Intersectional Blackness at Mexico’s Northern Frontier

Preface

Theodore W. Cohen’s Finding Afro-Mexico: Race and Nation after the Revolution illuminated the historical backdrop of Blackdom’s History. Blackdom, New Mexico (1903-1930) was not a subject of Cohen’s study; however, his scope provided a catalyst to refine the Afro-Frontier Thesis, and was the impetus to write a review. Finding Afro-Mexico served the purposes of refinement as well as the reintroduction of The Significance of the Afro-Frontier in American History to those unaware of the study. Cohen explored the “Afro” theme in his historical narrative and provided evidence of a collective intersectional “Black” consciousness in the Borderlands. 

Intentionally, in this review, “Afro” and “Black” have many meanings. Race doesn’t exist in the natural world. The process of becoming, or participation in racialization processes encouraged development of subaltern spaces. In this review, “Blackness” began in the late 1400s. Africanity, or “Afro” was forged out of a complicated mixture of African descendants participating in a diversity of place-based colonization projects. Notions of an objective well defined “Blackness” evaporate in frontier spaces of the Borderlands. Instead, definitions of “Afro,” “Black,” and “Blackness” are a subjective collection of tangible and intangible elements associated with “African” descendancy and notions of “citizenship.” Oversimplifications related to identity in this review are for the sake of brevity, and to highlight intersections of discussion rather than affirmation or projection of a realized static identity.

Together, the evidence in Finding Afro-Mexico and the Afro-Frontier Thesis support an enriched acknowledgement of “Black” consciousness in the Borderlands. The formal engagement of the Afro-Frontier Thesis was intentionally subjective. Cognizant of “White” conscious spaces; no matter, academic, entertainment or religious, Grand Narratives in Black Diasporic Histories are ignored. This review agitated a “cross-border” dialogue that assumed “Black” people employed new, and often, non-linear ideas that congealed into manifested Afro-Frontier spaces as well as Afrotopia.

#FindingAfroMexico

Mexico’s Northern Frontier

Indigenous spaces were forged into frontiers and fortified into colonized places through political and cultural projects. As early as 1519, European as well as African colonizers brought death and perpetual tumult into Indigenous spaces as part of a forced transformation of land into “the Americas.” By the 1800s, Indigenous Peoples in “North America” hosted two major colonizer forces. At the forefront of both colonization efforts, African descendants were significant to the military advance, occupation, and transmogrification of “territories” into “states.” 

In 1848, the two warring colonization projects resolved disputes and morphed into neighboring countries; Mexico to the South and the United States to the North. Although the U.S.-Mexico War ended with redrawn boundaries, borders crossed people who had their own consciousness. In a 1619 Project, Europeans who expanded westward marketed their campaign as a Manifest Destiny to colonize Indigenous Lands from ocean to ocean. Instances of colonization persisted with excessive militarization, medicalization, and racialization. 

Enforcement of racial and caste systems fueled growth in the subaltern and amongst the “Black” conscious resistance. In Mexico’s Northern Frontier, Black folks on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border maintained a consistent response identifiable throughout the African Diaspora. Newly annexed Indigenous spaces changed in relation to the colonizer’s consciousness of what to do with the new territories, and exploitation of Indigenous and Native Peoples. The response included radical revolt and revolution. Although there was violence that beget more violence, resistance beget more resistance.

Finding Afro-Mexico evokes 1810 and the history of Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, and Mexican independence from Spain. Within a few pages, Cohen established a continuity and cohesion between events of a Black Past and the new era of Afro-Mexicanity. Cohen also articulated Mexican “Blackness” as a product of resistance. In the U.S.-Mexico Borderland, citizenship and language further complicated racialization processes and nurtured a unique space; Mexico’s Northern Frontier, where boundaries of community overlapped national and local “legal” boundaries. Within perpetual cycles of coercion and consent in the racialization process, “Blackness” functioned as an anti-thesis. 

Situationally, the Exoduster narrative trajectory evaporated as a useful tool to explain a history of Black non-Hispanic people who achieved Afrotopia (Blackdom), established an oil company in 1919, and Black folk’s named their business Blackdom Oil Company. Black “non-Hispanic” people who migrated to the U.S.-Mexico Border region adjusted to the complicated frontier spaces, places and opportunities. In popular histories Blackdomites failed and abandoned the colonization project in “the mid-1920s.” However, the evidence in the Afro-Frontier Thesis proved land ownership to this present day, and that Blackdomites received royalties from Blackdom Oil Company as late as the post-World War II era.

Transnationalism

The Afro-Indigenous Mexican Seminoles are a good example of how national borders remade Indigenous places, spaces, and communities. Pushed from “Florida,” survivors settled in Mexico’s Northern Frontier amongst other places. After the U.S.-Mexico War (1846 -1848) and turn of the 20th Century immigration policies, the border separated Afro-Indigenous Seminoles who now speak separate languages (English and Spanish) among their own dialects. The lack of cohesion supported popular notions of their inferiority. Instead, colonized people in the borderland became border-dwellers. 

