Digital Revival of a Displaced Community

At the virtual intersection of Lakeland Road and Rhode Island Avenue, a tableau that laces together past and present unfolds. Next to a solar-powered smart device telling riders when the next bus is coming sits the former Mack’s Market, a mid-century general store with an ice cream counter and a billiard parlor.

It’s one of the interactive digital streetscapes featured in a new exhibition at the College Park Aviation Museum that create a portrait of Lakeland, a vibrant Black neighborhood near Lake Artemesia that existed for 75 years before being mostly bulldozed.

“This is going to allow Lakelanders ... to see something they haven’t seen for many years, and show their children and grandchildren,” says Quint Gregory, director of UMD’s Michelle Smith Collaboratory for Visual Culture, who assisted in developing “Reclaiming Our Space: The Story of Lakeland,” an effort led by residents and students.

Lakeland originated in the 1890s as a resort-style suburban community, designed to offer wealthy families more space and privacy out of the city. Within a decade, one of economic disruption, African American residents began to move in, as white people moved out.

Lakeland became a place where people picked apples from the trees in one another’s yards and had neighbors who felt like “cousins but you’re not quite sure how they’re your cousins,” says Maxine Gross ’81, chair of the Lakeland Community Heritage Project (LCHP).

Flooding had plagued part of Lakeland from its beginnings, and in the 1960s, community members asked for flood mitigation help from the local government. The result was the 1970 Lakeland Urban Renewal Plan, which had consequences they had fought against: the displacement of 104 out of 150 families to make way for Lake Artemesia Park, townhomes and apartment buildings.

“For that whole period of time, the community was in some degree of upheaval, uncertainty, living on the edge,” says Gross. “I’ve been living a lot with the voices of people who really fought hard and were truly disillusioned.” (The College Park Community Center stands on the site of Gross’ family’s former home.)

Using LCHP’s digital archive, graduate students in Gregory’s class on collaborative curation worked with Lakelanders to identify themes around which to shape the exhibition: business and entrepreneurship, connection to nature, religion, education and family. Research for the exhibition was partly funded by a grant from the Maryland 250 Commission, recognizing Marylanders’ contributions to U.S. history during its milestone anniversary.

American studies Ph.D. candidate Scherly Virgill, along with graduate students Dramane Batiano, Hannah Brancato, John Hunter and Jamie Myre, helped develop the exhibition in Gregory’s class, and currently works at the College Park Aviation Museum. “We want to make sure that those who still live in Lakeland and future generations can see Lakeland as an enduring place of hope and joy,” she says.