Written by SALA LEVIN ’10
In 1902, Robert Harrod Rr. signed the deed to own land in the very county where he had spent the beginning of his life legally owned and enslaved.
He bought 13 acres near present-day FedEx Field, which he farmed throughout his life, then divided into smaller parcels for each of his five children. Their legacy was cut off in the 1970s, however, when the state and Prince George’s County took ownership of the land as the result of unpaid property taxes.
Brittney Drakeford, a doctoral student in UMD’s School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, grew up in the county and recalls accompanying her mother and grandmother on drives where they’d pass a particular stretch of land, vacant and wild. They’d always point out that it had once belonged to Brittney’s great-great-great-grandfather.
When Harrod owned it, the land had fronted a street called Harrod Road or Harrod Avenue. Now, the overgrown road is called Deputy Lane. “To literally see this complete erasure—it made me furious,” Drakeford says.
It’s an erasure that Drakeford, at least the sixth generation of her family to live in Prince George’s County, is set on halting. Despite the county’s rich agricultural history, many of its residents now lack access to fresh food and are disconnected from the land seeded for centuries with a painful history. As a senior planner with the county and community leader, Drakeford is determined to remedy that. Through her volunteer efforts developing a neighborhood garden, opening farmers markets and helping churches become hubs for nourishment, Drakeford is building a community empowered in its relationship to the environment.
“My great-grandparents, my mother, they probably never would have thought that they’d even be able to tap into this information, and now they have a descendant who’s literally in a position to research their story, affirm their story, hopefully protect their family lineage,” she says. “I feel responsibility and a burden.”
Read Drakeford’s full story in the spring issue of TERP Magazine.