Change is a Place
rembering fairfield
About the Project
This project explores the complex, living history of Fairfield, Alabama through the voices of its residents. Fairfield, our town, began as a planned "model industrial city" designed in 1910 for skilled white steel workers, with deliberate barriers—both visible and invisible—that shaped the landscape and regulated Black movement.
These barriers weren't always obvious walls but often appeared as natural features: thick rows of trees, prickly olive-colored underbrush, and subtle changes in elevation that created dead-end street after dead-end street, cleverly disguised as nature. What seemed like innocent city planning actually functioned as a racial-temporal boundary, a colorline materialized in earth and the landscape.
While this part of Fairfields history is important, this project is also invested in documenting how Black residents transformed the town into their own space. When white residents departed, Black families didn't simply occupy the same houses—they reimagined and reshaped the landscape, creating what I call a "Black landscape" filled with life, memory, and communal knowledge. Through family photographs, community gatherings, spiritual labor, and everyday life, residents cultivated joy and belonging within and despite these designed boundaries. I want to document these stories.
Oral histories are vital to this project because they capture what written records and official documents cannot. They preserve the lived experiences, personal insights, and emotional truths that traditional archives often overlook. Unlike conventional history gathering that privileges written documentation, oral histories center the voices of community members who witnessed and shaped Fairfield's transformation firsthand. These narratives reveal strategies of resilience, patterns of community support, and forms of spatial knowledge that might otherwise remain invisible and unknown to future generations.
Your stories are essential to this project. Through interviews with current and former residents, we aim to document both the "official" history of Fairfield and the untold stories —the small moments of celebration, resistance, and community-building that made this place home. These oral histories will help preserve Fairfield's important legacy and contribute to conversations about what our town can become in the future.
Can I Interview You?
If you are from Fairfield or currently live in Fairfield, I want to learn from you.
Please share you contact information below and I will be in touch.
About the Artist
Tia-Simone Gardner is an artist, educator, and Black feminist learner who grew up in Fairfield, Alabama. Her work explores the connections between Black communities and their environments, focusing on how we make place.
Gardner received her BA in Art and Art History from the University of Alabama in Birmingham, her MFA from the University of Pennsylvania, and a PhD in Feminist Studies from the University of Minnesota. As a former Whitney Independent Study Program Fellow and Smithsonian Artist Fellow, she brings both personal connection and professional expertise to documenting Fairfield's rich history.
This oral history project represents a homecoming—an opportunity to collaborate with elders and community members to preserve the stories that have shaped Fairfield and the people who call it home.