Borderland Studies provided more capacity to articulate a complicated history of Afro-Indigenous people who developed into Border-Dwellers. The Afro-Frontier Thesis added more capacity for the reader to see Blackdom’s abundance of wealth when popular narratives projected failure and fecklessness. Sifting Blackdom, New Mexico’s primary source material through the rigors of Borderland History methods helped adjust Blackdom’s narrative to reconcile its apparent anomalousness. Exoduster was a pervasive term that characterized Black migration during the late Nineteenth Century and early Twentieth Century. A framework developed by culture producers who colored a “Black” experience through a lens of Up From Slavery and fear of “White” people.

The “exodus” sketched Black migration as an escape from the horrors of racist subjugation and violence indicative of “Southern” politics/culture biblical narratives. Emphasizing the history of White violence, often stories of All-Black Towns describe utopia threatened by White people. Juxtaposed to fear of Whites, the Black spaces were mythologized as a promised land–ordained by God and predetermined for the migrating refugees. These often scholarly narratives reinforced popular notions of Black inferiority, a lack of self-determination, and helplessness.  

Colon A. Palmer’s 1976, Slaves of a the White God was a seminal work on Blacks in Mexico. In 1519, Black colonization efforts were in a northward expansion. Notions of a 1619 [Colonization] Project undergird the Turnarian Westward expansion narrative in “American” History, “The West,” and the US-centric language of an “American Southwest.” In a Borderland Narrative, the Afro-Frontier Thesis began as an open critique of the Turnerian West and ended as a critique of Borderland Studies for the lack of Black (non-creolized) narratives. Slaves of a White God anchored the literary review and shifted the narrative of Black People from a westward dominated project of colonizer exspansion to more of a dual or “transnational” colonization model of “Blackness.” 

In the 19th Century, the spread of “White” consciousness infected Mexico’s Northern Frontier. The newly created Borderland in Mexico’s Northern Frontier added a citizenship component that was exploited, when possible, by newly created Border-Dwellers who found ways to personally benefit from chaos and darkness. For example, Karl Jacoby’s The Strange Career of William Ellis: The Texas Slave who became a Mexican Millionaire identified the new space of opportunity for Black folks. The “strange careers” of “Black” people hatched out of the chaos and discombobulation of racialization processes.

Translations

Theodore Cohen argued, “December 8, 2015, inaugurated a new period in Afro-Mexican history.” I pictured my doctoral hooding ceremony on December 9, 2015. I graduated the next day with my Ph.D. in Borderlands History with an emphasis in African Diasporic Studies and U.S. History from the University of Texas at El Paso. I was a first generation college student. I was the first and only Black (non-Hispanic) person to graduate from the program focused on Borderland History and Black (non-Hispanic) people. After graduation, leaving the UTEP campus, in my graduation gown holding my mock diploma and cap, from the parking lot on the U.S. side, I could see into Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. Similarly, Cohen’s work allowed me to better see into “Black” Mexico.

Intersectionally, during the 1800s, in Finding Afro-Mexico, and in The Afro-Frontier Thesis, African descendants in diaspora communicated beyond borders to one another in alternative spaces. Fluency in the language beyond borders added capacity to bolster antitheses in “White” dominated border regions. Nurturing “Liberation Theology” in Mosques, Synagogues, and Churches (among other spiritual practices), “Black” as an existence was a form of resistance. Embracing “Blackness” offered ways to thrive amidst the chaos of racialization.

The Significance of the Afro-Frontier in American History challenged the field of Borderland Studies to better include non-creolized Black folks in new historical narratives. The Afro-Frontier framework identified key elements to find significance in Black bodies that occupied frontier spaces. 

Anchoring the two separate studies was a relationship between post-Revolutionary places and  “Black” conscious spaces. Theodore Cohen’s thorough deployment of Du Bois, Hughes, and Ellison was hard not to notice. Masterfully, Cohen constructed intersectional Black spaces as he weaved through the scholarship and cultural production that influenced “Blackness” in Mexico. The two works meet as Blackdomites to intersect with Cohen’s survey of Black intellectual history. As an Afro-Frontier town, Blackdomites nurtured intellectual pursuits. While W. E. B. Du Bois was editor, Blackdomites advertised themselves in The Crisis Magazine and for decades had stories written describing Afrotopia.

#TheAfrōFrontier®️

Why transnational? Blackness congealed into new forms and depended on situations and circumstances. Yet, “Blackness” maintained an integrity to fundamental elements that consisted beyond borders of languages, nationhood and citizenship. Universally, in counter-hegemonic models, “Black” people revolted against subjugation and sought sovereignty by any means they deemed necessary. 

While exploring Theodore Cohen’s work never was “Black” or “Blackness” narrowly defined. For example; Cohen explored Zapata’s “Blackness” emphasizing Andres Molina Enriquez’s belief that he was of African descent. According to Cohen, “In thinking about the racialization of place, people, and culture, I never conclude that something is or isn't Black. Of course this has its own problems, but I hope I make the case in the Intro and Conclusion on why I take this methodology. My goal is to explain--and make an argument about--how Mexicans and others (especially African Americans) classify people, places, and cultures as Black, Afro-descended, etc.” Cohen’s mindful treatment of Black conscious space provided a whole view of African diasporic pieces.

