TITUSVILLE MARKERS COMMITTEE HISTORY 

 

HISTORY

The Titusville Marker Committee was formed in 2019 with a simple goal in mind—to identify significant places in Titusville and acquire historic marker plaques to display at those sites. The intent, through these individual markers, was to collectively tell the story of Titusville and its impact on our city, state, and world. The hope was, and still is, to distinguish Titusville as a place that matters, with physical and cultural assets worthy of protection and a history that must be documented and preserved.

On February 12, 2020, the original ten committee members held their first meeting at the Titusville Development Corporation, Inc. office to begin selecting significant places. By July of that year, the group had selected about forty sites for historic marker consideration, identifying fourteen of those sites to begin seeking markers immediately in Phase One of the project. (Two additional sites were subsequently added, bringing the total to sixteen sites in Phase One.) The Titusville Marker Committee expanded to sixteen members in 2023. It hopes to complete the acquisition of the Phase One marker plaques in the summer of 2024 and begin the selection process for sites to include in Phase Two of the project.

A number of educational and promotional programs have blossomed from that simple committee goal of acquiring historic markers for significant properties. Among them, in collaboration with the Titusville Development Corporation, Inc., the committee was awarded a grant from the Alabama Humanities Alliance to launch a landmarks and heritage website featuring the marker sites. The UAB community health outreach project, CHEER, created a GPS map of the marker sites, displayed in a kiosk at the North Titusville pocket park, and supported a self-guided walking tour map of marker sites.

The Bending the Arc to Justice Project produced Unheard Voices of Titusville, a collection of seventeen video recordings of people who lived among the marker sites during the Modern Civil Rights Era. The committee collaborated with UAB and Holy Family Cristo Rey Catholic High School to provide community resources to students enrolled in urban politics and African American history courses. Additionally, the committee partnered with the Titusville Branch Library to offer educational activities about the families who lived among the marker sites. The committee is also working with the city to support a grant to add Titusville as a historic district to the National Register of Historic Places.

Through the marker program, the Titusville Marker Committee continues to advocate for the revitalization of this once-thriving community by identifying, recognizing, and preserving the historical, physical, and cultural assets that once made it a destination for new beginnings.