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 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 the selection process of significant places. By July of that year the group had selected about forty sites for historic marker consideration, and fourteen of those sites to begin immediately seeking markers in Phase One of the project. (Two additional sites were subsequently added to make 16 sites in Phase One.) The Titusville Marker Committee expanded to sixteen members in 2023. It hopes to complete acquisition of the Phase One marker plaques in 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 that features the marker sites. The UAB community health outreach project, CHEER, created a GPS map of the marker sites on display 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 the UnheardVoices of Titusville, seventeen video recordings of people who lived among the marker sites during the Modern Civil Rights Era. The committee collaborated with UAB and the Holy Family Cristo Rey Catholic High School to provide community resources to students enrolled in urban politics and African American history courses. The committee collaborated with the Titusville branch library to offer educational activities regarding the families that lived among the marker sites. And the committee is collaborating with the city to support a grant to add Titusville as a district to the national register of historic places. Through the marker program, the Titusville Marker Committee continues to be an advocate for revitalization of this once thriving community through identification, recognition and preservation of the historical physical and cultural assets that once made it a destination place for new beginnings.