Blackdom Dail (e) y Journal | Summer 2020Too

Jesus Wept:

 Juneteenth at Blackdom c.1915

Jesus Wept '

Jesus Wept '

By Dr. Timothy E. Nelson, Historian, Artist, and Professor

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Preface: 

I began this article with the idea, What Would Jesus Do in Blackdom during Juneteenth. There were twists and turns so I decided to write a preface. Not to say one can’t easily understand the article without an intro to the introduction; but, I am writing this during a trying time (pandemic) in mind and to be honest, it is a privilege to complete a thought.

Why Jesus? Because God was the guest of honor at Juneteenth celebrations. Have you ever realized how amazing your father was after coming out of a time of not knowing the full weight of being the Patriarch? This pandemic has changed America. Many had to find faith. I wondered how Blackdomites, Black then, were still able to maintain and grow after continually suffering devastating losses. The answer; God. And then, Walmart tried to trademark Juneteenth.

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Introduction: Blackdom (Town) History (1900 - 1930) 

Santa Fe New Mexican, October 1, 1903: The company is also desiring of securing concessions from the railroads on which their colonists will come from the south, and bring with them cattle and swine. A canning factory is also to be erected on the Blackdom townsite. Clipping image created by Timothy E. Nelson, Historian.©

In the early 1900s, the Pecos Valley Region of Southeastern New Mexico; a U.S. Territory at the time, experienced an economic boom because of an influx of settlers into the area. People under the conditions of “Americanized Blackness” became settlers as well. They built Blackdom, the only All-Black Town in the territory. The city of Roswell was 20 miles north, all of which was situated in Chaves County. Today little remains of this ambitious frontier scheme that within a 20-year period became an oil producing town during the Roaring 20s/Harlem Renaissance.

In September 1903, thirteen Black men led by Isaac W. Jones and Francis M. (Frank) Boyer, signed the Articles of Incorporation to establish the Blackdom Townsite Company to build the town. Blackdom was located on a direct route to the Dexter train station to the East, and Artesia, another New Mexico Territory boom town 20 miles south. West of Blackdom was Apache land; however, to be honest, all of it was Mescalero Territory. Colonizers settled and the rest is a long story about genocide in perpetuity.

A few of the early founders were former soldiers in the All-Black 24th Infantry which served throughout U.S. Territory of New Mexico in the 1880s and 1890s. Frank Boyer was the most influential of them having trained as a minister at Atlanta (Georgia) Baptist College (now Morehouse College) following his discharge from the military. Boyer and his wife Ella, also brought Black Freemasonry to the county establishing the first masonic lodge.

An Afro-frontier town relying on dry-farming proved difficult to maintain. Survival depended on rain that often didn’t come. Between 1909 and 1916, however, the rains came and Blackdom was tangibly prosperous. In 1912, New Mexico transitioned into an incorporated State.

Between 1912 and 1915, Black people were sovereign beings with all power to control their tangible existence in “Blackdom.” The significance of statehood on Blackdom was the transfer of power from federal authorities to local district authorities. Blackdomites were sovereign beings on sovereign land led by Rev. Isaac W. Jones and Francis (Frank) Marion Boyer; until, White People.

In 1915, God was the significance of Juneteenth, even though Blackdomites suffered a great loss that year. As an incorporated town, Blackdom was at its peak. Believers understood Juneteenth as their “Day of Jubilee.” All 13 founders of Blackdom Townsite Company were deeply impacted by major and minor institutions of slavery. 

In 1917, Blackdom saw many of its young men conscripted into the military as the United States entered World War I. By train, during Blackdom’s Revival (1909-1919), a second cohort of settlers/ Black Colonizers employed their freedoms to migrate with their families out of a “plantation life” to further develop a sovereign space.

In 1919, oil was discovered and Blackdom residents created the Blackdom Oil Company. Blackdom Oil contracted with the New York-based National Exploration Company to drill. In a 1947 interview with Blackdom Townsite Company’s 1st President Frank Boyer, revealed that some Blackdom residents still received royalties from Gulf Oil confirming royalties in the post-WWII era (1945 - the start of the Vietnam Conflict [1955 - 1975]). 

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Image created by Dr. Nelson© of Thirteen Mile Draw (link provided)

God, Blackdom, and Juneteenth

Blackdomites were inspired by the God of Abrahamic faiths to seek Afrotopia. “Blackdom” (the idea) had become Blackdom (fareal, fareal) by 1915 and fulfilled God’s covenant to “Black” People. On New Mexico’s desert prairies, Blackdom produced a tangible Promise Land. Jesus could appreciate the image of people living out his father’s promise. At Blackdom during the Juneteenth celebration, there was no Henney. Just Say’n. Blackdomites may have had wine. If not, then boom, Jesus got a recipe. 

To be clearer: if Jesus didn’t make the wine, Blackdom’s church folk wouldn’t drink it. They might not have, even if Jesus made the wine because they were sovereigns on sovereign lands; and God was “abba” (father). Blackdom was a conservative Afrotopia. The town enforced Temperance and homesteading required cooperation amongst Blackdomites. 

Juneteenth at Blackdom had “No Booz” within a 3 mile radius of Blackdom Townsquare. It may have been a coincidence, but the infamous bootlegger Mittie Moore Wilson’s land was at the southern border of the 3 mile radius. 

