Thursday, February 8, 2024 - 6:00pm
We are so excited to welcome Dr. Timothy E. Nelson for a reading and signing of his book, Blackdom, New Mexico: The Significance of the Afro-Frontier, 1900-1930.
"This focus and interconnecting of Borderlands history with the interdisciplinary-transdisciplinary nature of Africana scholarship gives Blackdom the potential to be the model for our understanding of Black Town formation and function in the twenty-first century" — Herbert G. Ruffin II, Associate Professor Syracuse University, Arts & Sciences, African American Studies, Syracuse, New York, January 3, 2023
“The most energetic and persistent promoter of remembering Blackdom, however, is Dr. Timothy E. Nelson, who in addition to his pioneering scholarship has organized or partnered with others to create various multimedia presentations about Blackdom.” — Richard Edwards and Jacob K. Friefeld, Chp. 13. Struggles at Blackdom, Page 327 The First Migrants, June 17, 2023
Many believed that Blackdom was simply abandoned. However, new evidence shows that the scheme to build generational wealth continued to exist throughout the twentieth century in other forms. During Blackdom’s boomtimes, in December 1919, Blackdom Oil Company shifted town business from a regenerative agricultural community to a more extractive model. Nelson has uncovered new primary source materials that suggest for Blackdom a newly discovered third decade. This story has never been fully told or contextualized until now.
Reoriented to Mexico’s “northern frontier,” one observes Black ministers, Black military personnel, and Black freemasons who colonized as part of the transmogrification of Indigenous spaces into the American West. Nelson’s concept of the Afro-Frontier evokes a “Turnerian West,” but it is also fruitfully understood as a Weberian “Borderland.” Its history highlights a brief period and space that nurtured Black cowboy culture. While Blackdom’s civic presence was not lengthy, its significance—and that of the Afro-Frontier—is an important window in the history of Afrotopias, Black Consciousness, and the notion of an American West.
Timothy E. Nelson was born in South Central Los Angeles, raised in Compton, California, during the early 1990s, and went to Santa Monica Community College in the wake of race- and class-based conflict with the Los Angeles Police Department. Providing the most in-depth research on Blackdom to date, he reframes the history, focusing on the economic and social ambitions of Afro-Frontierists (Black pioneers). Through various art forms—academic books, trade books, screenplays, painting, photography, and videography—Dr. Nelson is digitally applying his theory of colonization within the digital frontier.