LibGuides: Blackdom, N.M.: General Resources

In the New Mexico State Library Collection

Blackdom, New Mexico: The Significance of the Afro-Frontier, 1900-1930 by Timothy E. Nelson; Herbert G. II Ruffin (Foreword by)
Call Number: SW 978.943 N431 2023
ISBN: 9781682831755
Publication Date: 2023-07-15
Blackdom, New Mexico, was a township that lasted aboutthirty years. In this book, Timothy E. Nelson situates the township's storywhere it belongs: along the continuum of settlement in Mexico's Northern Frontier.Dr. Nelson illuminates the set of conscious efforts that helped Black pioneersdevelop Blackdom Township into a frontier boomtown. "Blackdom" started as an inherited idea of a nineteenth-centuryAfrotopia. The idea of creating a Blackdom was refined within Blackinstitutions as part of the perpetual movement of Black Colonization. In 1903,thirteen Black men, encouraged by the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, formed the BlackdomTownsite Company and set out to make Blackdom a real place in New Mexico, wherethey were outside the reach of Jim Crow laws. Many believed that Blackdom was simply abandoned. However,new evidence shows that the scheme to build generational wealth continued toexist throughout the twentieth century in other forms. During Blackdom's boomtimes,in December 1919, Blackdom Oil Company shifted town business from aregenerative agricultural community to a more extractive model. Nelson hasuncovered new primary source materials that suggest for Blackdom a newlydiscovered third decade. This story has never been fully told or contextualizeduntil now. Reoriented to Mexico's "northern frontier," oneobserves Black ministers, Black military personnel, and Black freemasons whocolonized as part of the transmogrification of Indigenous spaces into theAmerican West. Nelson's concept of the Afro-Frontier evokes a "Turnerian West,"but it is also fruitfully understood as a Weberian "Borderland." Its history highlightsa brief period and space that nurtured Black cowboy culture. While Blackdom'scivic presence was not lengthy, its significance--and that of the Afro-Frontier--isan important window in the history of Afrotopias, Black Consciousness, and thenotion of an American West.
History of Hope: The African American Experience in New Mexico. by Thomas Lark,
Call Number: SW 973.0496 H673
Publication Date: 1996
Introduction / by Thomas Lark -- African Americans in the Enchanted State : Black history in New Mexico, 1539-1990 / by Quintard Taylor -- Gente de color quebrado / by Peter Stern -- African freedmen and the fuero militar / by Joseph P. Sanchez -- Africans in the Spanish Indies and the American Southwest during Colonial times / by Charles A. Truxillo -- New Mexico's Black women / by Maisha Baton -- African American women in New Mexico / by Charlotte Mock ; abstracted by Thomas Lark -- Do we know we? / by Shiame Okunor -- Black history : searching New Mexico / by Cortez Williams -- Current African American history projects in New Mexico / by Thomas Lark.
African American History in New Mexico: Portraits from Five Hundred Years by Bruce A. Glasrud (Editor)
Call Number: SW 978.904 A2582g 2013
ISBN: 9780826353016
Publication Date: 2013-02-15
Although their total numbers in New Mexico were never large, blacks arrived with Spanish explorers and settlers and played active roles in the history of the territory and state. Here, Bruce Glasrud assembles the best information available on the themes, events, and personages of black New Mexico history. The contributors portray the blacks who accompanied Cabeza de Vaca, Coronado, and de Vargas and recount their interactions with Native Americans in colonial New Mexico. Chapters on the territorial period examine black trappers and traders as well as review the issue of slavery in the territory and the blacks who accompanied Confederate troops and fought in the Union army during the Civil War in New Mexico. Eventually blacks worked on farms and ranches, in mines, and on railroads, as well as in the military, seeking freedom and opportunity in New Mexico's wide open spaces. A number of black towns were established in rural areas. Lacking political power because they represented such a small percentage of New Mexico's population, blacks relied largely on their own resources and networks, particularly churches and schools.
Glimpses of Late Frontier Life in New Mexico's Southern Pecos Valley: Archaeology and History at Blackdom and Seven Rivers by Regge N. Wiseman, Maisha Baton and Yvonne R. Oakes.
Call Number: NM F 701.46:233
Publication Date: 2000
Also available as a PDF from nmarchaeology.org http://www.nmarchaeology.org/assets/files/archnotes/233.pdf
A History of Blackdom, N.M. in the Context of the African American Post Civil War Colonization Movement by Maisha Baton & Henry Walt
Call Number: NM F 709.81:H 67/6
Publication Date: 1996
Digital copy is available at http://nmsl-montage.auto-graphics.com/#/item-details/entities_7489

Cover Art Blackdom by Daniel Gibson.New Mexico Magazine, February 1986, 64, p. 46-51.

