A.T. and Addie Odom Homestead

The Honor Award for the A.T. and Addie Odom Homestead in Shankleville, Texas was presented to the Odom heirs at Preservation Texas’s Southeast Texas Regional Preservation Summit in Beaumont on November 16, 2023. The site was previously included on Preservation Texas’s Most Endangered Places List in 2015.

"The restoration of the Odom Homestead serves as a model for the preservation of historic Texas Freedom Colonies," said Evan Thompson, Executive Director of Preservation Texas. "The importance of these rural places to the cultural, social, economic, and political history of Texas cannot be overstated. The Odom Homestead project ensures that a community landmark will survive for another century, to the benefit of all Texans."

Presented every other year, Preservation Texas Honor Awards recognize outstanding efforts to restore, preserve, rehabilitate or reconstruct historic places that have been individually included on Preservation Texas's Most Endangered Places list or relate to a previous statewide thematic endangered listing. This year’s Honor Awards celebrate the remarkable efforts made by individuals, organizations, and communities to rehabilitate once imperiled historic places, breathing new life into cherished structures while honoring their historical significance and architectural integrity.

*From left to right: Lareatha Clay, Harold Odom, and Charles John (Board of Directors, Preservation Texas)*

The Odom Homestead was established in 1922 by A.T. Odom, a carpenter, building contractor, farmer, teacher and community leader. He built numerous structures including homes, churches, and courthouses and taught young men working for the Civilian Conservation Corps. His wife, Addie, mentored community women, ran the couple’s general store, and served as a supervisor of the Newton County WPA canning plant established for African-American women. Today the homestead stands an intact and rare example of African American life in the Freedom Colony of Shankleville.

Upon A.T. and Addie Odoms’ deaths in 1979 and 1987 respectively, the homestead remained vacant for many years. After decades of neglect and damage from hurricanes and tropical storms, a group of Odom heirs banded together to save it, beginning restoration work in 2015. Thanks to individual contributions and grants from the Texas Historical Commission’s Texas Preservation Trust Fund and the Summerlee Foundation, much progress has been made toward restoring the Odom Homestead to its 1945 appearance. The homestead consists of the main house, crib (barn), smokehouse, chicken coop and a storage shed/workshop (called Noah's Ark). To date, the majority of the work has been completed by A.T. and Addie Odoms’ grandson, Harold A. Odom, Jr., with help from a host of other descendants, friends, and volunteers.

Project Manager: Harold A. Odom, Jr.

Project Architect: Donna Carter, FAIA, Carter Design Associates

Atlanta-Miller Grade School