Blackdom, New Mexico

Blackdom, New Mexico
Ghost town
Blackdom Location within the state of New Mexico
Coordinates: 33°09′49″N 104°30′32″W / 33.16361°N 104.50889°W / 33.16361; -104.50889Coordinates: 33°09′49″N 104°30′32″W / 33.16361°N 104.50889°W / 33.16361; -104.50889
Country	United States
State	New Mexico
County	Chaves
Area
• Total	24 sq mi (61 km²)
Elevation	3,638 ft (1,109 m)
Time zone	Mountain (MST) (UTC-7)
• Summer (DST)	MDT (UTC-6)

Blackdom is a ghost town in Chaves County, New Mexico. Blackdom was an all-Black Afro-Frontier town that began in 1903 with the establishment of the Blackdom Townsite Company and dissolved around 1930 during the Great Depression. It withered away with the tumble weeds of the Dust Bowl. In its almost thirty year lifespan, the idea and physical manifestation of the town endured barratry, drought, doubt, revival, and in its last decade became home to oil exploration with the announcement of the Blackdom Oil Company in 1919.

The well-developed activism as well as the entrepreneurialism of Black people propelled the development of the Blackdom Townsite Company in 1903. Black people employed frontier schemes from the dissolution shortly after 1903, to the revival in 1911, and while reaching the highest potential of a Black Colonization Venture in 1919 with the advent of the Blackdom Oil Company. In spite of the fact that they were few in number and disadvantaged by not possessing Whiteness, they thrived.

Black enclaves in the West developed into communities, but Chaves County’s Black community went beyond to incorporate a townsite company.

Geography

The Blackdom site is located eight miles (13 km) west of Dexter, New Mexico and 18 miles (29 km) south of Roswell. The altitude is 3,638 feet (1,109 m).

Current Google Satellite Maps with an overlay of the Blackdom Townsite.

History

Preconditions: Military men, Ministers, Free Masons

Frank Boyer, one of the major developers of the Blackdom project, bragged about his military service in the 24th Infantry touting the fact that “he took part in quelling a Navajo rebellion at Shiprock, Arizona” and the rounding up of Indian insurrectionists in the famous ‘Crazy Snake Rebellion’ in the Creek Nation of Indian Territory where Henrietta, Oklahoma is today.” Frank Boyer, was a minister educated in seminary a Morehouse College and was part of the faculty at Fisk University. Boyer served as a Buffalo Soldier in the American Borderlands. He was also one of the major figures in bringing Black freemasonry to the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. After Frank Boyer’s military service, Kathryn Henry wrote, that he returned to Georgia and was discharged from the Army, he decided to go back to the West. Boyer returned to New Mexico in 1899. “He helped lay out Fort Huachuca in southeastern Arizona.”The first Black regiment to arrive at Huachuca was the 24th Infantry (Boyer’s unit) in 1892.^[1]

Preconditions: The Black Colonization Continuum, Military Men

Quaker societies were mostly racially benign spaces, and Black people such as Paul Cuffee were able to rally support within the religious community of mix heritages in support of Black liberation projects. Even though there was little need for a separate Quaker denomination, Black liberation grew into Cuffee’s back-to-Africa movement, which began in the post-Revolutionary war period. Black people chose to fight on the side of British—Loyalist—because they were against the institution of slavery. By contract, in the aftermath American Revolutionaries the British helped Black people colonize Nova Scotia, Canada. In that exchange, Black people found refuge. However, liberation theology included activism inspired Ethiopianism and actions of Black independence to maintain liberty, which mean total control of land and resources.

Shortly after loyalist colonized various parts of Canada, Cuffee led efforts to convince the British government to help create Sierra Leone, which became a Black colony on the west coast of Africa. In the post-Revolutionary war period, the British assisted placement of Black loyalist. Paul Cuffee raised money and support to convinced U.S. abolitionists to push for the establishment of free Blacks in Sierra Leone as well. Instead, the United State created the American Colonization Society that helped to establish Black Ethiopianists colonize West Africa in Liberia during the 1820s.^[2]

Preconditions: The Black Colonization Continuum, Ministers

Bishop Richard Allen led a Black movement out of the Methodist Church and created mutual aid societies that grew into churches. Allen was a radical in that he believed in passive resistance and forgiving your enemy at a time when strength and power was measured by force. Bishop Allen was born under the institution of slavery in 1760. He later became an educator, writer and Methodist Bishop. He refused to accept the segregation in the churches and lobbied the Methodist Church for a separate denomination of Methodism for people of African descent. The A.M.E. Church movement was born out of Black Liberation Theology, and self-determination.^[3]

Preconditions: The Black Colonization Continuum, Freemasons

The early record of a Black intellectual network was represented in the life of Bishop Richard Allen of the African Methodists Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church, and Prince Hall of the African Masonic Lodges that developed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania during the post-Revolutionary war period. The infrastructure of the network was based on the relationship between churches and masonic lodges, among other institutions, fostering various intellectual exchanges between ministers, military men, and freemasons who then relay idea to the masses.

Opportunistically, Black people colonized where possible and invested themselves in building a network with infrastructure for mass Black migration and colonization to follow. One must first accept the idea that Black people possessed their own logic and interpretations under various conditions and circumstances to allow such a perspective to exist in Black Historical spaces. In the middle of the Nineteenth Century, the Black Colonization Continuum helped Black people nurture Black independence. During the post-1865 Black Migration, Black Military men led the charge toward the frontier. Black ministers followed the Black military invasion by either leading or facilitating mass Black migration into various frontier spaces. Black Freemasons solidified colonization.

Preconditions: The Borderlands and the Birth of Blackdom

In 1900 Chaves County, New Mexico as well as the greater Pecos Valley Region, Black people worked mostly as cooks (both domestic and for local establishments), and porters in local businesses and on trains. Many often worked as janitors in Chaves County as well. There were also Black people who profited from other skills such as carpentry, farming, and cattle rustling. Texan James Lacey in 1900, supported his family on what he could make as a general carpenter supporting Lizzie, his wife, who worked from home taking care of the couple’s seven-year-old daughter Elisabeth. There were others like Addison “Nigger Add” Jones who supported his family in West Texas and Eastern New Mexico as a cowboy. Jones had a rustling friend “Old Nigger Bob,” who was also a fellow Black cowboy.^[5] Frank Boyer had many jobs, but he focused on sharecropping after 1903. However, in every employment position occupied by Black people in Chaves County—cooks, porters, janitors, farmers, and cowboys—they all were jobs offered by White people. By establishing the Blackdom Townsite Company as the first step to building their own all-Black town, thirteen Afro-Frontierists attempted to harness the Black labor power to produce more for Black people in Chaves County and eventually produce a surplus to be sold to others.

From 1900 to 1910 in the New Mexico Territory, the Black population increased from 1610 to 1628. This apparent slow growth does not capture the movement of a transient Black population (e.g. cowboys and ranch hands) in and out of the territory and the new populations of Black families establishing themselves there permanently. While at the same time in Chaves County, the Black population increased from 66 to 233 because those already in New Mexico flocked to Chaves for the increased opportunity. Still they amounted to only 1% of the total population (16,460) in the county by 1910. Out of the 233 Black people in Chaves, close to 70% of them homesteaded.

Homesteading was the ultimate expression of frontierism particularly in desert landscapes for a variety of reasons, but most importantly, because rainfall did not dictate a growing season, the power of the water pump one acquired did. Farming and seeking to build a life based on dry farming and subsistence farming was such a treacherous and extraordinarily difficult feat. Committing to the process required more than skill and capital, but also intangible amounts of courage and faith in self-determination/ambition.

Black people who migrated to Chaves County came from somewhere else to better their lives and change the trajectory of their families. Jim Crow and its supporting institutions of the South had not yet fully developed in Chaves County. Opportunists by nature, the lack of Jim Crow Laws and associated procedures in this frontier space exacerbated their opportunistic fervor, which inspired the Blackdom Townsite Company. Black migrants recognized that working as domestic help, porters, janitors, and cowboys required the mercy of White people. Black migrants to Chaves County understood that within this frontier space, unlike other frontier spaces, the socioeconomic structure was not dictated by Jim Crow Laws. With only a Southern culture maintaining the conditions of Blacks, the Blackdom Townsite Company allowed for cooks, janitors, and porters to become founders and board members of the only All-Black Afro-Frontier Town in New Mexico’s history.

Early History: The Blackdom Townsite Company

Blackdom, in some ways, was a microcosm of the larger Exoduster phenomenon following the end of the Civil War and even more so at the close of Reconstruction. Tens of thousands of Black people migrated away from Southern racialized violence, but the Exoduster paradigm only describes the plight faced by Black people seeking refuge. In a region heavily influenced by Southern and Texas Cultures, Black people in Southeastern New Mexico still had limited economic opportunity and social mobility. When narrating the history of Blackdom, one is confronted with these and various other elements that are counter-intuitive to the Exoduster/refugee paradigm. In actuality, Blackdom’s history reflects the opportunistic and entrepreneurial impulses of the founders whose efforts were focused by a profit motive a hallmark of Afro-Frontierism (Definition: Black people, under varying circumstances, acted and reacted based on ambition first—a shift from the Exoduster paradigm of refuge and fear).