Unsuccessfully, Blackdom’s elders tried to contain the kids of the Jazz Age, we know how that went; #Harlem Renaissance. By the start of the Great Depression, Blackdomites had Juneteenth in Roswell, New Mexico 20 miles North.

#NoteToReader: Fitting; currently, the Roswell Correctional Facility is at the end of Chickasaw Road within 2 miles of the original Blackdom Townsquare.

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Significance of Juneteenth

In 1915, Blackdom patriarchs were ministers, military men and Black freemasons who manifested a “Promised Land.” If I had to guess, Jesus probably would have wept for Joy as he witnessed his father’s promise in motion. And, he might have had a few more pressing things to do; since he was in town. 

 The Abrahamic Religions and teachings framed the grand narrative of Juneteenth for “Black” people. Non-believers in the faiths celebrated Juneteenth; and, the major Juneteenth celebrations were a military inspired affair. Authentically, Juneteenth was about God and the joy of his deliverance of Black People into sovereignty. 

June 2020, during the early days of the apocalyptic pandemic shutdown, I couldn’t imagine joy, but found it on Juneteenth. White violence toward people under the conditions of “Americanism” and Blackness were subjected to the depravities of the #WhiteConsciousness. Worst of all, Juneteenth appeared to many as a platform to produce more trauma porn.

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Roswell Daily Record, June 7, Saturday, 1927, Pg. 5

Sixty-Two Years of Freedom Be Celebrated At Blackdom 19th

Our sixty-second Juneteenth anniversary is scheduled to arrive at Blackdom, Chaves County, New Mexico, on Sunday, June 19th, 1927.

On that day, it is being arranged to have, instead of a jazz band to furnish music, a well-trained choir to sing the choicest of our “Plantation Melodies,” as well as some of the latest negro spirituals. There will be preaching of course whether you like it or not. That means by the very nature of the thing that there will be no booze in three miles of town and certainly none will be on the grounds if hoping will keep it away. In the plan, provision is being made to utilize every moment of time from start to finish in singing, praying, preaching, and lecturing on all important questions now agitating the minds of today.

 Room will be made on the program for school children from anywhere and everywhere, this giving our boys and girls an excellent opportunity to read or declaim in public.

 Everybody is hereby cordially invited to come and help swell the crowd. And don’t forget if you come you are under ten thousand and one obligations to bring your eats with you, if you think well of your appetites. Clinton Ragsdale will furnish barbecue, but this is a basket dinner. 

 Come on Sunday, June 19th, 1927, dressed in your Sunday clothes and with your baskets running over with the best eats you ever prepared. So Long!

Blackdom.

Significance of Juneteenth At Blackdom

#NoteToReader: Jesus was a guest of honor every Blackdom Juneteenth, as well.

Blackdomites were of an Ethiopianist tradition, most of whom believed in God’s promise. Googling “Jesus Wept,” I found Luke 19:41 (King James Version of the Holy Bible). “And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it.” I imagined he beheld Blackdom (the town) and wept once more. The duality of Blackness would evoke a peek into the distant future to say his name; Emmit Till c.1941. 

One Black sovereign space wouldn’t stop the perpetual motion of Whiteness during the 20th Century, but it was a proof of concept for future generations. Most importantly, Blackdomites were homesteaders and earned exclusive rights to land with federally registered land patents. 

Believers assume God and Jesus are omnipresent. Jesus could see the full 150 year continuum (1865 - 2015). In Blackdom, though, he would have seen joy c.1915. The day was celebrated in a semi-sovereign space; little separated Blackdomites from their God. 

Image created by Timothy E. Nelson© The Crisis Magazine, September 1914, Vol. 8—No. 5

On June 10, 1914, Frank M. Boyer earned his second homestead patent for 40 acres using the 1909 Enlargement Act as assignee for Pernecia Russell and Mattie Moore. Blackdom Townsquare was under the legal authority of the May 20, 1862: Homestead Act that made it extra special. 

Officially, the “Exclusive Negro Settlement” had land attached to their Afrotopic notions. Blackdomites employed Journalist Harold Coleman, one of Black America’s “Who’s Who” at the time, to project a rustic-bourgeois in The Crisis magazine. Coleman wrote:  500 Negro families (farmers preferred) to settle on FREE Government Lands in Chaves County, New Mexico. Blackdom is a Negro Colony. Fertile soil, ideal climate. No “Jim Crow” Laws. For information write JAS. Harold Coleman Blackdom, New Mexico  

Harold Coleman was married to Anita Scott Coleman who was most known for participating in the Harlem Renaissance from Blackdom. “Black” Jesus would have felt the pride of Black folks at the peak of Afrotopia.  

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#NoteToReader: Similar to 2015, in the age of Obama and the era of post-racial-delusion, Blackdom’s Day of Jubilee, in 1915, was tainted by the virus of White supremacy; Birth of a Nation was a popular culture phenomenon, but on the Black side of town it was devastating. “Americanism” dominated popular culture, and Blackdom felt the first blows when “Black” and “White” kids in Roswell (20 miles north of Blackdom) had proxy fights during an age of significant racialization. Black folks experienced a similar “Americanism” at the start of the post-Obama era (2015-present) when political candidates projected Mexicans as “Rapists.” Black then, in 1915, Black men were the “Rapists” in the dank spaces of the White conscience; hence, King Kong. 

