Chapter 5 | Section 1
Rentiesville
An interesting pattern emerged in town formation (the ways towns were established and developed) in Indian Territory. Due to allotment, the lands often belonged to Native Freedpeople including young women and girls. In 1903, William Rentie and Phoebe McIntosh, both Muscogee (Creek) Freedpeople, contributed 20 acres each from their allotments to provide lots for Rentiesville, an All-Black town 70 miles southeast of Tulsa. It sat five miles north of Checotah in what became McIntosh County, and it was a flag stop along the MK&T railway. Located about a quarter mile from Honey Springs in Indian Territory, Rentiesville was founded by Native Freedpeople and veterans of the Battle of Honey Springs. Most of the All-Black towns were located in Indian Territory, with the majority of them in Muscogee Nation.
Following the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, attorney B. C. Franklin (right) and his law partner I. H. Spears (left) set up their law office in a tent, working to prevent dispossession of Greenwood residents.
Courtesy of the National Museum for African American History and Culture.
Dr. John Hope Franklin, by Everett Raymond Kinstler, 2012. Historian John Hope Franklin, the son of B. C. Franklin, graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in Tulsa. He received the PhD in history from Harvard University and served as professor at Howard University and Duke University among other schools. From Slavery to Freedom (1947) is his best-known book. Franklin received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1995 for his work as historian and civil rights advocate. Visit the John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park in Tulsa to learn more about his efforts to “establish history as a powerful force for good.”
Courtesy of the Capitol Art Collection, Oklahoma Arts Council.
Two Waves of Black Emigration to Indian Territory
Black emigration to Oklahoma before statehood came in two waves. The first wave included enslaved Blacks of the Five Tribes who were forcibly removed to Indian Territory from the southeastern United States during the 1820s and 1830s. Following the Civil War, Freedpeople of the Five Tribes “accepted” individual land allotments and they created farming towns. Tullahassee, for example, located in Wagoner County five miles northwest of Muskogee, is the oldest All-Black town in Indian Territory. When the Muscogee Nation opened a school there in 1850, and following the Civil War and Reconstruction Treaties of 1866, the population of Freedpeople increased in the town. By the early 1870s, the MK&T railway ran through Tullahassee, and the town’s population continued to grow. And by 1870, some six thousand African Americans called Indian Territory home.
Freedpeople camping at Fort Gibson before enrollment through the Dawes Commission and following passage of the Curtis Act in 1898. When the Five Tribes were forcibly removed from their homelands in the 1830s–40s, Black people enslaved by the tribes also made the long journey to Indian Territory. By 1861, thousands of Black people were enslaved throughout Indian Territory. They gained freedom after the Civil War.
Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
Tullahassee Manual Labor School, 1891. By 1883, this institution was a boarding school for Muscogee (Creek) Freedpeople and was funded by the Muscogee Nation in partnership with the Baptist Home Mission Society. For many years Tullahassee was the only school in Indian Territory for Native Freedpeople beyond elementary school. It continued as a school for Black students until 1924.
Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
The second wave of Black emigration to Oklahoma occurred when the federal government opened Native lands to homesteading in the late 1880s. For African American settlers from the South, land to the west in Indian Territory represented a “promised land” where they could establish themselves as free people and forge new identities. Black newspapers and church meetings promoted the All-Black towns. The towns were filled with Black leaders, businesses, schools, and cultural institutions. Town leaders recruited new residents with assurances of land ownership, economic prosperity, racial pride, and community. In 1896, the US Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson established the “separate but equal” doctrine, or legal segregation by race. Therefore, the founders of All-Black towns wanted to create safe communities apart from white communities.
Between 1890 and 1907, the Black population of Indian Territory (including both Native Freedpeople and African Americans) increased from 19,000 to over 80,000. The Native population remained at about 61,000. The white population increased from some 109,000 to over 538,000 as a result of the Homestead Act and the opening of the Unassigned Lands.
Originally from Tennessee, George Napier Perkins was a veteran of the US Army, lawyer, newspaper publisher, and civil rights activist who grew up in Arkansas before moving to Oklahoma in 1890. Perkins used his legal training and his Oklahoma Guide newspaper in Guthrie to appeal to whites for repeal of the grandfather clause and to mobilize Black leaders to contest it in the courts and fight against disenfranchisement.
Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
Black Town Formation
Between 1886 and 1920, there were as many as 50 Black towns and settlements in Indian and Oklahoma Territories, more than in any other territory or state in the United States. In 1905 Booker T. Washington traveled for the first time to Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory to visit these new towns. Today 13 historic All-Black towns remain in Oklahoma, including Boley, Langston, Rentiesville, and Tullahassee.
Promised Land
The twin territories of Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory captured the imagination and hope of people from a range of backgrounds. Edward P. (“E. P.”) McCabe was one of those people. Born in 1850 in Troy, New York, McCabe moved to Topeka, Kansas, along with many African Americans who moved west. A lawyer and politician, he built a name for himself as a leading Black Republican and served as state auditor twice in Kansas. With the creation of Oklahoma Territory, McCabe left Kansas to establish a Black town in Oklahoma. Not only did he actively recruit African Americans from all over the country to move to this new “promised land,” but he tried to get himself appointed as the governor of the territory.