The Blackdom Thirteen

The thirteen Black men who became the Blackdom Townsite Company board members lived diverse lives, all in the midst of tacit Southern racial bias in Chaves County. The relatively few Black people in the county overwhelmingly worked as a part of the servant class and the rest were farmers—mostly sharecroppers. Black men in their thirties and forties were like Texans John Buck and John Clayton, finding work as janitors and porters. If a Black person had a job, he or she was inclined to keep it, and missing weeks of work toiling the fields of a desert homestead would ultimately leave him or her without a job and only a poor chance of yielding a harvest worthy of the effort. The loss of a job as a domestic worker would not matter if one’s homestead was fully functional, and there was a guarantee of income. However, one was more likely to fail homesteading than succeed.

For literate Texan and cofounder of the Blackdom Townsite Company, Albert Hubert, homesteading was not an option. Hubert began his time in Chaves County around 1900 when he was “about 30.” Even though Hubert had a family of his own, in public records he was only identified as the “servant” of the Travis Ellis’ family.Travis Ellis was a twenty-nine year old railroad auditor from Kentucky. Travis’ twenty-seven year old wife Maude was born in Indiana, but migrated from Kentucky as well. With the help of Hubert, Maude worked from home taking care of two daughters under the age of ten in 1900.^[6]

Hubert, like most Black people in the county, was securely in the servant class for his entire existence in Roswell. He lived the majority of his years on East Third Street, growing his family every three to five years. When Hubert became a member of the Blackdom Thirteen in 1903, his family consisted of his twenty-year old wife Pearl, his two-year-old daughter Sadee, and possibly a nine-year-old daughter Bernice from a previous relationship.By 1920, Hubert’s family was composed of his wife and six kids—Bernice (24), Juanita (18), Linwood (son 14), Valerie (daughter 12), Burt (son 10), Mattie (daughter 7). From 1900 through 1920, he remained a cook as he added to his family. There were very few opportunities for him to change his economic status over a twenty-year period, until the signing of the Blackdom Townsite Company’s Articles of Incorporation in 1903.

Building the town of Blackdom was an opportunity that required a tremendous amount of work before yielding a profit. Full investment in Blackdom required that one homestead. Hubert never homesteaded and well into his forties was still a cook. For a brief moment; however, the Ellis family cook became a cofounder and board member of New Mexico’s only all-Black townsite company. Nevertheless, Hubert decided to continue focusing his attention on providing for his family rather than investing in the Black Colonization Venture. By 1920, Hubert was a forty-eight year old hotel cook still living on East Third Street.

ARTICLES OF INCORPORATION OF BLACKDOM TOWNSITE COMPANY ——-oOo——- KNOW ALL MEN BY THESE PRESENT, That we, Francis M. Boyer, Isaac W. Jones, Daniel G. Keys, Burrel Dickerson, Charles C. Childress, John T. Boyer, James Jackson, Charles W. Clifton, Charles Thompson, Benjamin Harrison, George White, and Joseph Cook, all citizens of the United States of America and residents of the Territory of New Mexico, have this day associated ourselves together for the purpose of forming a corporation under and by virtue of the provisions of Chapter I of Title V of the Complied Laws of the Territory of New Mexico of 1897 and we do hereby state and certify:

1903

Isaac Jones began his homesteading process in April 1903, but homesteading required significant investment of a few thousand dollars with no guarantee of success. Without significant cash reserves, Jones did not have any margin for error building his homestead with his family in tow. Making a mistake in the choice of crops or any aspect of homesteading would lead to a yearlong march toward economic disaster with very little means of recovery. For several months, he made little progress on his homestead while still working in Roswell.

It took a major event that year to accelerate Jones’ personal investment in his homestead as well as in the incorporation of the Blackdom Townsite Company. The Evansville Indiana Race Riot in July 1903—which resulted in the death of both Black and White people—was Jones’ catalyst, and he spent August and September building on his homestead. The home he built was a box house of twelve by twenty feet in diameter, and boasted a shingle roof, floor, seller, two doors, two windows, barn, well, out-building, corral and entire tract fence valued at about a thousand dollars.

His decision to join the Blackdom endeavor comported with the trajectory of his life. In September 1903, thirteen Black men who were from various parts of the United States but living in Chaves County entered a partnership to build an Afro-Frontier town. The men walked into the County Clerk’s Office in Roswell, New Mexico (the county seat), and Notary Public James Henry presided over the signing of the Blackdom Townsite Company’s Articles of Incorporation. Most of these Black men didn’t live in the same city. In fact, some of them were rural and lived completely different and separate lives from the others. They spoke different dialects. Some of the men were from Mississippi and others from places such as Georgia and Texas. Still, the Blackdom Thirteen understood the opportunities afforded them in this frontier space as individuals, and each came to different conclusions about how best to exploit the opportunities of the region.

Immediately after they signed the Articles, the townsite company bombarded Indiana, the Midwest, and various other parts of the United States with advertisements for migrants to come and help build a “Negro Refuge” called Blackdom. On September 11, 1903, the Sterling Gazette of Sterling, Illinois reprinted reports from Santa Fe of the exclusive “Negro Colony.” The article was an advertisement that read, “The Blackdom Townsite Company has been incorporated with a capital stock of $10,000. The purpose is to establish a colony of negroes from the southern states.” The Sterling Gazette was just one of many Midwest advertisers for Blackdom. In Decatur, Indiana the advertisement headline read “Negro Colonization Scheme”; in Elkhart, “Refuge for Negroes”; in Silver Lake, “Blackdom, a Negro Refuge.” Advertisements also appeared in Washington, Connersville, New Albany, Knox, Logansport, Middlebury, and Flora among other places. The Midwest was inundated with news of the Blackdom Townsite Company’s inception.^[7]

The name Blackdom was the first element of a clever marketing campaign to encourage migration. Blackdom’s success depended on migration to the town because local Black people, while operating under a less violent Southern culture, didn’t require refuge. Success proceeded a sufficient number of migrants interested in investing in the colony or, and at a minimum, seeking refuge with labor to offer to the townsite. The Blackdom advertisements were marketed to Black people elsewhere still disconcerted by the events of the Evansville Riot and overall racial climate in the United States. Unlike the vast majority of all-Black towns, the proposed town name implied something different—beyond Biblical references, local culture, or persons involved in the founding of the town. Instead, the town’s name projected a consciousness of empowerment through a Black identity.

Secondly, every advertisement about Blackdom contained a reference to “$10,000 capitalized stock.” Announcing this significant amount was another attempt to legitimize the project. Coincidentally, in January, the Dexter Townsite Company also incorporated with a capitalized stock of $10,000. However, the Dexter Townsite Company owned land and a railroad depot. The Blackdom Townsite Company’s capitalized stock only mattered if one were interested in the future townsite value and wanted to own part of it. However, there was no actual land or monetary value attached to the Blackdom Townsite Company. In reality, the company stock was worthless until there were considerable numbers of people—buyers and sellers—trading the five thousand shares of the company priced at two dollars each.

Lastly, the advertisements that appeared in newspapers across the United States sought to capitalize on the fact that New Mexico had no Jim Crow laws. Many Black people from the South moved to the Midwest for economic opportunity, and in most cases, sought to escape the horrors of the South. Blackdom projected the reunification of diasporic Black peoples, and the opportunities described in the advertisements sought to unite migrants with the opportunity that they sought. The idea for Blackdom seemed utopic.

Tallmadge Affair

Frank Boyer did not homestead until 1906, relatively late considering he was Blackdom Townsite Company’s President. This opens the discussion as to why the leader of the project balked after the 1903 inception. Drought was one of the glaring issues facing farmers in Chaves County. While droughts are difficult anywhere, Black farmers from the South had to learn all new techniques to farm on the drought stricken lands. Black migrants attempting to farm on Eastern New Mexico’s desert prairies had spent, generations in some cases, learning how to sow seeds and reaps harvests in Southern climates. Nevertheless, Black people chose the homestead all while serving as help for the White population in surrounding cities. Inside Blackdom, Black people were the town elders and controllers of daily life.

It is important to differentiate the Blackdom Townsite Company (established in 1903) from the Afro-Frontier Town of Blackdom established in 1911 and not officially platted until 1920. The Blackdom Townsite Company was a corporation organized by thirteen Black men as a first step to building an all-Black town. In comparison to Exoduster towns in other narratives, Blackdom’s history began solely as an investment tool. Refuge was a part of the narrative; however, it is only one element in a series of intersecting commercial endeavors.

