Blackdom was a short-lived New Mexico town founded in 1903 near Roswell to provide self determination for African Americans fleeing the South as racial violence increased after the Civil War. At its height, the small community contained homesteads belonging to men and women who had collectively built a church, school, post office, store and pumping plant. Though most families were compelled to leave the recently incorporated town by droughts in the 1920s, Blackdom's influence on southwestern African-American experience was profound.
The story map below, created by the Earth Data Analysis Center at UNM, provides an overview of the town's important legacy. Other collections and information on Blackdom can be found in the tabs of this curated guide.
#MappingFreedom is a thesis project by Darold Cuba.
"My thesis is #MappingFreedom - digitally documenting and interactively mapping all of the freedom colonies along the Western colonial pathways, as an effort for preservation, conservation, restoration and edu-tourism. Freedom colonies are the communities of people who immediately resisted Western colonialism, creating their own “safe spaces” to protect themselves from terrorism such as the resulting indigenous genocide, The Atlantic Slave Trade, plantation slavery, Black Codes, Jim Crow and other racialized human rights abuses. These places exist throughout the planet to this day, but because of our history, are endangered, and at risk of being lost due to migration, and other factors such as the failure of urban planning and gentrification to see the value in these sites." Read more about his project HERE
