Rachelle Berry

This interview was conducted with Rachelle Berry on June 24,2025, in Hudson, New York, where Berry was a participant in Oral History Summer School. In this focused interview, Berry discusses her academic research and activism at the intersection of Black geographies, critical race theory and urban geography. Berry explains how her doctoral research at the University of Georgia (UGA) led to her current project—What Remains: A Geography of Rememory, a book addressing how anti-Black urbanism propelled the creation of UGA's campus grounds and the responses of Athens' Black community to preserve, protect, and rebuild their institutions. In the interview, Berry describes the aftermath of a 1960s UGA-led urban renewal project that destroyed and displaced a 20-acre Black community to make way for student dormitories. She also details a more recent controversy, the unearthing and contested reburial of human remains likely belonging to enslaved or formerly enslaved individuals during the expansion of UGA's Baldwin Hall in 2016. Berry explores some of the book's theoretical touchstones, including Toni Morrison's concept of "rememory" and Christina Sharpe's idea of "the wake."Some subjects that come up in this interview include: reparational justice and healing, university-community relations, urban development, systemic racism, scholar activism, and the rebuilding of Black geographies.

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