Between 1903 and 1911 there was little to no activity dedicated to building the town. Within a year of its existence, Blackdom had no address and was in full decline in 1904. The lack of development was a byproduct of the land fraud investigations taking place in Chaves County at the time, involving the Tallmadge brothers (Chester and Benjamin), who were major railroad tycoons new to the region. The President and Vice President of the Blackdom Townsite Company were directly connected to the Tallmadge affair, provoking questions about the possibility that the company was operating as a shell corporation for the Tallmadge brothers.

The Lost Years (1903-1911)

Some went back to their jobs in Roswell and Dexter without ever investing in the development of the Blackdom project. Some continued sharecropping. None platted the townsite. None purchased land in the name of a townsite of Blackdom. Several, however, profited from the idea.

In the early conception of the Blackdom Townsite Company, land was the focal point. Land and the various dealings became two essential elements driving the trajectory of the townsite company and the Blackdom experiment. The circumstance of Black migrants acquiring land like Mack Taylor/Isaac Jones plagued the Blackdom project. Taylor’s name didn’t appear on Blackdom’s founding documents, yet his land dealings planted the seeds of Blackdom September 8, 1902 when he entered his first homestead patent.

By a series of associations, the Blackdom Townsite Company was a business with questionable legality in 1905 due to the business dealings of its board members. Land fraud charges stifled investment in the Blackdom Townsite Company and subsequent town of Blackdom. The incorporation of the company in 1903 was at an intersection of frontier schemes that included Afro-frontierists and robber barons. The promotion for the all-Black town coincided with the Tallmadge’s plans to control the Santa Fe Railroad. The Blackdom Townsite Company also requested concessions from the railroad to help transport Black colonists and their livestock to the area. In August 1907, the Territorial Supreme Court closed with a ruling on the appeal of the Tallmadge brothers that reversed an earlier conviction of perjury. The Blackdom Townsite Company had no legal issue afterwards.^[8]

In 1905, before the first indictments of the Tallmadge brothers, Frank Boyer’s older brother John began a homestead patent. He was a cofounder of the Blackdom Townsite Company and first in the aftermath of the Tallmadge affair to homestead. In his mid-forties when he signed the Blackdom Townsite Company’s Articles of Incorporation, he also led the Boyer family as the first to homestead in Chaves County. For years after the incorporation of the Blackdom Townsite Company, John Boyer spent his time in Roswell as a janitor. His homestead was his alternative to operating within the service industry in Roswell. More importantly, his job as janitor provided the capital necessary to build his homestead and provide for a family. Although homesteading sometimes drew him away from his job in Roswell, John had teenage sons to leverage time and resources to continue building on his homestead. John Boyer earned his land patent in August 1907.

The thirteen Black men, in different places in their lives, signed a document that expressed intentions to establish New Mexico’s first and only officially recognized “Negro colony” called Blackdom. However, building this town and uniting a diverse group of Black people did not spawned from a local event that caused racial solidarity. Instead, the history consisted of a multitude of frontier stories intersecting at various points during those years. There were three major narrative themes during the lost years (1903 -1911): homesteading, land fraud, and the desire to build an all-Black town with a profit motive. There was a diversity of reasons to be a part of the Blackdom project, but what propelled the momentum of the Blackdom Thirteen were the collective personal pursuits of wealth cause the collapse of the first attempt to build Blackdom.

The town of Blackdom did not exist physically before the revival of the idea in 1911. No one migrated to Chaves County specifically for the sake of building Blackdom. Before 1909, there was no one on record homesteading in the name of Blackdom. Many Black people who migrated to Chaves County became a part of the 1911 Blackdom project after they arrived. When Frank Boyer decided to move forward with Blackdom in 1908, he needed land and people who were motivated, able bodied, and financially capable to homestead.

Filled with individual pursuits, Blackdom’s early years were chaotic, but after 1909 Boyer learned enough from the experience of 1903 Blackdom to centralize power. In 1911, Boyer amended the Blackdom Townsite Company’s Articles of Incorporation limiting the board members to three—Frank Boyer, Ella Boyer, and Wesley William. The original decision to start the Blackdom Townsite Company was made in haste, and the divisions among the Blackdom Thirteen were too great to hold together the fragile union. Inspired to finally build the Blackdom townsite, Boyer fixed the major flaw in original plan.

Early Revival

Frank Boyer’s first act toward building Blackdom of 1911 was becoming assignee for Mattie Moore Moore and Pernecia Russell in 1908.^[9] Most narratives about Blackdom include Moses-like figure, Frank Boyer. For that reason, Boyer’s history needs clarity. Instead of Boyer leading a grand effort, it is more accurate to state that he mostly led his immediate family before 1909. A good example of Boyer’s lack of leadership was the fact that he was not the first of the Blackdom Townsite Company’s thirteen members to homestead. Boyer was not even the first in his family to homestead in Chaves County. Nevertheless, he was the President of the company, which warrants some discussion of his biography, particularly because he was instrumental in the revival of Blackdom in 1911.

When he returned to the Pecos Valley Region, instead of leading the Blackdom experiment in 1903, Boyer’s first priority was his career as a buggy driver for U.S. District Judge Alfred Freeman. Judge Freeman held court in Lincoln, Socorro, and Las Cruces. Prior to that, he served as U.S. consul in Prague, Bohemia, and was appointed Assistant U.S. Attorney General in 1877. After the U. S. Congress created a new Associate Justice position for New Mexico, President Harrison appointed Judge Freeman to the bench in October 1890. Justice Freeman served a four-year term, and by May 1895 was practicing law in Eddy (Carlsbad after 1899) with his son-in-law, James Cameron. Judge Freeman and Frank Boyer traveled by buggy and camped in the mountains when night overtook them in route from one place to another. Freeman’s long career afforded Boyer some access to wealth and political power.^[10]

When Judge Freeman became a fixture in Chaves County, Frank Boyer followed. Judge Freeman was one of the most powerful men in New Mexico. The sixteenth Governor of New Mexico, Miguel Antonio Otero, chose Judge Freeman to lobby in Washington D.C. against the building of a dam on the Rio Grande River.^{^[2]} In 1904, Judge Freeman was also the first pick of a group of lawyers in Chaves County who sponsored his nomination to the position of Associate Justice in the new congressionally created judicial district with Roswell as its headquarters. Boyer’s work for the Judge paid him enough to support his family and efforts as a sharecropper, and he was comfortable with Judge Freeman because of his previous relationship with Georgia’s Superior Court Judge Logan Edwin Bleckley, who paid for his education at Morehouse College. For years Boyer prioritized his stable career working for the powerful, well regarded, and well respected Judge Freeman over endeavors to build an all-Black community.

Blackdom at 1903 was an aberration of thirteen men, but the revival began with the help of three women. Mattie Moore, Pernecia Russell, and Ella Boyer were important to the development of Blackdom after 1908 because they provided the means to acquire land for the Blackdom Townsite. More than likely the women operated as neutral parties while men monopolized surrounding areas. Frank Boyer’s first act toward building Blackdom of 1911 was becoming assignee for Moore and Russell in 1908.

Previous historians sifted Blackdom’s history through the singular lens of refuge, which colored the appearance of the first revival period as the apex of the all-Black town’s arc of periodization: from the idea in 1903, to existence during the 1910s, to an ultimate demise around 1921 when Frank Boyer—Blackdom’s champion—left Chaves County. In 1911, the town’s people unofficially platted forty acres, creating New Mexico’s only all-Black townsite. Black people uniting at one physical location signified a major success, and engaging in town business independent of White people was a major achievement, even if it did not prove to be permanent.

White Aggression (Micro)

It is important to clarify the state of Chaves County’s racial climate that developed in part because of Blackdom’s inception in 1903. Rarely are scholars inspired to mention race relations in New Mexico, particularly when compared to the extreme nature of violence inflicted upon Black bodies in the South during the period. New Mexico newspapers reported the vicious acts of White people against Black people in neighboring states on a daily basis. Compared to violence against Black people elsewhere, Chaves County maintained a mild level racial aggression.

W.E. Utterback, a White person who travelled to Blackdom, projected the mild racial atmosphere in Chaves County at the turn of the twentieth century. In a two hundred fifty word article entitled, “Blackdom,” Utterback favored the racially neutral referencing of the interactions when he wrote, “A number of Negros homesteaded this land. They were a bunch of hard working people and gave no trouble in any way.” He continued with a reference to Juneteenth celebrations where Blackdom residents “invited the white folks out to a big feed. The women were excellent cooks. After the feed, the Negros challenged the white men to a baseball game.”^[11] On one hand, Utterback’s report suggests racial harmony. On the other hand, the celebration of Juneteenth memorialized the triumph of Black people over Southern Whites, and fittingly, the baseball game offered the opportunity for Black people to relive the glory of the triumph of Black people over White people. In the reverse, the game also offered a chance for Southern sympathizers to try symbolically to avenge the South.