Significance of Juneteenth; Blackdom, and a Roswellian Post-Script

In 1915, Mittie Moore Wilson, the infamous gun slang’n bootleg’n madame, started her homestead journey in Blackdom commons that year while running a bawdy business empire from 201 S. Virginia Ave. Close to Halloween c.1915, Mittie Moore’s Contempt of the Sovereign case before the newly created (1912) New Mexico Supreme Court ended with a ruling against her claim to sovereignty. After statehood, jurisdiction over bodies helped racialize the minds and incarcerate the “New Mexican” spirits. The “Black” nightmare became a reality in the newly incorporated State of New Mexico.

Non-believers had a lot to process mentally in order to maintain joy on the Black side of town. Believers had little worry and extended themselves even further, reaching out to some of the most racist people Southeastern New Mexico could muster. 

A number of negros from the Blackdom settlement up the valley came to Artesia Saturday afternoon and put on a very creditable performance in the Corringhall that night. The receipts went to the building fund of the Blackdom Church. It is the intention of the troupe to give concerts at other places in the Valley.

Blackdomite believers (c.1915) had reached God’s sovereignty; and celebrated their God-given sovereignty by worshiping him. They also raised an offering to manifest the covenant on earth.

The “Black” revolutionaries of the Christian faith recognized the subversive power in joy. Believing oneself as spirit and body increased the capacity of people to endure the physical degradation, and nurtured mental as well as emotional resilience/intelligence. Believers and non-believers in Blackdom acknowledged God as part of their “Black” experience. 

“Black” bodies possessed by “White” consciousness brought about sickness, pessimism and death. Non-believers couldn’t even trust a Ford. Thursday, December 30, 1915 the Santa Fe New Mexican [200 miles North on 285] reported, “‘Another Ford Goes Mad’ At Blackdom, ten [20] miles south of Roswell, the car containing Ross Miller, W.W. Hardin, and Tom Brown collide with a dagger….” 

By Juneteenth of 1915, Blackdom was a thriving unincorporated “Exclusive Negro Town.” A rustic-bourgeoise of ministers, military personnel and Black Freemasons morphed into a landlord class of successful homesteaders. Possessing one’s self and land equaled a chance at God’s sovereignty. All Blackdomites were required to honor God’s laws of seedtime and harvest. 

On Juneteenth of 1915, Immanuel would have been comforted because Blackdomites possessed the land patents and ruled their domain. Blackdomites solidified their sovereignty and were only accountable to God. Sovereignty ended on Thursday Jun 1, 1915, the Estancia News-Herald reported, “El juez federal William H. Pope ha abolido la oficina del comisario de los Estados Unidos en Blackdom.” Basically, the Ku Klux Klan and federal power nullified Black folks’ only sovereign space in New Mexico.

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#JuneteenthAtBlackdom

Start of the #GreatDepression, Blackdomites maintained "in town."

At dawn on thursday, June 19 a salute of nine guns fired by Battery “A” will usher in the 65th anniversary of the signing of the emancipation proclamation by Abraham Lincoln and the occasion will be fittingly celebrated here by Roswell’s colored folks.

There will be a big free barbecue dinner served from 12 to 1:30 o’clock and at 2 o’clock the emancipation program will be presented. The celebration will be staged at Page Park and the general public is invited to attend.

The Roswell Daily Record, Roswell, New Mexico, 07 Jun 1930, Sat  •  Page 5

Following is the complete program:

Song–Battle Hymn of the Republic

Invocation –Rev. G. H. Byas

Welcome Address –Rev. Rector

Response –Rev. W. M. Young of Albuquerque, N.M.

Introduction of Speaker–Rev. G. H. Byas

Presiding Elder–Rev. L. H. Owens of Phoenix, Ariz

Reading–Mrs. S. J. Washington

Recitation–Miss Ruth Gray

Instrumental–Miss Ovelia Sutton

Emancipation Proclamation–Wesley F. Adams 

Instrumental Number–Collins Trio

Reception–Miss Ruby Gray

Reception–Miss Eliose Moten

Reading–Miss E. Boyer

Vocal Number–Mays Quartett

Finis

4 p. m.--Thone Park

Hugh Ikard and his Cavemen from Carlsbad with a revamped line-up will attempt to square matters with John Jones “Black Sox.”

The famed syncopaters of the southwest, “The Cotton Pickers” will furnish music of the day. 

Officers in charge Charlie Fowler, George Fisher, Albert Hubert organizer and general manager Wayman D. Gray, organizer 

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Blackdom in the Borderlands

Significance of the Afro-Frontier (1903-1929)

New Mexico State Dept of Cultural Affairs 107-year-old El Palacio Magazine is featuring the first article about the history of Blackdom, New Mexico. ~Written by Historian Timothy E. Nelson, Ph.D. #BlackdomRenaissance #BH365 #BorderlandsHistory

The Unedited Version Below

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The Unedited Version Below 〰️

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Significance of the Afro-Frontier: Blackdom 100 Years Ago

