April 15, 1920 “Will Drill at Blackdom”

“This is a chronicle of the life of a black woman-child in America.”

Elaine Brown, A Taste of Power

Mittie Moore Wilson was an infamous madam who ran her empire from 201 S. Virginia Ave in Roswell, New Mexico. Mittie used her influence, money, and land to buy herself Blackdomite status. Mittie’s original entrance into Blackdom’s business may have begun in 1909 with the 40-acre land acquisition for the Townsite. Nothing about the land acquisition was clear. By 1915, in the middle of a New Mexico Supreme Court case, Mittie fully invested in #TheAfrōFrontier® when she began her first of two 320 acre land patents. Nevertheless, as a woman of ill repute, #MittieMoore was in the margins of Blackdomite society.

Mittie was an independent woman but needed 4 Blackdomites to sign affidavits testifying to her integrity in the completion of her homestead claim. Lucky for her, in the summer of 1919, Blackdomites were in talks to pool their land to create and incorporate the Blackdom Oil Company. Before the official launch, Joe Blue, Clinton Ragsdale, Henry Smith, and #ErastusHerron agreed and signed off on Mittie’s homestead patent. Coincidentally, within a year, Blackdomites sold the church, reassembled the townsite’s business operation to Roswell, and Frank Boyer left Chaves County.

Roswell Daily Record: Thursday, April 15, 1920 [Pg2]

Mittie’s money and land proved her worthy by enhancing the size of Blackdom Oil’s land holdings. The dirty business of oil extraction often left the environment unfarmable. Oil exploration began in 1920, and Blackdom’s existence as a functioning town went virtual once more. The town physically existed on occasions. For example, Blackdomites celebrated Juneteenth with a grand feast and invited neighbors from nearby towns to play baseball. The rest of the time, Blackdom was quiet, except for wildcatters. The homestead-class remained and more so interacted with Rosewell.

Mittie’s participation in Blackdom was a sketchy development for the Roswell Daily Record and they memorialized the moment. During this time, speculating on oil exploration and extraction was risky, lucre, full of shady characters, and associating Blackdom Oil Company with a gun-toting bootlegging negress could discredit the whole operation, in infancy. 

For 31 days, the Roswell Daily Record unprecedentedly reprinted Mittie’s Notice for Publication. Homestead land patents were reported as a “Notice for Publication,” and the Department of the Interior used to document land ownership. The U.S. Land Office at Roswell, New Mexico reported and the Roswell Daily Record reprinted the notice every day through September to October of 1919.

On New Year’s Eve of 1919, the Roswell Daily Record reported that Blackdomites “Will Pool Acreage.”  They made arrangements to pool about 10,000 acres. The land was put in an account at a Roswell bank and kept there until a drilling company came to lease land plots to begin exploration. Word on the street, The National Exploration Co. out of New York, months earlier, had secured land in Orchard Park between Blackdom and Roswell.  

Mittie led a contentious life in Chaves County. Must have felt good to open the daily newspaper on April 15, 1920, and read, “Will Drill at Blackdom.”

by Dr. Timothy E. Nelson ©

Black Panther Party Platform:

10. We Want Land, Bread, Housing, Education, Clothing, Justice, And Peace.

October 1966

Friday, April 28, 1920 “Will Drill at Blackdom”

April of 1920, Blackdom was in a time of celebration and abundance. Paradoxically, in the summer of 1919, #TheAfrōFrontier®️ entered boom times. Mysteriously, Mattie Moore and Pernecia Russell, 2 women responsible for the 40-acre townsite land vanished from records. Mattie and Pernecia allowed Frank Boyer as an assignee over the land. In 1914, after a protracted legal battle, Frank secured a homestead patent for Blackdom’s 40 acres, adjacent, Ella Boyer began her first homestead.

Mattie Moore, Pernecia Russell, and Ella Boyer took advantage of the new Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909.  Aside from enlarging the allotment from 160 acres to 320 acres, the equivalent to half a square mile, the new law allowed military benefits and assignee privileges. Mattie and Pernecia evoked spousal military benefits and assigned their land to Frank in order to build Blackdom.

In 1909, 42-year-old Mattie Moore, from Donley County, Texas made her homestead claim as sole heir of Dickson Garner under the Soldier’s Additional Homestead Right portion of the new homestead laws. As the assignee, Frank legally applied for the homestead allotment using Mattie's privilege under the Dickson Garner name. However, the heirs of Garner had already claimed the rights to a homestead years earlier. Mattie’s first rejection led to the initial investigation and ultimately the 2nd rejection. In 1909, Blackdom was a virtual #AfrōFrontier®️ town with no land attached. The local as well as federal land offices rejected Moore and Russell’s claims to additional lands. 