The comparatively mild racial climate in Chaves County leaned toward civility, but race relations were far from utopian. In this frontier space, the intersection of Afro-Frontierism and White Supremacy maintained a symmetry, and such analysis requires the confutation of all romances of racial utopia that persists in the Blackdom narrative. The perception grew out a false comparison. Black people represented less than one percent of New Mexico’s population and the Pecos Valley Region, in which case White aggression can’t be measured in mutilated Black bodies because the territory had so few. Instead, the general racial climate was reflected on front pages of newspapers in the form of bold claims of White Supremacy and tremendous coverage of the “Black Menace.”

On October 1, 1903, a headline in the Santa Fe New Mexican read, “The Blackdom Townsite: An Exclusive Negro Settlement to be Located in Southeastern part of Chaves County.” Within forty-eight hours, W.R. Cummins penned and published the article, “A White Man’s Country,” in the Artesian Sun on October 3, 1903. Although Chaves County had less than a hundred Black people at the time, the thought of an increase inspired outrage. Cummins’ article captured the general sentiments of White people in the region, which grew more pronounced during the course of the first decade of Blackdom’s history. The announcement reported the promoters’ goal of settling ten thousand Black people in town.

The Cummins’ article brought into question the loyalty and patriotism of White people who encouraged Black people to move to the area. “This is a white man’s government,” Cummins’ declared, stating that “ever since Roswell has been on the map white people have paid the taxes and managed the town.” In a gesture of fairness, Cummins offered his audience a token rationalization separating the good Black people from the bad, “It is true that there have been one or two good old fashioned negroes here and they have had the respect and confidence of all the people.” Cummins warned White people in Roswell of the threat of “an overflow of negroes run out of the panhandle of Texas and Oklahoma and the people are wondering what to do to protect their families and homes from these worthless blacks.”

The lack of Black people in the region allowed for the illusion of racial harmony; however, the response to the Blackdom Townsite Company’s announcement lifted the veil uncovering one form of White hostility in the Pecos Valley Region. The goal of settling ten thousand Afro-Frontierists, even if unrealistic, threatened White power in a public way, which inspired the backlash. The goals of Blackdom’s developers, if realized, would create a town that would rival Roswell and Artesia. Chaves County had a population of 17,000 while Eddy had 12,000 residents. There were 233 Black people in Roswell and 56 in Artesia circa 1910. Although the Black populations were small at the announcement of the goal, in 1903, the nationwide Black population was in the midst of a mass migration out of the South. New Mexico’s lack of a rigid Jim Crow system could possibly interpreted as attracting Black settlement. During Blackdom’s revival, the townsite became the physical midpoint between towns of Roswell and Artesia. White antagonism rose as an equilibrium when the racialized status quo appeared threatened. Ten thousand Black people homesteading and thriving would be a direct affront to notions of White Supremacy.

The Revival (1909 - 1916)

Mattie Moore of Blackdom was a prime example of the all-inclusive investment in Blackdom representative of a consistency in Chaves County’s Black communities. Moore allowed Frank Boyer to be her assignee to acquire most of the forty acres of land on which the Blackdom Townsite would eventually be platted (after a protracted legal case asserting her rights to the land, which was settled in 1914). By the 1920s, Moore also owned a whole square mile of land bordering the Blackdom Townsite. However, the one mile was acquired under her alias of Mittie Moore (and later Mittie Moore Wilson) who lived on South Virginia Avenue in Roswell. She changed her name when she was picked up in 1914 for running a bawdyhouse.

Homesteading was a way for Black people to invest and possibly build capital. Frontier people with land, if they reached a modicum of success, could support a family and produce a surplus to sell at market. The concept of land as capital and a capital producer was such a prevalent notion that someone as economically stable as Mittie Moore Wilson—married in 1917—sought the opportunity to homestead on desert land. The project of proving up just one desert homestead of 320 acres required thousands of dollars—and Mittie had two. She used her robust business controlling the bawdy district in Roswell to fund the proving up of her homesteads. In addition, in spite of the devout Southern Black Christian perceptions of her profession and the blight it symbolized in Black intellectual circles, Blackdom’s people who were college educated at institutions like Morehouse College, at least tacitly accepted Mittie. Her homestead patent final proof had four witnesses from the Blackdom Townsite, who essentially vouched for her character on a federal document under the threat of perjury.

The importance of homesteading cannot be overstated as a major opportunity for Black people in Chaves County. Still, the process was so physically taxing and costly that in a nightmare scenario to Black Christians, some Blackdom residents survived by working for Mittie in Roswell because homesteading yielded so little.^{^[1]} One of the more infamous of Mittie’s bawdy women was Dixie Porter, a negress prostitute who worked for Mittie on South Virginia Street. Like her employer, Dixie had no problem violating the decency laws in Chaves County to make a profit. Her name appeared in the Roswell Daily Record due to a prostitution arrest, conviction, and probation. However, she made front page news in 1917 when she was arrested and convicted for abusing her husband. Dixie and her husband had the opportunity to build wealth homesteading on free land, but the opportunity to make money in the bawdy district was more enticing and lucrative than toiling on desert prairies.

The Revival: Afro-Frontierists, Familial Colonization, and the Homestead Class

During the first decade of the nineteenth century, the South was still more dangerous with less opportunity than New Mexico and Chaves County, which attracted Black people like the Eubank family from Edmonton, Kentucky to the West. Supporting the revival of Blackdom was a host of homesteading families. There was an increase in the population, community, and functionality in the Black community in Chaves County, leading up to the announcement of Blackdom’s revival in December 1911. Between the years of 1908 and 1916, the goal of transitioning the Blackdom idea to a reality was a coordinated effort of the Boyer, Collins, Eubank, Herron, Ragsdale, and Proffit families, among others who homesteaded during the period.

The Crutcher Eubank family was one of the first to arrive in the new wave of Afro-Frontierists to Chaves County. The family learned the difficult nature of life homesteading on the Southeastern New Mexico prairies. Although James Eubank was one of the first teachers in Blackdom, he never homesteaded like his father Crutcher Eubanks, who began the Eubank family homestead in 1906. During Blackdom’s lost years (1903-1911), Black Southern farmers endured the cruel reality of desert homesteading with a trial and error approach, which for families like the Eubank’s, nearly cost them total financial ruin. From 1906 to 1910, homesteaders like Crutcher Eubank faced extreme hardship as they attempted to prove-up desert homestead lands.

Black farmers from the South learned all new conditions, farming techniques, crop rotation, and water pressures, all of which they had to master in a fairly short period or face total ruin. Crutcher Eubank began his homestead in the New Mexico desert winter planting kaffir corn—a warm-weather plant that has a slow early growth and should not be planted in a cold ground. If planted too early, the stand of the kaffir-corn was poor and a late replanting was needed. However, if a good stand was secured, the growth of the young plants would grow slowly, weeds aggressively grew, and more cultivation was necessary. Without a wealth of knowledge or access to specific knowledge, Crutcher’s future was uncertain and more than likely lead to disaster. Crutcher as well as other Black farmers in the region were relived of a prolonged drought that ended in 1911. Drought conditions didn’t return until after 1916.

Crutcher was born in Kentucky, where he farmed until he migrated to Southeastern New Mexico while in his late forties. Married with eleven kids, he began his homestead patent process. His land consisted of sandy loam (mixture of silt, sand, and clay). He built a small home, with a porch, worth about two hundred fifty dollars, which was meager at the time.

Crutcher had a well cased up with a mechanical pump worth three hundred fifty dollars. He fenced his one hundred sixty acres with three and four-barb wire worth about one hundred twenty-five dollars. In November 1911, Crutcher was fifty years of age when he filed his Final Proof. Crutcher Eubank, inspired by the 1911 “Negro Thanksgiving,” completed his homestead proof.^[12] Eubank’s endurance was the product of his perseverance made possible by him working on neighboring farms, towns, and cities, during a thriving regional economic cycle. From the beginning, Crutcher was forced to leave his family on the unimproved homestead land to earn money to support them all during the homesteading process. He would leave for weeks at a time, working where he could. Meanwhile, in 1907, he broke ground on two acres of his land, which yielded very little that year. In the 1908 growing season, he planted kaffir corn on another two acres bringing the total farming acreage up to four. By 1909, he broke ground on another two acres, planting corn, beans, potatoes and other garden products over the six acres. In 1910, Crutcher didn’t break new ground to farm; he replanted on the acreage of previous years. After a grueling six-year period (three years was a normal process), he finally filed for the completion of his homestead patent Tuesday, November 28, 1911, two days before the inaugural Thanksgiving banquet.

The Proffit family—another of the more successful of the homesteading class—embraced the idea of Blackdom early. William Proffit, the patriarch of family, was fifty-one when he began his homestead patent process in 1908, followed by another one two years later. As an ordained minister, William was a major figure in Blackdom and helped build the spiritual life in the town. He led the migration of the Proffit family from Mississippi in 1907. Luberta Proffit followed all her family’s homesteading with one of her own in 1915, and David Proffit completed his homestead patent in 1918. The Proffit family’s final homesteads included Belle Proffit in 1919, and William Proffit again in1921. When Blackdom was in its revival post-1911, William Proffit was the pastor of the Blackdom Baptist Church. When he died in his home on South Michigan Street in Roswell in 1929, he was the pastor of the Colored Baptist Church in Roswell.