By Dr. Timothy E. Nelson, Historian, Artist

July 2020 during COVID-19 Lockdown

At the turn of the 20th Century, Blackdom was a real place situated in the southeastern section of the New Mexico Territory. The Pecos Valley Region’s economic surge brought workers along with industry as well as human and land exploitation on a global scale to execute some of the largest infrastructure projects in the world at the time. People under the conditions of Blackness (Black People) sought opportunity in the colonization collision at the intersection of Mexico’s Northern Frontier and the U. S. Western Frontier. The interior of the North American continent hosted two different centuries long colonization schemes and Black People developed their own frontier amidst the chaos of the parallel Borderlands often acting as a buffer. The first colonization scheme launched as a northward exploitation of Indigenous peoples and lands in the late 1400s and a second wave colonization scheme was a westward evasion launched in the late 1500s; all from continental Europe. By 1900, the lack of full colonization by a singular force or hegemon in the Mexico-U.S. Borderlands provided opportunities for Black People seeking sovereignty through a unique form of trans-colonization in their development of an Afro-Frontier. Inspired by the explosion of commerce, in September of 1903, thirteen men who represented scores of family and kinfolk, walked into the Chaves County Clerk’s Office and incorporated the Blackdom Townsite Company. On December 31, 1919 Blackdomites succeeded in achieving generational wealth with the advent of the Blackdom Oil Company. In May of 1920, Francis (Frank) Marion Boyer, the townsite companies first president and his wife Ella (McGruder) Boyer, filed the official plat of the town and commons. Blackdom’s era of boom times began at the start of the “Roaring 20s and ended after the economic collapse of 1929. The Great Depression ended Blackdom’s town relations and the Dust Bowl ended all prospects of town revival during the pre-WWII era. Nevertheless, according to Frank, Blackdom’s oil company continued to produce royalties for the homestead class in post-WWII America. Blackdom was a grand scheme in the niche business of Black Towns for profit. Blackdom became an institution that nurtured ideas and fostered sovereignty for people of African descent in diaspora. At the intersection of Mexico’s Northern Frontier and the U.S. Western Frontier, New Mexico offered Black People a unique freedom to achieve sovereignty. Lack of Jim Crow Law enforcement afforded Black People authority over their lives and financial futures of their children’s children. Propelled by religious fervor and influenced by the ideas cultivated in the New Negro Movement, and refined by Negro masonic institutions,Blackdomites oriented themselves to a primordial colonization continuum that began in (so-called) Africa during antiquity. Peoples of the African Diaspora often suffered the physical condition of Blackness; a legal status codified into supreme law of their diasporic host land and the law was often fortified with coercion. Blackdom was a case study in the notion of separate-and-equal that Black people interpreted as opportunity in the legal doctrine of Separate-But-Equal (Plessy v. Ferguson May 18, 1896).

In New Mexico, Blackdom mimicked the sovereignty of Africans in “antiquity”. Ethiopia represented a people and culture of sovereigns before the technology of Whiteness was invented. Ethiopianism wrapped in Liberation Theology of the Christian traditions, and refined by masonic understandings, Black people were freely able to exist as God’s first sovereign people. Mortality after infection from euthanizing viral notions was abated, there were little to no consequences of other people’s belief in White Supremacy. The significance of the Afro-Frontier town was reflected in the unveiling of Black intentionality allowed to unfold with the lack of integration or arresting of sovereignty when Blackness didn’t quarantine.

The Lost Years | 1903 - 1909

The Eubank Family currently holds the largest amount of land connected to the original Blackdomite society commons (within a days walk of Blackdom’ town square). Crutcher Eubank was a minister and led one of the waves of migrants to the Afro-Frontier of Chaves County. Crutcher was representative of the religious homestead class who found meaning in the harshness of proving up a homestead on dry desert prairies. He was born in Kentucky at the end of named slavery, watched the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and migrated to Southeastern New Mexico going beyond freedom seeking sovereignty in his late forties. Married with eleven kids, he began his homestead patent process on October 9, 1906. November 10, 1926, Frank and Ella Boyer quit-claim deed to Crutcher Blackdom’s 40 acre Townsite. Cruthcer Eubank was the pastor of Blackdom’s first church and his legacy of sovereignty manifested in land ownership and immortalized in deeds as well as land patents. Crutcher’s vision produced generational land ownership; a projection of intentionality. He had faith in God to transform sandy loam; mixture of silt, sand, and clay to secure the futures of his 11 children. He built a small home, with a porch, worth about two hundred fifty dollars ($7,000 adjusted for inflation); modest back then. Crutcher leveraged most of his capacity and capital in proving-up his land with a well cased up with a mechanical pump worth three hundred fifty dollars ($9,000 adjusted for inflation). With the help of family labor, Crutcher fenced one hundred sixty acres with three and four-barbed wire worth about one hundred twenty-five dollars. In November of 1911, Crutcher was fifty years of age when he filed his Final Proof. His endurance showed intention, sacrifice, cost and benefit analysis. Droughts made feeding the family off of subsistence dry-farming hard to overcome. He had to stop work on his land to work on neighboring farms as well as in nearby towns, and cities to survive. From the beginning, Crutcher was forced to leave his family on the unimproved homestead land to earn money on jobs that took him away for weeks at a time. In 1907, he broke ground on two acres of his land, which yielded very little that year. In the 1908 growing season, he planted kaffir corn on another two acres, bringing the total farming acreage up to four. By 1909, he broke ground on another two acres, planting corn, beans, potatoes and other garden products over the six acres. In 1910, Crutcher did not break new ground to farm; he replanted on the acreage of previous years. After a grueling six-year period (three years was a normal process), he finally filed for the completion of his homestead patent on Tuesday, November 28, 1911, in time to announce at the annual Blackdom Thanksgiving banquet. Pastor Eubank not only preached about faith, he chose to live the life homesteading in the New Mexico desert during the winter planting kaffir corn, a warm-weather plant. This corn variety has a slow early growth and wasn’t ideal to plant in cold ground. Crutcher quickly learned that if planted too early, a late replanting was needed and made growing in the way he did extremely inefficient. Even worse, if a good stand was secured in the first planting, the growth of the young plants would grow slowly, weeds aggressively grew, and more cultivation was needed.

