Priscilla T. Graham is a Gulf War veteran, documentary artist, genealogist, and cultural preservationist restoring the histories of Black communities across Texas and the American South. A fifth-generation descendant of Harriett Mitchell of Thomas County, Georgia, her work is rooted in lineage, memory, and the responsibility to protect stories nearly erased. In 1994, she heard Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee say, Too often when people need us the most, we give them our worst. The quote became her compass, guiding a lifelong commitment to serve communities with excellence, dignity, and truth.
For more than a decade, Graham has assembled one of Texas’s most extensive contemporary archives of Black heritage: 44+ Freedom Settlements visited and photographed (26 documented in books), thousands of documentary images, and 150+ oral-history interviews. Through photography, genealogical research, oral history, and digitization, she preserves settlements, churches, cemeteries, neighborhoods, and landmarks that are often overlooked or endangered.
Her preservation work has earned recognition from civic leaders and institutions across Texas, including a Congressional Resolution of Recognition from the United States House of Representatives, Texas’s 18th Congressional District, along with proclamations from Fort Bend County and the City of Houston. Through her archival studio, she continues to expand a growing body of work that safeguards and Indigenous histories for future generations.