The above families were a few examples of the investments made in the Blackdom idea after 1906. The idea of Blackdom lingered as Southern Black farmers tried to learn to the irrigation system to grow crops on their land, which proved impossible for some of them. Nevertheless, with unusually good rainfall, Frank Boyer and others successfully planted and harvested Alfalfa, Kaffir Corn, small fruit trees, cotton, cantaloupe, onions, and sugar beets among other crops as well as raising small livestock.

The Revival: The Blackdom Townsite

The first public display of a functioning all-Black town in Chaves County, New Mexico called Blackdom came in late November 1911, when all of the town’s supporters, promoters, and developers gathered for the inaugural “Negro’s Thanksgiving.” The banquet to commemorate the opening of the new Blackdom Townsite began with great fanfare. In formal attire, Blackdom supporters feasted on vittles provided from surrounding homesteads and gardens. Intermingled throughout the festivities, the Dixie Chorus and instrumental music serenaded those in attendance. For a moment, Blackdom existed, and the idea behind building Blackdom—to reintroduce the Black population in Chaves County to the greater economy—finally gained traction when the Artesia Pecos Valley News announced the existence of the “Negro town of the Pecos Valley,” Blackdom.

Frank Boyer was at the helm as toastmaster. First on the agenda was the immigration plan to get new groups of Black families to the townsite. Boyer introduced recently certified homestead patent owner William Young to discuss the matter. William, thirty-four years old, completed his homestead in July 1911, making him one of the leaders of his generation. He proceeded to discuss the complete process and particulars of migrating to Chaves County through completing the homestead patent. Male heads of Blackdom families answered the call of the toastmaster to engage the crowd with their specific expertise—Daniel Keys (What we Produce), George Wilson (Possibilities in Livestock), Clinton Ragsdale (Pumping and windmills), Wesley Williams (Real Estate), and Monroe Collins (Homesteading). Blackdom’s citizenship and officials were composed entirely of the “colored people” in Chaves County, New Mexico.

The New and Improved Blackdom

In 1912, New Mexico was in a national spotlight because of its statehood and Blackdom residents took advantage of the increase in attention by publicizing “free land” and “No Jim Crow.” The image of New Mexico in Black communities across the United States—Blackdom in particular—was bolstered by Jack Johnson’s announcement a comeback to boxing. Blackdom residents promoted New Mexico as a place of refuge from Jim Crow and Jack Johnson’s saga provided evidence. Many state officials were against the fight, but “when Charles O’Malley [a local business man] offered Curley [Jack Johnson’s Promoter] $100,000 on behalf of Las Vegas, the decision was made.” New Mexico Governor William McDonald was clear that he was not against prize fights, but if he could he would not permit a contest “between a white man and a negro,” because it would be detrimental and “a disgrace to the entire state.”^[13]

By 1912, the vast majority of the country banned prizefighting and despised Johnson, which made it difficult for the promoters of his fights to secure a place for his next heavyweight bout. Allowing the fight to take place in the newly authenticated state with new and increased national political power, some people in the state as well as outside viewed the allowance of Johnson to fight as a display of backwardness. New Mexico had not outlawed prize fighting and even more important to the promotion of Blackdom was the increased attention on the contrast between New Mexico and the Jim Crow South.

Along with the increased momentum of the Blackdom project, the arrival of Jack Johnson to the newly formed state of New Mexico helped promote the Afro-Frontier town of Blackdom. Coming out of retirement, Johnson scheduled to fight in Las Vegas, New Mexico (180 miles North of Roswell) on July 4, 1912. The flamboyant heavyweight champion of the world, Jack Johnson, inspired New Mexico’s Black population of less than two thousand across the state. More importantly, all of the prosecutions and punishment Jack Johnson endured because he was Black, the image of him in New Mexico infused a comparison between the freedoms he had in New Mexico versus his ability to operate outside New Mexico.

In the aftermath of Johnson’s fight and plight, in December 1912, Jason Harold Coleman placed an advertisement in The Freeman (Indianapolis, Indiana) with the words, “WANTED 500 Negro families (farmers preferred) to settle on FREE Government Lands in Chaves County, New Mexico. Blackdom is a Negro colony. Fertile soil, ideal climate. No ‘Jim Crow’ Laws. For more information write Jason Harold Colman” The headline, “Wanted” was larger than the article. Along with advertisements in Black media outlets in Chicago, Coleman placed advertisements in Indiana similar to actions taken in 1903.^[14]

Anti-lynching was the focal point of Black activist media campaigns as the first decade of the Twentieth Century closed. In 1912, Blackdom was a national story in Black media outlets. “IN INTERESTING RACE NEWS,” the headline read in the Topeka Plaindealer, December 20, 1912. Towards the end of the article was “Colored people have established a town called Blackdom in New Mexico near the line. It is made up by people from Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, California, Texas and Virginia.” Also featured in the article a stories with headline such as, “At Mound Bayou, Miss, Negroes own and operate a $100,000 oil mill” touting the greatness of Black people independently wealthy Black people who settled in all Black towns in the South with Jim Crow. The article also featured the story of “Frank Brown, a young colored man of Baltimore, Md, has an invention designed for the elimination of the use of coal and to reduce the cost of labor. It is called a wave and gravity motor.”^[15]

1912

Consistently in the 1910s, Blackdom’s history intersected with territorial, state, federal, and global events from the controversial Jack Johnson fight in 1912 to World War I. However, Blackdom allowed a certain level of insulation for Black people from the terrors of the outside world, but most important was Blackdom’s role as an economic refuge. Without the singularly expressed deep devotion to protecting Black people from the prospects of imminent racial violence, Blackdom residents didn’t prioritize building Blackdom over capital accumulation. When major events occurred such as World War I, Blackdom’s progress waned as resident sought opportunity in surrounding economies. Moreover, this Afro-Frontier town was a conduit for Afro-Frontier ambitions, which meant that any instance perceived to be more profitable was supposed to take precedent over efforts to grow Blackdom.

Congressional legislation concerning homesteading assisted the growth of Blackdom. June 6, 1912, the U.S. Congress passed the Three-year Homestead Act and decreased the time needed to reside on a homestead claim from five to three years. Essentially, the duel residency that Blackdom supporters established became more lucrative because the investment matured twice as fast. In addition, the reduction in years made homesteading more accessible, and there was a growth in Blackdom affiliated homesteads, which multiplied in the wake of the announcement.

One important element in Boyer’s decision to revive Blackdom was the approaching transition of New Mexico transition from a U.S. Territory to statehood. On January 6, 1912, New Mexico officially became a state, and shortly after, Blackdom residents erected the first post office in the history of the town. Mail service began as an extension of Dexter and Roswell’s mail service. The designated Blackdom resident would meet a mail carrier from Dexter or Roswell at a specific location along the route. The mail was then distributed at local landmarks such as the local general store or the church once it was built. Within a month of New Mexico’s statehood, Black had a freestanding building dedicated to postal services.

Along with the newly designated Secretary of the Blackdom Townsite Company, Wesley T. Williams, Frank Boyer amended the 1903 Blackdom Townsite Company Articles of Incorporation of Blackdom in December 1911. Williams became the first Black man appointed to the position of United States Commissioner in New Mexico on December 27, 1911. On December 30, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported, “Blackdom Amends Charter: Colony of Negroes Found a Townsite in Chaves County.” According to the article, “The Blackdom Townsite Company of Blackdom, Chaves county, today filed amendments to their charter with Nathan Jaffa, secretary of the territory. The amendments concern a change in the number of directors allowed the company, Blackdom is a colony of negroes.” The 1911 amendment sought a reduction of the thirteen board members and officers to three—Wesley William, Frank and Ella Boyer.

In 1911, there was a surge of Black people joining the homestead class, and the phenomenon lasted two decades. Longtime supporters of Blackdom such as Charley Thompson, who homesteaded in the southeast quarter of section thirty-five in township thirteen range twenty-four east of the New Mexico Meridian, New Mexico, containing one hundred sixty acres changed his economic and social trajectory. Charley’s wife Emma moved to the homestead after 1911 and helped complete the process January 23, 1914. Thompson had the wherewithal to homestead early in Blackdom’s history, but the various motivating factors mentioned about stimulated action. After he signed the articles of incorporation in 1903, it took him almost a decade to invest fully in the Blackdom experiment. Thompson’s homestead was a part of the new era marking a new era of great investment. He worked as a janitor in Roswell during the lost years (1903-1911) and decided to reestablish himself in the regional economy as part of the Homestead class of Afro-Frontierists in Chaves County. Although Blackdom of 1911 was in a new era and filled with promise, the problems of a lackluster economic growth loomed large. Most Black people weren’t content with being of the servant class forever and invested in the Black institution—Blackdom Townsite Company—with the most potential to change the economic trajectory of the community.

