Chapter 7 | Section 1
The Persistence of All-Black Towns
As we learned in chapter 5, All-Black towns were founded throughout Indian Territory following the end of the Civil War. The earliest All-Black towns were started by formerly enslaved people from the Five Tribes, but more All-Black towns emerged as land taken from Native Americans was opened to settlers. In particular, the Land Run of 1889 led to a number of new All-Black towns, including Langston, which still exists today. Prior to statehood, African Americans voted, owned property, ran businesses, and enjoyed economic and political rights. Between the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the end of World War I in 1919, there were over fifty All-Black towns in Oklahoma. Some of them, including Langston and Boley, grew prosperous. These towns were well advertised by word of mouth and in newspapers in Black communities across the country. Booker T. Washington, the best known African American leader in the country in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, visited Oklahoma and praised the thriving community of Boley. Boley served as a significant location in the struggle for Black civil rights, particularly voting rights activism, from the Progressive Era through the 1930s.
Students and staff at Halochee Institute in Taft, one of Oklahoma’s historic All-Black towns. Taft was located eight miles west of Muskogee. The town developed on land that originally belonged to the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and then later was allotted to Muscogee (Creek) Freedpeople. The people of Taft valued the importance of education, and Halochee was the first of several schools founded in Taft.
Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
The promises of opportunity and self-sustained Black communities free from discrimination and violence were what attracted families like California Taylor’s to Oklahoma. E. P. McCabe continued to encourage African Americans to move to Oklahoma. He told anyone who would listen that Oklahoma offered opportunities and lacked the racial prejudice and discrimination found in so much of the nation, especially the South. And for a short time perhaps that was true.
Growth of Segregation and Racial Violence
In the debates over statehood, as we saw earlier, segregation was a central topic and for a variety of reasons, and was written into the state constitution. Following statehood, Oklahoma continued to pass restrictive laws to limit the rights of African Americans. In the All-Black towns, it took longer for these laws to have an impact, but eventually Blacks who had voted prior to statehood and even shortly afterward lost that right as Jim Crow laws spread throughout the state. Poll taxes and threats of violence made it difficult and sometimes impossible for Black men to vote. Following statehood, segregation quickly took hold in communities across Oklahoma, and some towns, like Norman, were sundown towns where Blacks and other people of color would be allowed to work or travel in the community during the day but had to leave by sundown.
Folk singer and songwriter Woody Guthrie grew up in Okemah, and he learned about the lynching of Laura Nelson and her son L. D. Nelson on May 25, 1911. Guthrie memorialized this act of racial violence in the song “Don’t Kill My Baby and My Son.” In 2021, the Woody Guthrie Festival held a panel discussion with representatives of the Laura Nelson Project regarding racial violence. The Laura Nelson Project was started by a Langston University professor. Today the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa is dedicated to sharing Guthrie’s message of diversity, equality, and social justice.
Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
Many African Americans who moved to Oklahoma before and even shortly after statehood were looking not only for economic opportunities but for a place where they could live free from racism. Yet communities adopted statutes that prevented African Americans from buying or renting homes in certain neighborhoods. Segregated schools made it harder for Black children to get access to education. Within a decade of statehood, both law and custom began to undermine dreams of opportunity and equality. Some African Americans left Oklahoma for other parts of the American West or Canada rather than live under the new Jim Crow laws.
For many, it must have felt like things changed almost overnight in Oklahoma. In the territory period, Republicans dominated the territorial government, but with the influx of Democrats from Arkansas to the east and Texas to the south, political power shifted quickly, and Oklahoma entered the Union as a state solidly controlled by Democrats, who tended to oppose equal rights for Blacks. This directly affected the well-being of All-Black towns. Many of them dissolved. It became harder to attract new residents. Existing residents grew fearful of violence against them, and there were plenty of reasons to be afraid. One particular threat was the groups of angry whites called the White Cappers, who terrorized African American towns and communities. In 1909, for example, a group of White Cappers terrorized the Black residents of Sapulpa, Oklahoma, forcing all of them to relocate in less than a twenty-four-hour period. Black towns and communities were raided and vandalized across Oklahoma. The release of the film Birth of a Nation in 1915 led to a rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). The film, based on Thomas Dixon, Jr.’s book The Clansman, used racist stereotypes and promoted the idea that Freedmen were a danger to white society. The KKK came to play a prominent role in Oklahoma politics and society. In large cities such as Tulsa, Oklahoma City, and Lawton, segregation became commonplace, and stories of African Americans being lynched shocked no one.