During Blackdom’s lost years (1903-1911), the idea of building a town based on a farming culture seemed far fetched and akin to believing in miracles. Crutcher’s future was uncertain because his decisions almost led to generational economic disaster. Crutcher as well as other Black farmers in the region were relieved when a prolonged drought that ended in 1911. Crutcher prayed, the rains came and drought conditions did not return until after 1916. The next generation had choices and Crutcher had to endure their free will. The lost years encapsulated a time of sifting through those faithful to the cause and those discouraged by the seemingly inevitable failure. James Eubank was a part of Blackdoms first cohort of teachers and did not homestead and follow the path of his father Crutcher.

The Revival (1909-1919)

John Boyer endured a childhood under the institution of slavery, in Georgia. By 1910, at the age of 54, John reached sovereignty in the form of a homestead patent in a municipality of Blackdom he helped build, along with a house in Roswell, New Mexico on South Main Street. John and his wife, Pinkie, had 3 sons (age) : Berry (18), Ethon (15) and Porter (14). John's significant thriving was due in part to the tremendous amount of cultivation by the Boyer family to improve chances of good homestead outcomes. Francis L. Boyer, John’s younger sister, married Daniel Keys who homesteaded adjacent to Frank Boyer, in Dexter, New Mexico, and Daniel was able to start the same day and earn his patent the same day as Frank. Individual hard work, sacrifice and collective actions helped the early settlers who endured to enter into a revival of all-black municipality ideas. The process was refined enough to get predictable outcomes. More importantly, the catalyst of new supreme laws of the land in 1909 (Homestead Act) had two major advantages for the revival of Blackdom’s township. The Enlargement Act, signed February 19, 1909 double homestead allotment from 160 acres to 320 and was important for the individual Blackdomites. Collective in the new act enlarging non irrigable Western frontier land, the new law also allowed for assignees to property. Frank Boyer, the leading visionary of the frontier scheme, saw the opportunity to connect the idea of Blackdom to land.

Assurance of assignee privileges allowed more women to participate in the homestead process. Mattie Moore, Pernecia Russell, and Ella Boyer were a few who benefited. Mattie with 35 acres and Pernecia with 5 acres together they chose Frank Boyer as assignee for the 40 acres of land that became Blackdom Townsite. In part, the new rule about land was a way to appease the military class as a war tactic to help with the efforts of colonizing the Borderlands in the New Mexico Territory. Soldiers' benefits allowed 42 year old Mattie from Doley County, Texas to stake a claim of government land as heir to Dickson Garner under the provision of soldiers survivor benefits to get additional homestead rights. The Mexican Revolution of 1910 helped colonizers of New Mexico leverage the U.S. Government to transition a federal territory into a state. The political leaders of New Mexico along with the coercion of Whiteness would shift federal powers to local governing entities leaving the fate of sovereignty for Black bodies in jeopardy. Impending statehood and the ultimate shift to sovereignty defined by local Southern confederate politically leaning White people 20 miles North accelerated the growth of Blackdom’s homestead class.

December 7, 1911, the Pecos Valley News reported, “Negro Thankgiving:” The Blackdom population has imbibed the spirit of the valley time and have a Booster’s club. This club gave a banquet Thanksgiving evening. Blackdom is a the negro town of the Pecos Valley, eighteen miles east [sic] of Roswell. Its citizens and officials are composed entirely of the colored people. Francis [Frank] Boyer was the toastmaster of the evening. Toasts were responded to by….

The Afro-Frontier town had developed into an ordered society in the time of New Mexicobecoming the 47th state on January 6, 1912. Frank’s toast was followed by William Young discussing the status of immigration toBlackdom and developments in the overall process. William completed his first homestead process July 1, 1911. James Eubank answered the toast with an update on the school system. Daniel Keys lectured on, “What we produce.” Blackdom’s Real Estate matters took center stage with Wesley Williams who finalized his first homestead, October 15, 1914. Blackdom Townsite and Blackdomites grew and thrived in revival time. The striving was not without losses along the way.