Blackdom in the Borderlands: Significance of the Afro-Frontier (1903-1929) by Dr. Timothy Nelson. El Palacio, Spring 2021

Digital Resources

Blackdom: Interpreting the Hidden History of New Mexico's Black Town a thesis by Austin J. Miller (available for download through the University of New Mexico's Digital Repository)

This master’s thesis recovers the history of Blackdom, New Mexico. Founded by an African American family from Georgia, Blackdom is a ghost town that existed in the early decades of the twentieth century near Roswell, New Mexico. Blackdom was initially imagined as both a refuge from the hostilities of Jim Crow society and as a for-profit enterprise. Entanglement in land-fraud scandals hindered the town’s early development, but Blackdom eventually grew to nearly three hundred residents, with its own school, Baptist church, post office, and general store. Blackdom settlers practiced a variety of agricultural methods, including dry farming and irrigation from shallow wells, but drought eventually doomed this unique community. This study engages Blackdom’s history through three distinct lenses: community, race, and environment. It explores how Blackdom was envisioned and created, discusses the role of race in both internal and external perceptions of the community, examines the volatile environment of the Pecos Valley that contributed to Blackdom’s collapse, and connects this hidden history to memorial attempts that emerged nearly a century after Blackdom was established.

The Significance of the Afro-Frontier in American History Blackdom, Barratry, and Bawdyhouses in the Borderlands 1900 – 1930 a thesis by Timothy E. Nelson (available from the University of Texas El Paso's digital repository)

The current narratives about Black people migrating from the South to America’s western frontier at the turn of the Twentieth Century fundamentally fail to capture the full nature of the extraordinary undertaking Black migrants endured with both great success and failure. Exoduster was a pervasive term that characterizes Black migration during the late Nineteenth Century and early Twentieth Century. The theme of Exoduster literature filtered the activities of Black people through the lens of fear. The “exodus” captured the idea that Black people migrated to escape the horrors of racist subjugation and violence indicative of Southern politics and culture. Often stories of All-Black Towns describe a promised land—one ordained by God and predetermined for the refugees. These scholarly narratives imply Black inferiority or lacking control over their fate. Narratives about frontier spaces reflect peoples’ entrepreneurship, opportunism, and grit. However, compared to the narratives focused on White frontiersmen, Black peoples within the same period and in the same spaces appear feckless side notes to the historical trajectory of history. Blackdom’s history offers the opportunity to construct a new narrative that allows for the further expansion in the study of Black People of the West with the use of a new conceptual framework. Afro-Frontierism.

I'm Really Just an American: The Archaeological Importance of the Black Towns in the American West and Late-Nineteenth Century Constructions of Blackness a thesis by Shea Aisha Winsett (available for download at William & Mary's digital repository)

Blackdom, Centennial Journeys Radio Spots (available through University of New Mexico's Digital Repository)

Two former slaves from Georgia found an African-American community in southern New Mexico.

Blackdom/Cottonwood Church: New Information by Elvis Fleming p. 28 in New Mexico Conference, United Methodist Church, May 2011 (available for download through University of New Mexico's Digital Repository)

Glimpses of Late Frontier Life in New Mexico's Southern Pecos Valley: Archaeology and History at Blackdom and Seven Rivers by Regge N. Wiseman, Museum of New Mexico, Office of Archaeological Studies, Archaeology Notes 233, 2001. (available online as a pdf)

Journal Articles

African American Homesteader “Colonies” in the Settling of the Great Plains by Jacob K. Friefeld, Mikal Brotnov Eckstrom, and Richard Edwards. Great Plains Quarterly, Volume 39, Number 1, Winter 2019, pp. 11-37. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/gpq.2019.0001

Vado, New Mexico: A Dream in the Desert by M. A. Walton Southern New Mexico Historical Review Volume II, No. 1, January 1995, p. 17-23.

Additional Books

Black and brown : African Americans and the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1920 by Gerald Horne, New York, N.Y. ; London New York University Press, 2005.

Forgotten spaces and resident places: New Mexico Black towns and communities (1897--1930) a thesis by Price, Flora L. 2003. Available from the University of New Mexico