Ode to DunKin
Op-ed submitted to Seth Roffman at Green Fire Times December 28, 2018
As a preface to this therapy, say to yourself, “Race doesn’t exist, but racism does.” Warning: If you are racist or an agent of racism, you will be triggered and angry. This musing was triggered by my experience with the Santa Fe Dunkin Donuts One-Hour-Rule and the people cool with it. Some say the #1HourRule wasn’t racist. This is a teachable moment for New Mexico.
Narratives about frontier spaces reflect a people’s entrepreneurship, opportunism and grit. However, compared to narratives focused on “White/Anglo/Caucasian” peoples in frontier spaces, Black peoples within the same period and in the same spaces appear as feckless footnotes to the historical trajectory of the borderlands of California, México, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma and Colorado. Blackdom, New Mexico’s history provides an anchor point for this reaction [BlackPast.Org Blackdom, New Mexico, not Wikipedia]. Blackdom’s history offers a microcosm that allows for further expansion in the study of Afro-frontierism in the borderlands as well as a place from which to analyze current ripples of history. Most importantly, it is time to disabuse everyone of the notion that Black (“non-Hispanic”) peoples are foreign to this frontier space.
Dark, blue-black, Nubian Moors ruled Spain for more years than you might want to acknowledge—mostly because Spanish roots were supposed to insulate racial walls separating “White” from Black. But; yes, Africans ruled Spain for 800 years and produced Black African descendants on the Iberian Peninsula for hundreds of years. When the Moors were pushed out of Spain in 1492, many of the Black babies of Spain (now men and women) went along with the envoys of “Spanish Conquistadors.” Racism had not been invented yet. Yes, to be clear, there were Black/Negro/African “Conquistadors.” And yes, Black people participated in the genocide of North American indigenous peoples from the beginning.
Por ejemplo; Juan Garrido was born in West Africa in 1480, changed his name and converted from Islam (Moor) to Catholicism to join various Spanish expeditions into North America. He settled in México and was granted property in 1522. Please note that free Black people were in North America before the first “White” colonists from Western Europe decided to settle on the East Coast of North America in 1619—just saying.
Now, if you are still reading and just finding out that Spanish roots don’t make you “White”, wait; there is more. While many have forgotten the silly rules of Race, I haven’t. The #1DropRule was created by “White” people to distinguish the haves from the have-nots. “White” people said, “One drop of any ancestry that is not “White,” you ain’t “White.” If you have indigenous ancestry, you can’t be “White” according to “White” people. Sure, no one knows all the rules to the illusion of Race. These rules are fluid, so the water can be stolen while we fight. The system of racism picks up the slack between the intellectual argument and government policy. Where the illusion of Race ends, the law picks up the slack to oppress the masses so the few can maintain dominance. I walk into Dunkin Donuts and by the end of my coffee I am face-to-face with government agents—Santa Fe police.
Here is your plot twist. Black people: dark-skin peoples under the oppressive conditions created by “White” people who purported their superiority and rigged the levers of government in favor of their “White” skin; never needed “White” people. To be clear, Black people were here first. Say his name: Juan Garrido of México. Fast-forward to the turn of the 20th Century, when the New Mexico Territory offered Black people no Jim Crow laws. Black (“non-Hispanic”) people with no privilege saw the space between no Jim Crow laws and the racism of New Mexicans as opportunity to change the course of their familial history, and they did. Blackdom was established in September of 1903. A Sept 11, 1903 article read, “The Blackdom Townsite Company was incorporated...” Within 20 years, Blackdomites struck oil.
Dec. 31, 1919, the Roswell Daily Record reported the incorporation of the Blackdom Oil Company. When Black people struck oil in Chaves County, Roswell’s “White” people developed a 1920s version of the #1HourRule in the form of loitering laws to harass the Black Bourgeois of Blackdom. These were Black teachers, Black lawyers, Black doctors, Black homesteaders, Black ministers, Black military men and Black Freemasons. In response to Black progress, Roswell’s “White” people invited “White” people from all around to come to Roswell’s major theater to hear lectures on Americanism from the Ku Klux Klan grand wizard of Texas. By 1924, Roswell inaugurated its Pioneer Klan chapter. This Klan was harmless for the most part until you are reminded of how small the town was. This Klan included the mayor, the coroner, the police and so on.
Racism is a system that ends with Black people in conflict with the legal system and government intended to neutralize any power Black folks might possess in the natural world. Maybe the right to be in a Dunkin Donuts for longer than an hour after buying a hot beverage and a doughnut with sprinkles was too much to ask from this contested frontier space. Despite the outside pressures, Blackdomites struck oil. They never needed “White” people. They only needed the space between no Jim Crow laws and the racism of New Mexicans to get stupid rich.
Dr. Timothy E. Nelson is currently writing a book about Blackdom and teaching part-time at the University of New Mexico.
PULL-QUOTE: “Now, if you are still reading and just finding out that Spanish roots don’t make you “White”, wait; there is more.” ~Timothy E. Nelson
[SIDEBAR:]
In the early 1900s, the Pecos Valley of southeastern New Mexico Territory experienced an economic boom because of an influx of settlers including African American families. They built Blackdom, the only all-black town in the territory. In Sept.1903, 13 black men, led by Isaac W. Jones and Francis M. (Frank) Boyer, signed Articles of Incorporation to establish the Blackdom Townsite Company to build the town about 20 miles south of Roswell, in Chaves County. It was located on a direct route to the Dexter train station to the east. Artesia, a boom town, was 20 miles south. To the west was Apache land. Today little remains of the ambitious frontier scheme that within a 20-year period became an oil producing town.
NOTE: (Seth Roffman, Green Fire Times) “I’m sorry. I find it impossible to adequately proofread/copy-edit this rant. In fact, I can’t even read it. I believe that this person would be upset if I were to make the changes to conform with AP style or any other sort of consistency that we have been following for the seven-plus years I’ve been with GFT. For example, we always lower-case white and black, without quotations, so that immediately means changing half the article. I think he would flip out if we did that. I made what few changes I felt would be non-controversial, and I really need to leave it at that. Plus, I have no idea whatsoever what he’s talking about regarding Dunkin Donuts or the “1-hour rule.” Maybe this is well-known in Santa Fe, but not to me.”