Edward P. McCabe

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Edward P. McCabe (born in Troy, New York, October 10, 1850; died in Chicago, Illinois, 1923) was an African-American politician in Kansas, and later in what was then the territory of Oklahoma. A Republican office-holder in Kansas, McCabe became a leading figure in an effort to stimulate a black migration into Oklahoma, with the hopes of creating a majority-black state that would be free of the white domination that was prevalent throughout the Southern United States. In pursuit of this goal, McCabe founded the city of Langston, Oklahoma.

[edit] Quotes

The following are quotes from Discrimination and Statehood by Philip Mellinger, published in The Chronicles of Oklahoma, Vol 49, 1971, pages 340-378.

Page 343: “By 1881, several Negro leaders were planning for the potential resettlement of twenty or thirty thousand freedmen in Oklahoma.”

“E.P. McCabe, a former Kansas state auditor, acquired a 320-acre (1.3 km²) tract near Guthrie, Oklahoma, which became the town of Langston about 1892.”

“McCabe then embarked on an ambitious adventure in state-building,using Langston as a nucleus. He encouraged the immigration of Negroes ‘in such numbers that eventually they would outnumber the whites.’ In 1892 he went so far as to predit that within a few years Congress would have two Negro senators from Oklahoma. He planned to organize Negro settlers so that he could muster ‘ a majority of black voters in each representative and senatorial district of the proposed state.”

He hoped to eventually be appointed governor or secretary of the Oklahoma Territory.

Page 346: “The opportunity for progress through prosperity and the chance to escape racial discrimination were the two drawing attractions promoted by Oklahoma black newspapers. The newspapers emphasized one or the other at random in 1905 and 1906.”

Page 349: “Negro boosting in Oklahoma achieved impressive results. The black population of Oklahoma continued to grow until statehood in 1907.” Between 1900 and 1906 the black population at doubled.

Page 350: Black Oklahomans owned fairly large farms and even controlled whole towns.

“…they were behaving in a manner directly contrary to the hopes and expectations of the whites. Past 1900 large numbers of Negroes began moving from the South and East sections to the interior part of the sate. They left farming and the Oklahoma coal mines, and took urban service jobs.”