The Renaissance House Historical Collections: Preserving the Public Memory of Terrell Heights through Digital Justice
TCU faculty members Stacie McCormick and Angela Mack, along with graduate students Deja Groomes, Renee Osborne, and Victoria Washington were awarded the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Sustaining Community Connections Grant to partner with local non-profit organization, The Renaissance Heights of Terrell Heights. Through the awarded grant, the TCU research team assisted The Renaissance House with telling the story of Terrell Heights, a historically Black community in the Historic Southside neighborhood of Fort Worth, Texas.
In this blog post, Graduate Assistant Deja Groomes details the process of putting public humanities research into practice within the digital space.
The Renaissance House Logo
Creating a Digital Footprint
The Renaissance House of Terrell Heights is a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the public memory of Terrell Heights, the first Black middle-class community in Fort Worth, Texas. Though the history of the community may be well known among local Fort Worthians due to its historic marker, the digital footprint of Terrell Heights remained nascent, and those unfamiliar with the area were limited in gaining new knowledge.
In my role as a Graduate Research Assistant for The Renaissance House Historical Collections project, I worked toward closing the gap between community knowledge and the digital footprint of Terrell Heights to make information about The Renaissance House organization and the Terrell Heights neighborhood more accessible.
First, I created a Wikipedia article specifically for The Renaissance House, as well as a Google Maps location for the organization’s address at 1201 East Terrell Avenue so that search engines would begin to recognize the name and populate relevant results. Now, when a Google search is made on “The Renaissance House of Terrell Heights,” the location, website, and relevant news stories are clearly listed.
Additionally, I worked toward remedying the absence of Terrell Heights and Historic Southside from other relevant Wikipedia pages and articles. Most notably, I noticed that neither Historic Southside or Terrell Heights were listed on the List of Fort Worth neighborhoods Wikipedia page. In October 2025, I added both neighborhoods to the Wikipedia list along with brief descriptions and links to relevant sites such as The Lenora Rolla Heritage Museum and the forthcoming National Juneteenth Museum. This work can be expanded in the future with the creation of specific articles on Terrell Heights and Historic Southside, respectively.
“Welcome Home”: On the Greater Impact of Digital Justice
During one of the first meetings with the TCU research team and The Renaissance House founders Dr. Jennifer Giddings Brooks and Mrs. Marnese Elder, Mrs. Marnese stated that when guests arrived in the space, she says the phrase “Welcome home.” I understood this to mean two things: we were being welcomed into a house with a signifiant history within the Terrell Heights community, as well as for Dr. Brooks and Mrs. Marnese, themselves, as they were family friends of the previous owner and grew up spending the holidays in the home; additionally, I also understood the welcome as a way to ground the importance of public humanities work. The history of Terrell Heights is inclusive of politicians, business owners, doctors, and lawyers, and both the former and current locations of their homes and owned property. Understanding that the concept of “home” as sacred guided me during the research process.
As a researcher, it was my duty to document the greater impact of the community work that The Renaissance House has accomplished, as well as the lay the foundation for the visibility of what is to come. I also found the work to be imperative as a TCU graduate student engaged in African American literature and storytelling within my own work, and my ability to make clear the cultural impact of Terrell Heights and the keepers of its story.
Deja Groomes is a graduate student in the Department of English at Texas Christian University. Deja’s research interests include African American Literature, with focus areas in Black Girlhood Studies, Black Feminisms, and Black Speculation. Through her research, Deja is interested in centering the self-theorizing and speculative world-making practices of Black girlhood and Black daughterhood in literature.
