traffic violation, she was taken into police custody—an encounter that would unjustly and abruptly end her life. Near…

In the summer of 2004, I was drawn to the driveway of Stringfellow Orchards in Hitchcock, Tx by a Texas Historical Commission subject marker that shared the history of the site. Mr. Stringfellow was a world-renowned horticulturalist and former confederate soldier. To my surprise the property was abandoned and owned…

On Sol Legare Island—one of the last remaining African American settlement communities in the Lowcountry—stands a tree that has watched over its people for more than two centuries. Rooted deep in the tidal soil, this tree has been present for every chapter of Sol Legare’s story: war, emancipation, farming, segregation,…

On the banks of Oyster Creek in Fort Bend County stood a ten-room plantation house built in 1846 by the widow Mary Nibbs. All that remains of the 5,000-acre sugar and cotton plantation — once called “Walnut Grove” — are three very large live oak trees, grown from acorns Mary…