Autographed Paperback Book: Blackdom, New Mexico: The Significance of the Afro-Frontier
Autographed Paperback Book: Blackdom, New Mexico: The Significance of the Afro-Frontier
Order an autographed Copy of Dr. Nelson’s First Academic Book: Published July 2023. 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. 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.
ISBN 9781682831755 - Published July 2023
Unsigned copies can be ordered via Texas Tech University Press
Forward by Herbert G. Ruffin II, Syracuse University Associate Professor of African American Studies. Research Interests Include: African American History; Africana Studies; California History; Digital History; Public History; Race and Ethnic Studies; Texas History; Urban History; U.S. Social History; U.S. West History
Orderan Autographed copy of Timothy E. Nelson’s First Academic Book - Texas Tech University Press is set to publish Spring or Summer 2023.
“Blackdom” started as an inherited idea of 19th Century Afrotopia. The idea of “Blackdom” was refined within Black institutions as part of the perpetual movement of Black Colonization. In 1903, thirteen Black men, encouraged by the 1896 Plessy decision, formed the Blackdom Townsite Company, and set out to make Blackdom a real place in New Mexico, where they were outside the reach of Jim Crow laws.
Blackdom, New Mexico was a township scheme that lasted about 30 years. Many believed that Blackdom was simply abandoned. However, new evidence shows that the scheme to build generational wealth continued to exist throughout the 20th century in other forms. During Blackdom’s Boomtimes, in December of 1919, Blackdom Oil Company shifted town business from a regenerative agricultural community to a more extractive model. Timothy E. Nelson has uncovered new primary source materials that shapes Blackdom’s newly discovered 3rd decade.
This story has never been fully told or contextualized until now. In Blackdom, New Mexico, Timothy E. Nelson situates the story where it belongs, along the continuum of settlement in Mexico’s Northern Frontier. Dr. Nelson illuminates a set of conscious efforts that helped develop Blackdom Township into a frontier boom town. 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 also highlights a brief period that allowed one to study a 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.