“This project started as a way to not only explore this nation’s painful past, but also reclaim my family’s legacy.”

Rodney Hawkins
Founder
Tiny Hawk Productions
…on helping to restore the Old Mount Gillion African-American cemetery in East Texas, the subject of a visual and AR exhibition coming to Dallas’ AT&T Discovery District.

Efforts to restore Black cemeteries and burial sites are increasing across the country—and now the unveiling of a buried past deep in East Texas’s Piney Woods is the subject of an immersive visual and AR exhibition opening this weekend in Dallas’ AT&T Discovery District.

Hawkins, a former CBS News producer, explored his own heritage on nearly 100 acres of family-owned land in East Texas. In 2020, he began an effort to restore the roughly 200-year-old overgrown Old Mount Gillion Cemetery that borders his family’s acreage. The restoration was chronicled in a three-part series between 2020 and 2022 on CBS Mornings with Hawkins reporting on location.

Historic Mount Gillion Cemetery. [Photo: Kwesi Yanful]

Now the cemetery’s rebirth is the foundation for a new, immersive experience making its debut this MLK Day Weekend in partnership with the AT&T Discovery District. “The Mount Experience” exhibition aims to uncover America’s buried past through a combination of photography, augmented reality, audio recordings, and visual installations created by Black Dallas artists.

“This project started as a way to not only explore this nation’s painful past, but also reclaim my family’s legacy,” Hawkins said in a statement. “I can trace my familial roots in Texas all the way back to the 1800s, but that’s a privilege that most Black Americans don’t have due to the destructive effects caused by slavery. It’s so important that our ancestors are honored, so it seemed fitting to launch this experience on a weekend that commemorates our history through the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.”

Placing flowers at the Old Mount Gillion Cemetery. [Photo: Kwesi Yanful]

“The Mount Experience” which will be open free to the public this Saturday, January 14, and continue seven days a week through February 21 in the lobby of the AT&T headquarters at 208 S. Akard Street in downtown Dallas. The pop-up exhibition is produced by Hawkins’ Tiny Hawk Productions in collaboration with AT&T and Samsung, and will serve as this season’s AT&T Showcase while helping to honor Black History Month.

In addition, a virtual panel called “Connecting Your Roots to Find Your Voice” will be held on February 16, featuring Hawkins Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League, and Michelle Jordan, AT&T’s chief diversity officer, along with Mary Elliot of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Also, three emerging Black Dallas-based storytellers and artists will be featured in a Mount Black Art Pop-Up February 16-19, with details to be announced at a later date.

For more of who said what about all things North Texas, check out Every Last Word.

Get on the list.
Dallas Innovates, every day.

R E A D N E X T

Every Last Word: Quotes About All Things North Texas
Read “who said what” in our roundup of quotes about all things North Texas, including ENO8's Jeff Francis; MyndVR's Chris Brickler and Ted Werth; Axxess' John Olajide; the Urban Land Institute's Ron Pressman; Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson; the Mavs Foundation's Katie Edwards; UT Arlington's Yi Hong; HomeUSA.com's Ben Caballero; ParkHub's George Baker Sr.; and more.
The Last Word: Google's James Harding on the Promise Shown at the HackDFW Marathon
The eighth annual HackDFW, powered by Say Yes to Dallas and presented by Google, connected hundreds of aspiring technologists to several Fortune 100 companies. It was a unique 48-hour marathon that challenged more than 550 people from 80 universities. Tech teams created ways to innovatively tackle waste management, climate change, better understand decisions from the Supreme Court, and much more.
The Last Word: UT Southwestern's Kathleen Bell, M.D., on Long-Haul COVID
As many North Texans try to move on from the pandemic, Dr. Bell is focused on the "tens of millions of patients" who've developed long-haul COVID—and who are experiencing life-altering symptoms long after their COVID-19 infection cleared.
The Last Word: Wired's Steven Levy on How Tech Is Changing Us, and Why There's No Stopping Innovation
Levy has been writing about technology for more than 30 years. A founding writer at Wired, he's widely considered to be the premier tech journalist in the U.S. He’s covered the digital revolution since the early 1980s, reporting every major trend and profiling its key figures. Today, as a keynote speaker on the closing day of Dallas Startup Week, he took stock of how we got here—and what's next.
The Last Word: UTA's Maria Konsta-Gdoutos on Getting a $1.5M NSF Grant to Turn Concrete Into a Clean Source of Energy
Konsta-Gdoutos is exploring a way to turn one of the world's biggest polluters—concrete, which accounts for at least 8% of global energy-related CO2 emissions—into a source of clean, renewable energy. “We will pioneer TE-CO2NCRETE, a thermoelectric carbon-neutral concrete, that will exhibit a high carbon dioxide uptake potential and storage capacity,” Konsta-Gdoutos said in a statement. “Engineering the nanostructure of concrete also will allow the material to capture thermal energy from the surroundings and convert it into usable electrical energy, leading to the development of a novel technology for renewable electricity and higher efficiency power source.”