Increased Visibility

Blackdom’s new found public status caught the attention of leaders in Black communities in Oklahoma. Throughout the early Twentieth Century, the state of the Black communities in Oklahoma was a mixture of prosperity and devastation concerning economics and personal freedom. The state boasted almost two dozen all-Black towns over the course of its history, which led the nation. Simultaneously, Black prosperity brought a hyper-visibility of Black people, which often brought the wrath of racist White people in Oklahoma who proceeded to brutally terrorize various Black communities. The proximity of Oklahoma to New Mexico and the new public persona of Blackdom, as well as the state of New Mexico as a comparative safe haven for Black people, intersected with the public anti-lynching campaign of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

In November, 1910, the NAACP began publishing its magazine The Crisis, which was edited by W.E.B Du Bois. In a 1911 editorial, Du Bois began a push for a federal law against lynching, and endorsed Woodrow Wilson over Taft in the 1912 presidential race, because Wilson appeared more willing to champion Black issues. At the same time, the manager of the Afro-Frontier town of Blackdom, Jason Coleman, began running advertisements in The Crisis. Coleman understood that his claim of “No Jim Crow” contrasted with the visuals of the magazine’s anti-lynching campaign. In the absence of the Jim Crow Laws in New Mexico compared to Oklahoma, it appeared to be a racial promised land and was advertised as such. The new advertising campaign was an effort to grow the functioning, but fledgling colony of Black New Mexicans.

Beginning a violent era in Oklahoma history, on April 19, 1909, a mob of about fifty White men swarmed a jail in Ada, Oklahoma and took J. B. Miller, Jesse West, Joe Allen and B. B. Burwell, held for the assassination of Gus Bobbitt. In May 1911, the lynching of Oscar and Laura Nelson in Oklahoma was reported. The NAACP used it to attempt to dispel the Black rapist myth that was often perpetuated in cases of lynching. There were discussions in the NAACP on how best to organize an anti-lynching campaign around the lynching of Laura Nelson, who was raped by White men prior to being hanged.^{^[3]} NAACP officials were in constant debates about how better to continue the anti-lynching campaign, and the consensus idea was to find “sympathetic” victims like Laura Nelson. Race relations in Oklahoma at the start of the twentieth century progressively got worse, as violence against Black people steadily increased. In 1914, the NAACP did a thorough investigation of the Marie Scott lynching on March 31, 1914. In the aftermath, Oklahoma officials concluded that there was a lot of speculation about salacious details about Scott’s life that would not “result in obtaining public sympathy for the victim.” She was a seventeen-year old Black girl who was raped by two drunken White men who “skulked into the black residential section of Wagoner, Oklahoma, looking for female sexual prey.” Scott’s brother heard her cry, came to her rescue, and killed Lemuel Pease—one of the attackers. Both the sister and brother fled, but the sister was captured put into jail, and a mob overran the jail and humg her. Blackdom became connected to the story when Coleman, Blackdom manager, helped with the escape of Marie’s brother and supplied information to Pullman porters, who helped smuggle the brother into Mexico. Scott’s brother reportedly told the porters that he murdered Pease when he found the men trying to rape Marie.^{^[4]}

Even though the racialization process for Black people was increasingly hostile, New Mexico was still a less threatening place than other racialized spaces for migration. Black men like George Malone moved to New Mexico and made his way to Blackdom after the 1911-1913 Blackdom advertising campaign. Malone was a lawyer from the South. Malone graduated from the Central Law School of Walden University, a Black institution in Nashville, Tennessee. After practicing in Mississippi, he decided look for broader horizons and moved to Blackdom in 1914. He was one of the teachers in the town. Malone applied to the New Mexico Supreme Court for a permanent license to practice law.^{^[5]} Roswell lawyer Harold Hurd vouched for Malone’s integrity and informed the clerk of the court “that most of the colored population called upon him for assistance.”^{^[6]} In early August 1916, the Santa Fe New Mexican announced that Malone was admitted to the state bar, and he “is a negro, and at present the only negro lawyer in New Mexico.”^{^[7]} Malone became the first Black man to argue in front of the New Mexico Supreme Court in August 1916. Shortly after Malone had his Supreme Court appearance, he moved to Albuquerque to practice law and died within the year

The revival of Blackdom in Chaves County New Mexico began as Afro-Frontierists in the area homesteaded or committed to homesteading in critical mass at the end of the first decade of the town’s history. By the start of New Mexico’s statehood in 1912, over half the Black population in Chaves County were directly or indirectly a part of Blackdom’s resurgence through homesteading. The ranks of homesteaders swelled, but only relative to the less than seventy individual homesteaders. Few of the Black residents were single, which meant at least seventy additional people including spouses and children. Some families had close to ten children while other household maintained extending family time in one home. All Black people in Chaves County had at least a minor connection to one another and Blackdom was an enterprise that helped maintain tacit connections. Overwhelmingly, homesteading was a family affair, which created a homesteading class of Black families in the Pecos Valley Region.

Homesteading had the potential for great financial returns for entrepreneurs, and in some cases, homesteading allowed the older generation to benefit from the labor of the youth who were more often their children or close relatives. Older Black people, most of whom experienced experienced slavery or its immediate aftermath, up close were then able to live out the final year of their lives watching Black people on Black owned land build, populate, and run a Black owned town. Blackdom’s original purpose, crafted in 1903, reached a climax during the first revival (1911-1916) by the town’s fulfillment of its potential for creating generational opportunities.

During the revival, between 1912 and 1915, the Blackdom Townsite achieved what some consider success. Black people connected to the Blackdom project through homesteading or engaging in town business on behalf of the townsite accrued individual successes that led to steady progress. All of the progress blossomed from the work of at least a dozen families and individuals. The explicit goals detailed in the townsite’s articles of incorporation of a single townsite, surrounded by a multitude of homesteading Black families sending their children to school and a church life, all came together during the three-year period.

The deliberate gamble to revive Blackdom paid off for Afro-Frontierists, at least in the short run. Blackdom was a thriving community from 1912 to 1916 when epic drought devastated the homesteading class of Blackdom’s community. Although many scholars understood the drought of 1916-17 as the beginning of Blackdom’s demise, in part because of the inactivity in the town post-1916 as evidence of the Afro-Frontier town in full decline, the activity during that period was misunderstood. Building Blackdom was a business decision, instead of decision to seek refuge. When greater opportunities existed outside of Blackdom, residents of the town prioritized opportunity above all else. While drought destroyed Black wealth in the county at different points in the town’s history, Roswell for example, welcomed Black people as servants. In this scenario, this group of Afro-Frontierists established a duel existence living, working, and communing in White dominated societies while also maintaining a virtual existence in Blackdom that sometimes materialized in economic and community progress.

In addition, some Blackdom affiliated people complied with U.S. conscription and joined the Army during World War I after 1916. On the one hand, this took people away from Blackdom but allowed the people of Blackdom to flourish. However permanent or temporary, Blackdom’s population migrated according to opportunity and often away from their rainless farms making a greater presence in surrounding municipalities creating another layer of a physical hyper-visibility—duel residency, working, communing, and living outside of Blackdom—, but returning to town on regular occasions. The duel residency of Blackdom’s townspeople, a pattern established early in its history, was able to preserve the investment vehicle—Blackdom—until the next boom cycle in the townsite, which came in the post-World War I era with the oil bonanza in the region.

In order to understand fully Blackdom’s success before during and after the revival period, it is important to note, for Afro-Frontierists, the increased racial tension in the county that grew with the heightened migration of a White Southern population. Even though there were no Jim Crow laws to extinguish avenues of opportunity, the increased racial tension did, however, inspire a stronger solidarity among the small Black population in the area as well as the Black homesteading class. Camaraderie held together the diverse Black migrant population.

The Blackdom Townsite Company threatened to upset the system with too large an influx of Afro-Frontierists. Texas and Oklahoma were treacherous places and notoriously inhospitable to Black people, places where venomous rhetoric was only the beginning of racial tension. In reality, the Black population’s increase from less than one hundred in 1900 to a little over two hundred in1910 never raised too much suspicion among White people until the public announcement of the revival of Blackdom in 1911.

Blackdom’s levels of existence/non-existence or thriving/struggling are facile criterion compared to the dynamism of the Black Colonization Venture. Blackdom’s “success” or “failure” requires a redefining of success and failure. As a racial refuge, in the Exoduster tradition, Blackdom was a failure with limited success because of limited period of increased activity. As an Afro-Frontier town, Blackdom had successes because Blackdom achieved the original intent, which was as an economic refuge with the durability to withstand feast or famine.

Boyer Migration a Paradox

After World War I ended, the Boyer family as well as other prominent families proceeded to acquired land even though prominent members decided to migrate elsewhere. John Boyer, Frank Boyer’s older brother and the first in the Boyer family to homestead, added to his homestead land near the Blackdom Townsite receiving his second patent in 1921. At the same time, John maintained his residence in Roswell. Terraceia and Francis L. Boyer (Frank’s son) received their homestead patents in the first half of 1921. Members of the Boyer family secured themselves in Chaves County homesteading.

