Historic Black Towns
After the American Civil War, freed slaves established their own towns across the South and West. Liberty, Oklahoma was considered one of the revolutionary all-black towns in the United States in 1900, when William Nelson WARWICK lived there.
In the late 1800s, Creek Indian and African American Abigail Burnett McCormick began posting advertisements, inviting African Americans to live on her 160-acre plot in Boley, Oklahoma. By 1910, what was once a humble farming community had transformed into a vibrant town of 4,000 African Americans supporting countless businesses, banks, a newspaper, school, and a college.
The state of Oklahoma alone was host to 50 all-black towns by 1920. In the face of continued violence and discrimination after the abolition of slavery in 1865, African Americans banded together to found all-black towns across the American South and West. From Maine to Florida, Alabama to California, the towns ranged in size from a few hundred to thousands.
Like McCormick, individuals often invited others to live on their land, offering an alternative to the segregated South—protection, security, and equality. But with the economic downturn of the 1920s and the Great Depression of the ’30s, many of these all-black towns collapsed and today only a handful remain.
Professional organizations like the National Negro Business League were made possible by the emergence of all-black towns, which created markets to support African American entrepreneurs.
For the first time, large numbers of African American children received an education. Even so, with virtually no resources to fund education, about 80 percent of African Americans remained illiterate in 1880. 1901, Sykes Chapel, Mississippi.
Of the 200,000 African Americans veterans of the American Civil War, all were systematically stripped of the rights they’d gained through emancipation, excluded from voting, holding office, and owning land. About 1863, Maryland. Prominent African American leader, Booker T. Washington, was a proud supporter of all-black towns, one was even named in his honor: Bookertee, Oklahoma, about 1915.
In Florida, cities like Eatonville produced great writers of their time including Zora Neale Hurston, one of the voices of the Harlem Renaissance, about 1940. In Texas, African American landownership jumped from less than 2 percent in 1870 to more than 30 percent by 1900. For the first time, African Americans owned their labor. Small farmers grew crops for personal consumption and for local markets, 1900.
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