As the assignee of Pernecia, Frank faced rejection as well. The Roswell General Land Office found that the widow of John B. Russell had already made her claims to an allotment of 45.01 acres years earlier under the assignee Francis F. Bamforth in Wyoming. Simultaneously, an investigation showed that Pernecia Russell had sold the land to J.T. Pendleton. Essentially, the ruling was that Russell exhausted her right to homestead land prior to 1909. 

Ella Boyer was required to show significant improvements, specifically proper irrigation for her land entry. On November 22, 1910, Ella filed one of the annual reports required and it showed her investment cost of over $1237. However, there was no sufficient irrigation to maintain her claim in the satisfaction of General Land Office requirements. Ella’s homestead entry was rejected as well.

After the initial round of rejections, Frank Boyer appealed as assignee to get Mattie’s 34.79 acre allotment. In late 1909, Boyer granted the Power of Attorney to David Geyer, a lawyer in Roswell. After numerous rejections on the local and federal levels, under the advice of Geyer, Mattie wrote to Peter Keller, Commissioner of the Buffalo, Missouri General Land Office and claimed she misspelled Dickson and to replace the name with Dixon. 

Mattie’s new spelling found W. A. Dixon, Chester Q. Dixon, and Margaret White of Conway County, Arkansas. Mattie’s new claim was rejected because someone else had already transferred an additional right for 80 acres. Sole heirs of Allen Dixon assumed to go by the alias Dixon Garner/Dickson Garner. In February of 1911, the General Land Office in Washington D.C. answered the request of the Roswell General Land Officer for a ruling on Mattie’s claim. Keller testified against Mattie’s claim, which was rejected.

Roswell Daily Record: Wednesday, April 28, 1920 [Pg3]

Mattie’s public record faded into the heat of the Borderlands and she was never heard of, but imagine if she had the opportunity to open the Roswell Daily Record on Friday, April 28, 1920 “Will Drill at Blackdom”.

by Dr. Timothy E. Nelson ©

“This may be democratic for the majority but for the minority it has the same effect as fascism.” 

Huey P. Newton, {May 1, 1971] To Die For the People

Thursday, April 22, 1920 “Will Drill at Blackdom”

Lives of the first 5 families of Blackdom represent a unique frontier space I refer to as the Blackdom Thesis or #TheAfrōFrontier®️. Blackdomites maintained a variety of philosophical and theoretical models that dictated their actions, reactions, and the development of the Blackdom idea. In 1907, Blackdom inspired Monroe and Mary Collins who migrated from Mississippi to be Blackdomites. Blackdom was a new beginning with freedoms and no Jim Crow laws in the territory. In Dexter, the Boyers hosted the Collins family for their first 6 months.

During the roaring 20s in Chaves County, New Mexico, Black people were in a renaissance of their own. Boyer, Collins, Eubank, Herron, Ragsdale, and Proffit were among the first 5 family dynasties who established culture around homesteading. People under the conditions of Blackness employed freedom to reach a state of sovereignty in spirit, mind, body, and space. Written in Blackdom’s articles of incorporation, Blackdomites envisioned schooling through college. In the early 1910s, Blackdom had a university/college that produced seminary students. Blackdom developed into a sovereign, dry-farming agronomy culture that also prioritized education.  

In a 1985 interview, Lillian Collins, recalled her education as a child in Blackdom’s school at the townsite. Lillian also remembered major challenges when she moved 20 miles north into Roswell, New Mexico at the beginning of school segregation. After New Mexico’s statehood in 1912, Blackdom’s ability to quarantine Black people from racism decreased. Lillian said the “Mexicans and Whites” were welcoming. “When we moved to town ( Blackdom to Roswell) we did not really have the problem because uh, they were such sweet people, uh, of any race.”

Roswell Daily Record: Thursday, April 22, 1920 [Pg3]

Lillian stuttered as she began to remember problems “in the later years when the kids would have rock fights.” Lillian described angry “Anglo kids” from a different school instigating the “Coloreds” from her school. The fight continued until someone called “the law.” Racialization materialized as a proxy fight with kids and rocks. After statehood, Roswell fell largely under the control of local New Mexicans influenced by Southern society, and the lives of people under the conditions of Blackness got progressively worse. A few years, Black high school graduates never received diplomas after graduation.  

Blackdomites had come from prestigious educational institutions now referred to as Historically Black Colleges/Universities (HBCUs). Frank Boyer, (Blackdom Townsite Company’s 1st President) was a Buffalo Soldier who attended Atlanta Baptist College (Morehouse College). Prior to statehood, Blackdomites embraced the freedom of being separate-but-equal and taught their kids within the society, culture, and community. They also made statements using mass media and communication. On October 13, 1910, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported, “Blackdom Wants a School.” 

Imagine a literate Black child from a poor Black family in Roswell, on April 22, 1920, opening the Roswell Daily Record and reading, “Will Drill at Blackdom.”

by Dr. Timothy E. Nelson ©