Concurrently, Frank Boyer arranged to relocate to Doña Ana County, a place he knew well because of his time spent as a Buffalo Soldier in the region, and also, because of his first job as a buggy driver for Judge Freeman. Unlike popular folklore, few abandoned the Blackdom Townsite including Boyer. In fact, the Boyer family as well as other Blackdom families, prepared to continue the Afro-frontier mission of Blackdom. When Frank Boyer moved some of his family to Vado, he left with the Blackdom vision complete, the townsite intact, and his family to carry on the legacy as he expanded the reach of the family. By 1921, Frank Boyer had established some of his family as well as a few Blackdom residents in Doña Ana County, New Mexico while others migrated to Bernalillo, County (“Albuquerque, County”). The diaspora of prominent Blackdom residents and families to other counties in New Mexico signified a new period in the Blackdom odyssey—one that extended the network of Black entrepreneurs, intellectuals, and connections. At no time in Blackdom’s history was there an opportunity for great economic growth and strength than after 1919 and the development of the Blackdom Oil Company made it possible.

Many Blackdom residents responded to the economic windfall by moving away after 1920. Crutcher Eubank received his homestead patent in 1912 just as Blackdom became a viable Black Colonization Venture after a six-year process. Some of the Eubank family moved to Albuquerque in 1920 after the contract between the Blackdom Oil Company and National Exploration Company. Part of the consequence of Afro-Frontierism was that opportunism supersedes any notion of building a town.^{^[1]}

Essentially, Blackdom served its purpose, not as a refuge, but an investment vehicle that the residents/investors withdrew their profits after a maturation period of almost twenty years for some of them. Mistakenly, in June 1922, the Artesia Advocate reported, “An experiment in the colonization of the Negro, which was attempted several years ago at the little village of Blackdom, has proven to be a failure….” Failure had not occurred by 1922, but it was in transition because of economic stability. ^{^[2]}

Blackdom Oil Announcements

By 1919, depending on how one defined resident, Blackdom’s population range was 70 residents to 150 total population that associated themselves with Blackdom. When one defines a resident narrowly as a landowner, the number of residents shrinks. Pooling acreages to lease for oil speculation companies allowed homesteading class of Blackdom residents to focus the majority of their lives outside of Blackdom, particularly in the bustling city of Roswell, which was “modernizing” with electricity, paved roads, phone service, and popular consumer goods. At a time when the city of Roswell had a major oil market filled with investors, Blackdom residents were some of the best.

In March 1920, Blackdom Oil Company entered a land leasing contract with the National Exploration Company for 4200 acres of land. The members of the Blackdom Oil Company received a “bonus of $1.25 an acre.” To drill in Blackdom, oilmen would have to buy a contract and once the money deposited in the bank operations had a ninety day window to begin. The Blackdom Oil Company offered land for $15 an acres. The Blackdom Oil Company deal was possibly worth close to $65,000 not including $5000 bonus. Who were the leaders, and how the money was distributed has yet to be discovered. Provided that money was distributed according to number of acres, these Afro-Frontierists received money according to how much land they contributed to the pool. Most individuals owned one hundred-sixty acres or less and no one owned more than six hundred-forty acres.^{^[1]}

The Blackdom Oil Company (1919- ?)

One of the reasons for Blackdom’s acceptance of Mittie Moore Wilson was related to the discovery of oil in Chaves County circa 1919. The discovery of oil on private property made an owner tremendously wealthy. Conservatively, an accepted number of 16,000 acres is a good start in understand size of Black colonization in the area. These homesteads, more often than not were worthless, sandy, and drought stricken tracts of land with limited access to water in 1918. But in 1919, the same land was a ticket to total dominance of the Chaves County economy. In order to get money from the discovery of oil in Chaves County, Blackdom land owners pooled acreages together, created the Blackdom Oil Company, and leased the tracts of land to major developers from New York and California.^{^[1]} The ultimate goal was for the discovery of oil on the properties, which would produce ongoing royalties for the owners. The company’s large span of land not only increased the probability of finding oil, but also attracted major investors with greater pools of money.

The formation of the Blackdom Oil Company in 1920 raises significant questions as to why it is not a part of the current Blackdom narrative. The story of this oil company indicates a more significant Blackdom history at a time when Frank Boyer was no longer a major fixture in the town. The standard hero’s journey narrative puts Boyer in Vado, New Mexico by 1921, and thus ends the Blackdom story. If Blackdom was in full decline by 1921, the existence of Blackdom Oil Company supports a different scenario. It was still being reported as viable in the Roswell newspaper as late as the early 1930s because of the drilling that continued there until the devastation of the Great Depression ended most investments in oil exploration.

Racial Competition

The hyper-visibility of the minute Black population, because of Blackdom Oil Company, led to jealousy and angst in some White circles of society, which helped to foster the emergence of the KKK in Roswell during the 1920s. Throughout the United States, racial animosity towards Black people increased in the 1920s.^{^[1]} Ensuring racial conflict, during the early 1920s was the rebirth of the KKK nationwide. New Mexico was one of the least hospitable places for the KKK in the Southwest. Yet, after 1919, Roswell became fertile ground for the KKK.

During the wartime build-up, through the post-war demobilization after World War I, Black people increasingly settled in cites. The presence of hundreds or thousands of Black people created direct competition with White people, and often led to violence. The competition exhausted all means of civility leading to a crescendo of violence in 1919. Scholars characterized the carnage of over twenty race riots across the United States as the “Red Summer” capturing the essence of a volatile time United States.[2] White extremism emerged in different ways in the post-War period. On September 1, 1919, White animus resulted in the lynching of Clinton Briggs. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War I, he returned to Star City, Arkansas, and soon after, White people hanged him from a tree with a car chain because they could not find a rope quick enough.[3] Although the number of riots and violence subsided by 1920, racial hostilities didn’t. By 1921, White racial animosity towards Black people evolved into more strategic plans of attack to destroy the gains Black people made during the World War I era.

Specifically, in places where Black communities were more successful than neighboring White communities, White terrorism shifted to targeting Black financial centers. Such was the case in the Greenwood district in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The discovery of mid-continental oil reserves in the region including the Pecos Valley, led to a post-World War boom in those areas. Considered Black Wall Street, Greenwood was home to Black businesspeople and professionals such as doctors and lawyers who maintained an economy better than their White neighbors. Jim Crow and segregation ensured the recycling of capital in Black communities across the United States, which continued to propel growing an exclusive Black economy. By the middle of 1921, Black Wall Street was a burned-out ruin as an outcome of targeted racialized violence.

The discovery of mid-continental oil reserves in the Pecos Valley Region spurred the economic interest in Blackdom lands during the post-war period as well. The Blackdom Townsite came about because of self-segregation to grow Black wealth. The fluidity with which Blackdom residents and supporters shifted perspectives as they journeyed between the two societies helped to sustain Blackdom as a community. Although activities in the Blackdom Townsite decreased during the wartime, the Blackdom project continued development. The Oil boom solidified Blackdom’s relevance and with the announcement of the Blackdom Oil Company, White envy of Black people increased racial tensions in Chaves County, which manifested into Roswell, New Mexico’s Pioneer Klan No.15—a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.[4]

The KKK has an epic history in the United States and slightly more dubious existence in the Borderlands compared to the South. The race riots of 1919 marked the beginning of a new era in racialized spaces for Black people as they languished in White terrorism began to face the organized repression of the institution of the KKK. In the end, thriving Black communities were targets of White aggression, i.e., Millen, Georgia 1919, and Tulsa Oklahoma in 1921. Not until Black people moved to a position of economic challengers did New Mexico become a place where the KKK expanded, late into the 1920s. Albuquerque, Las Vegas, and Rowell were cities where KKK organizers focused. In 1924, the newly formed Pioneer Klan No. 15, announced their official inception with a burning cross on the South side of Roswell.

There was no great presence of the KKK in New Mexico, nor did they produce the same racial animosity indicative of time. Unlike in other states, the KKK was not welcomed by a vast majority in power elites as well as nor the public; yet, in the cities they prevailed. One of the many factor for this was the presence of the Black population in cities.

On September 13 of 1923 the Roswell Daily Record reported that “Albuquerque Klan Meets.” In the article offers confirmation of the existence of the KKK in New Mexico, specifically Roswell. Moreover, the Roswell chapter that developed in 1924 “had been perfected in the city of Albuquerque.”^{^[5]} The Farmington Times Hustler reported on September 7, 1923, “Las Vegas [New Mexico] Hit By Flood Of Ku Klux Klan Circulars.”^{^[6]} The vast majority of the infinitesimal Black population was concentrated in these three cities as well as Deming and Las Cruces, in part, because of the significant amount of Black soldiers stationed in those areas. All of these cites faced the threat of the KKK and even though they maintained an enemies list that went beyond the Black population, Black people were some of the most vulnerable to their terror campaigns.

