One of the main intentions of the CommUnity Garden @ The Creek is to ‘Honor Mill Creek History & Legacy”. To work towards this intention, we established a partnership with MIT University and the Alain Locke Middle School to engage students in researching the history of the Mill Creek neighborhood and watershed, and to envision ways that we can honor that history in the garden.

During the spring semester of 2024, MIT and Locke students worked together to conduct research about the indigenous Lenni-Lenape who called their river Nanganesy; the of the arrival of Europeans and William Penn, whose “Liberty Lands” encompassed the river’s watershed; On old maps, they saw how mills proliferated along the river, how its name was changed to Mill Creek, how the river was buried in a sewer, how houses were built on top, how sewer and houses caved in. They discovered how early abolitionists who lived along the creek and how the Great Migration of Black folks from the South transformed Mill Creek and American culture. They learned about redlining and how eighty years of disinvestment paved the way for today’s gentrification and displacement of residents, issues that are very real for Locke students, 25 percent of whom are homeless.

In March the students came together for a neighborhood walking tour where they walked the path of the buried river, consulting historical documents along the way. We stopped at a manhole and listened to the sound of the buried river flowing through the sewer, paused at the corner of Fairmount and May to listen to jazz great McCoy Tyner’s composition, “Blues on the Corner,” which he wrote in memory of his home there; We stood at an open space in the 5000 block between Brown and Funston streets where a cave-in over the sewer destroyed homes and took lives in 1961; We ended our tour at the CommUnity Garden @ The Creek, where students sat around a campfire in the garden’s meditation Labyrinth and listened to stories and perspectives shared by community leaders and elders.

In May, all of the students came together once again to present their final projects to a room full of community members and stakeholders, which included a series of proposals for how we can honor the history of Mill Creek at the garden and throughout the neighborhood.  What you will find here is the FINAL REPORT from this collaboration, which includes the history book made by the Locke 8th grade class and all of the students’ final proposals.

Moving forward, the CommUnity Garden @ The Creek team will explore opportunities to bring these ideas to life inside the garden and throughout the community. We aim to integrate various elements of the student proposals into public installations and community programs dedicated to honoring the rich history and culture of Mill Creek. Meanwhile, Locke and MIT are excited to continue this collaboration, and look forward to engaging both groups of students in similar learning journeys for years to come. We are all so incredibly proud of our students and thank them for the energy, care, and insight that they brought to their proposals.