In 1913, the patented Blackdom process to sovereignty was marketed as the Afrotopia of the future. However, in the Crisis magazine, February 1913 issue, Blackdomites advertised, “farmers preferred.” The refined homestead process required a certain malleability to the steep learning curve striving in an agri-cult society focused on transforming drought-ridden desert prairies into generational wealth. Harold Coleman, Blackdom’s advertising manager from back east handled the layout; at the top, “WANTED” 4 times as large as the remaining words that read 500 Negro families (farmers preferred) to settle on FREE Government Lands in Chaves County, New Mexico. Blackdom is a Negro Colony. Fertile soil, ideal climate. No “Jim Crow” Laws. For information write JAS. Harold Coleman Blackdom, New Mexico Free was relative and the ideal climate depended on perspective. More important than the other selling points, no Jim Crow Law and enforcement meant the striving spoken of by W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington had the potential for realization. The emphasis on farmers was a signal that there would be a seedtime and harvest time which required newcomers to be patient, maintain capacity for loss and the adaptability of rural peoples for best outcomes. Coleman knew of the hardships that came with life. His advertisements were published in Crisis Magazine issues until December of 1914.

Although the Boyer Family perfected the homestead process, Frank was near bankruptcy as Blackdom grew. Nevertheless, Blackdom Townsite served as his temporary refuge before he proceeded to continue his sovereignty project. Ella began her homestead patent during the fervor of the 1909 allotment increase to a half a square mile (from 160 to 320 acres). February 19,1914, Ella was granted an extension to submit her final proof December 1, 1915. The new law required Ella to be deposed and prove her claim within 60 days, and pay the receiver at the land office the sum of 50 cents per acre. If Ella were not to complete her proof by the deadline, she would forfeit her whole investment and rights to the land adjacent to Blackdom’s town square.

Boom Times (1919 - 1929)

Blackdom Oil Company’s decade-long existence ended an era. On October 24, 1929, the world economic market crash, followed by the Great Depression, ended Blackdom’s history. The economic collapse ended the ability of Bladomites to muster in the town square. Oil exploration required that speculators take on massive amounts of debt. After 1929, many companies and municipalities suffered from a lack of liquidity in financial markets. In 1947, Frank Boyer the only Negro Oil company ever formed. In fact, Blackdom Oil was a part of a cohort of Black owned oil companies in frontier space. Frank passed away on his lush acreage in Vado, New Mexico 2 years after his final interview with Kathryn Henry, a reporter for the Clovis News-Journal. Frank Boyer, Justice of the Peace in Blackdom decided to take half of Blackdomite society to Doña Ana County, New Mexico. Frank’s departure coincided with the vision of Blackdom moving from an agrarian society to a municipality fueled by the boom and bust cycles of exploration. Oil royalties helped sustain Blackdomites hundreds miles away from Blackdom town square. Frank died the Grand Corresponding Secretary of his Prince Hall Freemason fraternal order. Although he decided to lead an Afrotopia 200 miles South of Blackdom, he frequently traveled back to Roswell for fraternal meetings and to pick up his royalty checks. Uniting Black Ministers, Black Military and Black Freemasons allowed Frank Boyer to succeed in quarantine. Frank set a course for generational wealth in the Boyer family after his passing. Most redeeming, his father Henry Boyer, who was born under the institution of slavery passed away, sovereign. Henry was born October 29, 1822, in Hancock County, Georgia on the plantation of Elias Boyer. Since 1875, Henry Boyer nurtured his belief in sovereignty in the Ethiopianism of the African Baptist Church’ liberation theology. Henry married Hester Hill and Frank Boyer was the last of their 17 children, and was the first of a generation born free. Henry passed away at the age of 103 at the home of his son, Henry Boyer Jr., in Rowell, New Mexico on South Kansas Street at 10 o’clock (am or pm), February 24, 1926. Henry was survived by 5 of his children, John Henry Jr., Robert S., Frank and Henry’s daughter, Mrs. M. V. Johnson. Henry’s great wealth at his passing was measured in 38 grandchildren and sovereignty. Henry’s mother and Frank’s grandmother, Aggie Boyer, were born sovereign in West Africa before her sovereignty was interrupted by being forced into the institutions of slavery in the United States. For people under the conditions of Blackness in America, the trajectory from freedom to sovereignty was often interrupted by the institutions of the Atlantic Slave Trade. Frank’s departure changed the culture of Blackdom’s business dealings. No one benefited more than Mittie Moore Wilson from the town's economic shift from agrarian to oil exploration. She was a bootlegger at a time Blackdom was a municipality that enforced Christian Temperance and applauded the advent of the Volstead Act. Ratified on January 16, 1919, Frank as Peace Officer had the authority of supreme law of the land to enforce the National Prohibition Act. Infamously, Mittie Moore, at the height of Blackdom’s revival, was ensnared in a New Mexico Supreme Court case because of her bawdy business as a madam. She ran her empire from 201 S. Virginia Ave. in Roswell, New Mexico. Blackdom’s church was built in 1915 and sold to First United Methodist Church of Cottonwood in the summer of 1922. Cottonwood was a settlement 15 miles South of Blackdom where an offshoot of Black people began colonizing similar to Blackdomites. The original purpose for the town and religious ideals waned as the prospect of grand fortunes fueled the frenetic pace of Black homesteaders investing in Blackdom commons. The Blackdom Oil Company’s patented landholding began with 10,000 acres when rumors circulated in the summer of 1919 “Red Summer”. In September, Mittie was allowed to add her whole square mile to the 10,000 acres announced on December 31, 1919 in the Roswell Daily Record. Mittie completed her proving documents on February 25, 1922.