Conclusion: Blackdom and the Black Colonization Continuum

Blackdom’s history was a part of a century long continuum of Black migration and colonization. Although Black migration included diverse communities of color who were spread across great distances, they were able to develop various ways to collaborate, plan, and execute complimentary migration schemes designed to deliberately colonize frontier spaces on four continents. Black ambition has been too often lost in the discussions of Black History, sacrificed for the sake of narrating the ambitions of others. Slavery, White aggression, and the tremendous suffering under the various incarnations of White supremacy, had a tremendous amount of influence on the trajectory of Black History. However, through the lens of ambition, particularly in this study, Afro-Frontierism, Blackdom’s history unfolds as an extension of historical events rather than being footnote to larger events in the region and the United States.

This conclusion synthesizes the Black Colonization Continuum in an effort to reopen discussions involving Black migration and colonization during the Nineteenth Century. Afro-frontier represent one method to begin a discussion with a formula of placing Blackdom within a continuum context. The study does so with the implication of importance for developing the history of the Afro-Frontier towns, and furthermore to infer the need to revisit other Black enclaves previously understood as insignificant.

Theoretical and Philosophical Background

Historians of Black History too heavily rely on the periodizations most associated with U.S. History, e.g., antebellum, bellum, and postbellum. In so doing, Black History appears inextricably tied to the events in U.S. History without nuance. There is an alternate periodization focused on the ambitions of Black people and their strivings, first. For that reason it is important to address a Black migration timeline to capture the depth and breadth worthy of discuss claiming the existence of a Black movement. The Black Colonization Continuum was identifiable within the Black migrating communities, some of which are identified in this study.

The Identifiable Beginning of a Continuum

The cycle of migration began with the Black community’s consciousness with the development of Black Liberation Theology in some form. The concept’s developments manifested into activism that projected a philosophy of Ethiopianism and subsequent activism based on institution building. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania’s Black intellectual communities of the late 1700s were at the epicenter for this kind of activity and social exchange. Ministers, military men, and freemasons spawned from the different communities, migrated, and colonized under various circumstances, but under the same principles. This group of ministers, military men, and masons collaborated on projects and shared information evident in there consistency. Also, Black presses and information outlets operated as collaboration tools, across vast distances, and between the various communities a source chronicling the evolution of the century long continuum.

Black Liberation Theology and Ethiopianism helped to mobilize Black people for migration, and was heavily influenced by world events. In short, Black migration and colonization was a conduit for realizing Liberationists ambitions. Migration and colonization represented a dialogue from the perspective of Black people, statements of which offered a rebuttal to notions Black inferiority. The continuum projects the uniquely Black striving separate from other and all their own. They offered themselves as competitors to a well-entrenched undergirding notions of Black inferiority. In response to the many forces of oppression, Black people advanced competing ideas and actions based on liberation, repatriation, and colonization.

Blackdom Redifined Success

The pliability of Blackdom’s aptitude to continue existing in spite of organizational chaos, drought, and a series of adverse circumstances, reflected in periods of total inactivity. One needs to expand current notions of what defined a successful all-Black town in order to understand better the urbanity of the town’s maturation and materialization, relative to its miniscule population and limited period of functionally. This discussion begins with the assumption that Afro-Frontierists’ ambitions fed the zeal of Black people to build the town repeatedly after times of significant regression. Moreover, during Blackdom’s first revival period (1909-1916), the town reached total functionality, operating on two levels: as a reservoir of Afro-Frontierists’ ambitions and a physical location.

Previous Entry

Henry Boyer, a Freedman from Pullam, Georgia, was a wagoner with the army units of Stephen W. Kearny during the Mexican-American War in 1846. Henry's son, Frank Boyer, was raised hearing stories from his father about New Mexico before being educated at Morehouse College and Fisk University. While at school, he learned about the legal requirements for homesteading. Frank started teaching in Georgia and soon married Ella Louise Boyer (née McGruder), herself a teacher graduated from the Haines Institute. Frank began encouraging African-Americans to report and challenge abuses in the Jim Crow-era South. When his life was threatened by the Ku Klux Klan, Frank's father encouraged him to move to the West for his safety. In 1896, Frank traveled to New Mexico with two students, Daniel Keyes (who married Ella's sister Willie Frances) and one with the last name of Ragsdale, on foot picking up day labor work along the way.^[16] Ella and their four children followed in 1901. Frank's idea was to found a self-sustaining community which would be free from the hindrances that existed in the South.

The community of Blackdom was started in 1901 centered largely around Frank and Ella Boyer's house. Frank advertised in a number of newspapers for African-American homesteaders to join the community and by 1908, the community had 25 families with about 300 people and a number of businesses (including a blacksmith shop, a hotel, a weekly newspaper, and a Baptist church) on 15,000 acres (61 km²) of land. W.T. Malone, the first African American to pass the New Mexico Bar exam, was one of the early settlers from Mississippi.^[16] The community was the first solely African-American community in the New Mexico Territory.^[17]

1916 saw worms infest much of the crops, alkali buildup in the soil, and the sudden depletion of the natural wells of the Artesia aquifer that had provided most of the water for the farms. Settlers began leaving the area, moving to Roswell, Dexter, and Las Cruces. In 1921, the house of the Boyer's was foreclosed upon and the family relocated to Vado.^[16]

Blackdom was officially incorporated in 1921. Blackdom was to be 40 acres and 166 lots in the original plan. However, by the time it was recognized as a town, most of the population had relocated because of the water problems.^[17] There are no structures remaining in Blackdom, with the exception for the barely visible concrete foundation of the school-house. However, The Blackdom Baptist Church building was sold in the 1920s and moved to the town of Cottonwood in Eddy County, where it is now a private home.^[18]

Juneteenth celebrations in the community were well known as many white ranchers in the area were invited to the community for a large festival and baseball game.^[17]

Present day

October 26, 2002, was proclaimed Blackdom Day by the governor of New Mexico, and a historical marker was erected at a rest stop on Highway 285, between Roswell and Artesia. Former Blackdom residents and descendants of settlers were on hand for the dedication ceremony.^[19] Local and state community leaders are working to establish a memorial site in or near Roswell to mark the community of Blackdom. Archeological examinations of the homestead have been directed by the New Mexico State Highway and Transportation Authority.^[20]

References

↑ Cornelius C. Smith, Fort Huachuca: The Story of a Frontier Post (Washington, D.C.?: Dept. of the Army, 1981), 392.
↑ George Washington Williams, History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880 Negroes As Slaves, As Soldiers and As Citizens; Together with a Preliminary Consideration of the Unity of the Human Family, an Historical Sketch of Africa, and an Account of the Negro Governments of Sierra Leone and Liberia (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1883), 202.
↑ Nina Mjagkij, Organizing Black America: An Encyclopedia of African American Associations (New York: Garland, 2001), 204.
↑ Frederick L. Downing, To See the Promised Land The Faith Pilgrimage of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1986), 90- 91.
↑ Michael Searles, “Addison Jones: ‘The Noted Negro Cowboy that Ever Topped Off a Horse’,” In Sara Massey, Black Cowboys of Texas (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 2000), 203.
↑ U. S. Bureau of the Census 1900, Sheet No. 28.
↑ Sterling Gazette, September 11, 1903.
↑ California, The Pacific Reporter (St. Paul: West Pub. Co, 1907), 731.
↑ Assignments in real estate law is the transfer of property rights held by one party, the assignors (in this case Moore and Russell), to another party (in this case Frank Boyer).
↑ Las Cruces Sun News, March 30, 1947.
↑ Marta Weigle, Frances Levine, and Louise Stiver, Telling New Mexico: A New History (Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 2009), 227-230.
↑ Crutcher Eubank, Homestead Entry Final Proof –Testimony of Claimant (U.S. Land Office, Roswell, NM: November 28, 1911), No. 011293.
↑ Randy Roberts, Papa Jack: Jack Johnson and the Era of White Hopes (New York: Free Press, 1983), 131.
↑ Freeman, December 12, 1912.
↑ Topeka Plaindealer, December 20, 1912.
1 2 3 "The Town of Blackdom". City of Albuquerque. Retrieved 9/10/2012. Check date values in: |access-date= (help)
1 2 3 "Blackdom". KNME TV. Retrieved 9/10/2012. Check date values in: |access-date= (help)
↑ "Blackdom, New Mexico Baptist Church". New Mexico Wanderings. Retrieved 9/10/2012. Check date values in: |access-date= (help)
↑ Rodriguez, Helena (January 17, 2010). "Memorial to be built for Little-Known Black Community". Clovis News Journal.
↑ Weisman, Regee N. "Glimpses of Late Frontier Life in New Mexico's Southern Pecos Valley" (PDF). Museum of New Mexico. Retrieved 9/10/2012. Check date values in: |access-date= (help)

Municipalities and communities of Chaves County, New Mexico, United States

County seat: Roswell

City	Roswell

Towns	Dexter Hagerman Lake Arthur

CDP	Midway

Unincorporated community	Mountain View

Ghost town	Blackdom

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Thursday, February 11, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.