Oklahoma: The King Of All-Black Towns
Map of Oklahoma’s All-Black Towns (Created by the Oklahoma Historical Society, OHS).
The great state of Oklahoma is known for many things. What comes to mind for most people is our NBA team, the OKC Thunder, our intense love for the game of football, or how friendly our inhabitants are to newcomers. As a native, I have learned much about my hometown. Yet, I still find myself learning more with time.
Oklahoma, affectionately known as “The Sooner State”, has such a rich Black history that few people know about.
From 1865 to 1920, African Americans created more than fifty identifiable towns and settlements. There is no other location in the Deep South or Far West where so many African-Americans settled, occupied, and governed their own communities.
Following the Civil War when former slaves of the Five Tribes settled together for mutual protection and economic security, All-Black towns began to expand in Indian Territory. When the United States government forced American Indians to accept individual land allotments, most Indian “freedmen” chose land next to other African-Americans. They created cohesive, prosperous farming communities that could support businesses, schools and churches, eventually forming towns.
Countless entrepreneurs were attracted to the newly created Oklahoma following the Land Run of 1889. More “free” land was made available to non-Oklahomans and they wasted no time settling in and creating profitable businesses. Publications like the “Langston City Herald”, founded by Langston co-founder E.P. McCabe, shepherded more African Americans to Oklahoma, making the state a “Promised Land” of sorts. As news traveled throughout the South, McCabe hoped his tactics would create an African American political power block in Oklahoma Territory. Other African American leaders had a vision of an All-Black state. Although this dream was never realized, many All-Black communities sprouted and flourished in the new territory and, after 1907, the new state.
“Oklahoma’s thirteen surviving Black towns are Boley, Brooksville, Clearview, Grayson, Langston, Lima, Red Bird, Rentiesville, Summit, Taft, Tatums, Tullahassee, and Vernon. ”
Boley, Oklahoma: “The Most Enterprising and Interesting of All-Black Towns”
Welcome To Boley - Photo by Kari Barber
Each of these towns has a story to tell, but the largest and most renowned of these is Boley. The town was named after J. B. Boley, a railroad official of the Fort Smith and Western Railway. Founded in 1903 and incorporated in 1905, Boley and the African-Americans living in the area prospered for many years.
By 1911, Boley boasted more than 4,000 citizens and many businesses, including two banks and three cotton gins. Booker T. Washington, founder of the National Negro Business League and the Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University), in Alabama, visited the town in 1905 and proclaimed it "the most enterprising and in many ways the most interesting of the Negro towns in the United States."
The Boley Rodeo, the nation's oldest African-American community-based rodeo, continues to be held every Memorial Day weekend. The delicious barbecue, alone, is worth a pilgrimage.
Langston, Oklahoma: Home of Langston University
Photo credit: Struggle and Hope via Kari Barber on Pinterest
Ten miles northeast of Guthrie, the town of Langston stands proud and tall. The town’s name honors John Mercer Langston, an African-American educator and U.S. representative from Virginia. Because Langston and Brooksville began in Oklahoma Territory, they differ from the other thirteen surviving towns. Although E. P. McCabe has been credited for founding the town, Charles Robbins, a white man, owned the land and filed a town survey and plat in 1891. The two men opened the town, April 22, 1890. In 1890, Langston was dubbed the only All-Black town in America.
In 1897, through the influence of McCabe, the Oklahoma Territorial Legislature established the Colored Agricultural and Normal University (later Langston University) at Langston. The college helped Langston endure the Great Depression.
Many prominent Oklahomans have made Langston their home or were affiliated with the university, including Melvin Tolson, Ada Louis Sipuel Fisher, Clara Luper, and Simon Alexander Haley, the father of acclaimed author Alex Haley, who taught at the college.
Around 1900, a fourteenth Black town, IXL, was established six miles northeast from Boley. It was incorporated in 2001 and continues to thrive well into the 21st century. The name, however, remains a mystery.
“These boroughs provided African Americans a safe haven where they thrived freely from racial prejudices and brutality found in other racially mixed communities of the Midwest and the South. In Oklahoma and Indian Territories, African Americans would establish their own communities for numerous reasons. Liberation from discrimination and abuse would be a motivating factor.”
Sadly, the 1920s and 1930s spelled the end for most Black communities. The Great Depression devastated them, forcing residents to go west and north in search of jobs. As a result, many of the Black towns could not survive, but their legacy still remains.
Today, the Coltrane Group, a nonprofit organization, is working to preserve and revitalize Oklahoma’s 13 All-Black towns all while educating people about these historic communities. So, the next time you take a drive east, west, north, or south in the Sooner State, remember that you’re able to soak up some knowledge at a historic Black town just up the road.