Edward P. McCabe, 1850–1923, by Simmie Knox, 2005. E. P. McCabe was an influential African American lawyer and politician who wanted to establish Oklahoma Territory as a Black state. He helped found Langston, Oklahoma, the first All-Black town in the territory, and campaigned for other African Americans to move to Oklahoma. McCabe is best known today for his promotion of Black settlement in Oklahoma.
Courtesy of the Capitol Art Collection, Oklahoma Arts Council.
All-Black towns. Between 1886 and 1920 there were as many as fifty Black towns and settlements in Indian and Oklahoma Territories, more than in any other US territory or state. Today thirteen historic All-Black towns remain in Oklahoma, including Boley, Langston, Rentiesville, and Tullahassee.
Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
E. P. McCabe supported Republican Benjamin Harrison’s bid for the US presidency in 1888, and he hoped that his loyalty to Harrison and the Republican Party might help his later effort to become governor of Oklahoma Territory. McCabe believed that if President Harrison appointed him governor, even more Black people would want to move to Oklahoma (something upon which both supporters and opponents of this idea agreed). Beyond that goal, McCabe envisioned the territory, heavily populated by successful African Americans, as a future Black state of the Union. McCabe’s ambitions for a governorship and a Black state met with fierce opposition, and neither of these goals came to pass. McCabe and other Black leaders did, however, succeed in attracting thousands of African Americans to settle in Oklahoma’s thriving Black towns and communities. Ultimately, though, the rate of Black migration, substantial though it was, could not keep up with the number of southern whites and immigrants who poured into Oklahoma.
Front page of the Langston City Herald, August 11, 1894. Founded by Edward P. McCabe in 1891, the Herald was Oklahoma Territory’s first weekly African American newspaper and was continually published until 1902. Its tagline read, “Without fear, favor, or prejudice, we are for the right, and ask no quarter, save justice.”
Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
Members of the Langston University choir around 1914. Langston was founded in 1897 with the purpose of offering higher education to Black students. Today Langston University is one of 107 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) in the United States and remains an important member of the 25 public colleges and universities in Oklahoma.
Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
In 1890, McCabe and others founded Langston, the first Black town in Oklahoma Territory, after purchasing 320 acres near Guthrie. In his campaign to attract Black settlers to Oklahoma Territory, McCabe described Oklahoma Territory in his newspaper the Langston City Herald as the “paradise of Eden and the garden of the Gods.” Using the newspaper to promote settlement, McCabe recruited Black settlers to Oklahoma Territory from Kansas, Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Missouri, and Tennessee. Langston University, Oklahoma Territory’s only Historically Black College and University (HBCU), was founded in 1897. Langston became one of about a dozen Black towns founded in Oklahoma Territory in the 1890s. The Black population in Oklahoma Territory went from 3,000 in 1890, a year after the first land run, to almost 19,000 in 1900.
Boley, the Largest All-Black Town
Boley was founded in 1903 in the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, Indian Territory, on the allotment land of Abigail Barnett, the seven-year-old daughter of Muscogee Freedman James Barnett. Like other Black towns, Boley attracted African Americans from the South who were seeking freedom, safety, and security. Boley sits at the crossroads of the southern and western portions of Indian Territory. Settlers in Boley viewed Indian Territory as a western place, but their town was established on land originally owned by Muscogees and Muscogee Freedpeople, formerly enslaved people and the descendants of those enslaved by the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.
This is the historical marker for Boley, one of thirteen remaining All-Black towns in Oklahoma. The Boley Rodeo, first held in 1903, is possibly the oldest Black rodeo in the United States. Today the rodeo is held annually during Memorial Day weekend and includes bull riding, barrel racing, and team roping.
Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
Thomas M. Haynes from East Texas cofounded and managed the new town of Boley. He had lived in Oklahoma City for a time before moving his family to Creek Nation in Indian Territory. Like other Black parents, Haynes was looking for a good place to raise his children. Haynes actively recruited settlers to Boley, noting the promise of fertile land and the ideal location of the town as a stop on the Fort Smith and Western Railway. Boley became a prosperous town with a bank, a pharmacy, schools, hotels, restaurants, grocery stores, clothing stores, and doctor’s offices. Just as the Langston newspaper recruited Black settlers to Oklahoma Territory, the Boley Progress newspaper actively encouraged southern Blacks to move to Boley.
California M. Taylor arrived in Boley from Texas in 1904. Along with other Black women, she began fashioning her identity and defining what it meant to be a Black middle-class woman in a prosperous All-Black town. She worked as a federally commissioned notary public in town and later became a pharmacist and drugstore manager. She served as secretary of the Boley branch of the NAACP.
By the early 1910s, with a population of over four thousand, Boley became the largest Black town not only in Oklahoma but in the United States. The high school was one of five public high schools for African Americans in Oklahoma. Boley and other Black towns in Oklahoma would serve as centers of Black activism in the early civil rights movement. However, by the 1920s and 1930s, the population of Boley and other Black towns began to decline. Children and grandchildren of the founders moved north to places like Chicago and west to places like Los Angeles. Boley cofounder Thomas M. Haynes moved to Los Angeles in the late 1920s and continued to work in real estate.