The Mexican Revolution in 1910 prompted many Mexicans to leave Mexico and move north to Oklahoma to find work. The mines and railroads in Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations recruited Mexican workers. This photo shows Nestor and Paz Cervantes, immigrants from Mexico, on the day of their wedding in Dow, Oklahoma, 1910.
Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
The Little Flower Catholic Church men’s group, Oklahoma City, 1927. The Little Flower Catholic Church served as an important center for Mexicans in Oklahoma City. The church established a school, a community center, and a health clinic.
Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
Chief Alfred Sam’s Back-to-Africa Movement
With the rise in legal segregation following statehood, Oklahoma no longer served as a promised land for Black people. Hundreds of Black Oklahomans migrated to Canada or Mexico. Several groups of Black Muscogees had left Muskogee for Liberia in West Africa much earlier in the late 1880s. These movements of people, including family groups, are all examples of transnational migrations between Indian Territory, Canada, Mexico, and West Africa.
Alfred Sam was a missionary and a native of the Gold Coast in West Africa. He called himself “Chief Sam.” He was part of a transnational network of African Methodist Episcopal (AME) churches in Liberia, the United States, and elsewhere, and he visited AME churches in the United States in the 1910s. In 1913 Chief Sam visited Wetumka, Weleetka, and other towns in the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, calling on Black people to leave Oklahoma and make a fresh start in Liberia. Inspired by his message, several thousand people made plans to sell their land and leave Oklahoma. Some gathered in tent camps in Weleetka as they made their plans to emigrate to Liberia. In 1914, many of these followers of Chief Sam’s “back to Africa” movement traveled to the Gold Coast (which later became the independent African nation of Ghana). Participants traveled by ship, but many returned to the United States a year later for a variety of reasons, including health-related issues and challenges in purchasing property in this area of Africa. The Chief Sam movement ended during World War I.
Deep Deuce in Oklahoma City and Greenwood in Tulsa
Despite increased racial violence against African Americans, some All-Black communities continued to thrive, and Black sections of cities offered a safe haven to many. For example, Deep Deuce, in the 300 block along Second Street in downtown Oklahoma City, became a cultural and economic center for the African American community. Deep Deuce grew up after the 1889 Land Run and in the years following statehood. This section of the city housed a range of shops, restaurants, and eventually a theater, hotel, and the office of the newspaper The Black Dispatch, founded by Oklahoma civil rights leader Roscoe Dunjee.
Even more prosperous was the Greenwood District in Tulsa, which became a national symbol of Black success. A thriving community for Black Tulsans, Greenwood offered shops, hotels, two theaters, and dozens of restaurants.
Roscoe Dunjee, 1883–1965, by Simmie Knox, 2005. Oklahoma journalist and civil rights leader Roscoe Dunjee founded and led the Black Dispatch newspaper in Oklahoma City from 1915 to 1954. A member of the NAACP national board of directors, Dunjee served for sixteen years as president of the Oklahoma State Conference of Branches of the NAACP. He used his influence as a newspaper editor to fight against discrimination and segregation.
Courtesy of the Capitol Art Collection, Oklahoma Arts Council.
A. J. Smitherman, attorney and owner of the Tulsa Star, advocated for self-reliance and protecting one’s family and property. This Tulsa Star headline from January 31, 1920, rails against Jim Crow segregation in public transportation such as streetcars (trolleys) and railroad cars. White mob violence destroyed Greenwood in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, including Smitherman’s press and home.
Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
Stories of the prosperity in Greenwood received national attention and led to Greenwood’s characterization as the “Black Wall Street.” However, the success of African Americans in Greenwood existed in the shadows of racism, hostility, and deeply ingrained anger among white people. A few years after the end of the First World War, this thriving community was burned to the ground. We will return to the subject of the Tulsa Race Massacre in detail in chapter 8.