Planting Seeds of Freedom in the Pecos Valley of New Mexico: How Blackdom Grew Its Roots through Dry-Farming

Blackdom in the Borderlands: Significance of the Afro-Frontier (1903-1929)

El Palacio Magazine | March 2021 | Introduction:

In the early 1900s, the North American continental interior hosted two different centuries-long global colonization schemes. The Pecos Valley region’s economic surge underwent the largest infrastructure projects in the world at the time and brought exploitation of people and land. African descendants under the conditions of American Blackness (Black people) sought opportunity in the colonization collision at Mexico’s northern frontier and the United States’ western frontier. Through the homestead process in the southeastern section of the New Mexico Territory, Black people became colonizers. After the discovery of oil in New Mexico, they fully participated in the bonanza and received royalties that extended through the post-World War II era. In this essay, we explore an intersection of African descendants in diaspora, who quarantined themselves to achieve the goals of their ancestral strivings.

Maya L. Allen: With a background in systematics of algae as an undergraduate researcher, Ms. Allen has since gone on to work in marine, fresh-water and terrestrial systems. Ms. Allen also was a participant in the National Science Foundation’s Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections Project as an undergraduate, where she contributed to this important effort to make academic collections more accessible to the global research community and the public. She conducted her MS thesis work on resolving the phylogeny of Glossopetalon, a small genus of flowering shrubs native to SW North America using restriction site associated DNA sequencing (RAD-seq). Ms. Allen has transitioned to exploring research questions focused on the phenotypic plasticity’s role in evolution and patterns of plasticity throughout species ranges. As a graduate student at UNM she is a mentor to students from underrepresented groups through the Project for New Mexico Graduate Students of Color program and as a Research Coaching Fellow.

August 30, 2021 - NARA Focuses on Expanding Access to Digital Records

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Dr. Richard Edwards haD been diligently working on this matter since 2008. See the link for his article below.

Richard Edwards is a primary leader in the “Homestead Records Project,” a consortium formed to digitize, preserve and make accessible approximately two million original homestead land-entry files.

This unfortunate decision would leave the important homesteading states of Colorado, Montana, Kansas, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, New Mexico, Washington, and California back in the hard-to-access and costly-to-access paper records regime. I believe NARA’s decision is mistaken, and that it should be a HIGH priority to finish digitizing these records. Richard Edwards, Director, Center for Great Plains Studies, Professor of Economics, August 31, 2018

An interview with Gwenyth Doland.

Passionate about the significance of the Afro-Frontier in American history, Dr. Timothy E. Nelson uncovers the forgotten history of New Mexico’s Blackdom.

New Mexico Black History Black History Month 2020

“They called it Blackdom for a reason. This was a Black Kingdom where sovereigns lived.”

—Timothy E. Nelson

Click to see Santa Fe New Mexican Article by Robert Nott

Some 60-plus years before African Americans marched and fought for equal treatment in the nation’s civil rights movement, Blackdom stood as a symbol that African Americans could be masters of their own destiny.

“Blackdom proved black people could thrive, not just survive,” said African American historian and author Timothy Nelson, who wrote a 200-page dissertation on the rise and fall of Blackdom in 2015 for the University of Texas at El Paso.

“They called it Blackdom for a reason. This was a Black Kingdom where sovereigns lived,” he said.

And yet, some 30 years after its founding in the early 1900s, Blackdom was all but abandoned, a victim of drought, nature and an oil boom gone bust because of the Great Depression.

Today, a plaque commemorating the history of Blackdom and a few stone ruins are all that remain of the original community, located about eight miles west of Dexter and 20 miles south of Roswell.

Blackdom’s fight for a self-sustaining life came decades before King urged African Americans to take to the streets to demand equality with such phrases as, “If you can’t fly then run if you can’t run then walk if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward.”

Entire Academic Article can be purchased @ [Great Plains Quarterly 39 (Winter 2019):11–37] via University of Nebraska-Lincoln Center for Great Plains Studies

by Jacob K. Friefeld, Mikal Brotnov Eckstrom, and Richard Edwards

Abstract: African Americans participated in homesteading in the Great Plains primarily by establishing “colonies” or geographically concentrated homesteading communities. We studied Nicodemus, Kansas; DeWitty, Nebraska; Dearfield, Colorado; Empire, Wyoming; Sully County, South Dakota; and Blackdom, New Mexico, which were the largest and most important Black homesteading communities in their states. Black homesteaders, like their white counterparts, were mostly very poor, struggled to grow crops in a harsh climate, and used the land they gained to build new futures. But because of their previous experiences in the South and racism in some nearby communities, Black homesteaders developed a distinct understanding of their efforts, particularly of schooling and the “success” of their communities.

Jacob K. Friefeld holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Great Plains Studies at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He is co-author, with Richard Edwards and Rebecca Wingo, of Homesteading the Plains: Toward a New History (2017).

Mikal Brotnov Eckstrom is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Great Plains Studies. His written work includes a co-authored chapter with Margaret Jacobs in Why You Can’t Teach US History without American Indians (University of North Carolina Press, 2012) and the Wall Street Journal.

Richard Edwards is director of the Center for Great Plains Studies, professor of economics, and senior vice chancellor (emeritus). Recent books include Atlas of Nebraska with J. Clark Archer and others (2017) and Natives of a Dry Place: Stories of Dakota Before the Oil Boom (2015).

Notes and credits the work of Timothy E. Nelson, Ph.D.

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KUNM | By ty bannerman

Published June 11, 2019, at 9:43 AM MDT

New Mexico has rich African American history and culture beginning with the arrival of Spanish explorers, continuing with the Homestead Act, through the Civil Rights era, and into the present day. In celebration of Juneteenth, we'll hear from folks who are working to preserve and share this legacy here.

We want to hear from you! How do you and your friends and family recognize Juneteenth? Do you have a family or personal history that showcases a unique experience of being black in New Mexico? What questions do you have about the history of black folks here? Email LetsTalk@KUNM.org, tweet us using the hashtag #LetsTalkNM or call in live during the show.

Guests:

• Cathryn McGill, Founder, and Director, New Mexico Black History Organizing Committee

• Rita Powdrell, Executive Director, African American Museum and Cultural Center of New Mexico

• Ebony Isis Booth, Founder, Burque Noir

• Jim Harvey, President, African American Performing Arts Center and Exhibit Hall

• Jon Ghahate, 17:12 Cultural Educator at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center

  • (NOTICE: Jon Ghahate was not listed as a guest on KUNM link.)