Oklahoma Black History

Current Status

As of 2019, U.S. Census Quick Facts lists the Oklahoma population at nearly 4M with 7.8% black compared to 12.2% nationally and 14% worldwide. Median annual black family household income in Oklahoma is $46,862 compared to $45,438 nationally and $20,568 worldwide. Oklahoma City is home of the Black Chamber of Commerce and approximately 5,000 Oklahoma businesses are black owned.

Indian Territory

In 1830, Democrat President Andrew Jackson instituted the "Indian Removal Act" forcing Native Americans out of the U.S. and into the territories of the west.?What is largely unreported is 10% - 15% of native tribe populations were black slaves. There are no verifiable records for how many thousands of Native Americans died or their slaves during the forced death march of the "Trail of Tears", but these were the first blacks in Indian Territory that would become Oklahoma.

Many people today incorrectly believe slavery means white people holding black people in bondage. Every civilized people in the history of the world have been enslaved or practiced slavery regardless of race.

By 1860, Republican President Abraham Lincoln was elected and soon after the Civil War began. While often depicted as a war between manufacturing North and agricultural South, the Civil War was actually between anti-slavery Republicans and pro-slavery Democrats throughout the nation. Over 600,000 white men died during the war to free 3M black slaves and Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation to free slaves in 1863.

In Indian Territory, slaves were also freed and these new "freedmen" settled in nearby open land for freedom and opportunity. Freedmen from other parts of the U.S. also participated in the Land Rush of 1889, some were Boomers waiting for the cannon signal and others were Sooners leaving early to claim a plot.

All-Black Towns

Widely unknown is the fact that Oklahoma was home to more than 50 historically all-black towns - more than any other U.S. State. Most started as farming communities that quickly added businesses, schools, and churches. While an important part of forming Oklahoma, many of these towns do not exist today due to the Great Depression, as well as Jim Crow laws.

Source:?okhistory.org

Even the west side of the original state capitol of Guthrie was predominantly black and known by two names: Little Africa and The Elbow. You name it, Little Africa had it: saloons, barber shops, restaurants, and so on. One of the biggest pieces of Guthrie’s black history deals with the Prince Hall Masons, who established a Masonic lodge where black Freemasons could congregate. Hall was an abolitionist who helped make it possible for blacks to take part in freemasonry.

Just 13 of the previously all-black towns remain today:

1. Boley - The largest and most well known of the all-black towns of Oklahoma. The town was named after J. B. Boley, a railroad official of the Fort Smith and Western Railway. Founded in 1903 and incorporated in 1905, Boley and the African-Americans living in the area prospered for many years.?By 1911, Boley boasted more than 4,000 citizens and many businesses, including two banks and three cotton gins. Booker T. Washington, founder of the National Negro Business League and the Tuskegee Institute, in Alabama, visited the town in 1905 and proclaimed it "the most enterprising and in many ways the most interesting of the Negro towns in the United States." The town supported two colleges: Creek-Seminole College and Methodist Episcopal College. Boley also had its own electrical generating plant, water system and ice plant. The Masonic Grand Lodge completed a majestic Masonic Temple around 1912. At the time, it was said to be the tallest building between Okmulgee and Oklahoma City.
2. Brooksville - Located in Pottawatomie County 4 miles southwest of Tecumseh,?Brooksville?was established in 1903. Originally, the town was named Sewell, after a white doctor who owned much of the surrounding land and who attended the residents. In 1912, the name changed to Brooksville in honor of the first African-American in the area, A. R. Brooks, a cotton buyer and farmer. His son, W. M. Brooks, became the first postmaster.
3. Clearview - Located in Okfuskee County eight miles southeast of Okemah,?Clearview?was founded in 1903 along the tracks of the Fort Smith and Western Railroad. J. A. Roper, Lemuel Jackson and John Grayson platted the town site and formed the Lincoln Townsite Company to attract settlers and advertise the settlement. From its beginning the community supported a newspaper, the Lincoln Tribune, which evolved into the Clearview Patriarch. Grayson and Roper also organized the Abe Lincoln Trading Company to operate a general store, deal in farm produce, and buy and sell real estate.
4. Grayson - Formerly known as Wildcat,?Grayson?is situated in southeastern Okmulgee County. The town was named for Creek Chief George W. Grayson. A Grayson post office was established Feb. 10, 1902, and was discontinued April 30, 1929. By 1909 the small rural community boasted five general stores, two blacksmiths, two drug stores, a physician, and a cotton gin. At the turn of the 21st century Grayson's population was 64.1 percent African-American, 9.8 percent white and 9.8 percent American Indian. It had two public schools, two churches, and a community center where area residents voted.
5. Langston - The town of?Langston?in Logan County is 10 miles northeast of Guthrie. The name honors John Mercer Langston, an African-American educator and U.S. representative from Virginia. Because Langston and Brooksville began in Oklahoma Territory, they differ from the other thirteen surviving all-black towns. Although E. P. McCabe has been credited for founding the town, Charles Robbins, a white man, owned the land and filed a town survey and plat in 1891. The two men opened the town?April 22, 1890. In 1897, through the influence of McCabe, the Oklahoma Territorial Legislature established the Colored Agricultural and Normal University (later Langston University) at Langston. The college helped Langston endure the Great Depression.
6. Lima - Located in Seminole County between Seminole and Wewoka. At the turn of the 20th century, Seminoles and Seminole freedmen occupied the area. The community known as Lima, named for the local limestone quarries, existed at least by 1904 and probably earlier. The post office survived from 1907 to 1957, and Grudge V. Gross served as the first postmaster. Established on the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad, Lima was incorporated in 1913. In 1926, the discovery and development of the Greater Seminole Oil Field brought prosperity and white settlers to the town. The newcomers started a separate village east of Lima, which became known as New Lima. This community never incorporated but built its own school, post office and businesses. The combined population numbered 239 in 1930 and 271 in 1940. With the decline in the oil boom, the population dropped. In 1957, with the end of segregation, the Lima and New Lima schools merged. As the 21st century began, almost 90 percent of the population of Lima and New Lima commuted to work, most to Seminole or Wewoka.
7. Red Bird - The Barber and Ruffin families settled in the?Red Bird?community before 1900, and other families soon followed. The settlement attained a post office in 1902, with A. A. White as the first postmaster. In 1889, E. L. Barber, one of the town's developers, organized the First Baptist Church, the largest church in Red Bird. He also became Red Bird's first justice of the peace and served as an early mayor. The Red Bird Investment Company recruited African-American families from all parts of the South to settle in the newly established town. More than 600 people attended the grand opening at Red Bird, Aug. 10, 1907. By 1920, Red Bird's population was 336.
8. Rentiesville - Located 17 miles southwest of Muskogee,?Rentiesville?possesses a unique blend of musical and academic achievements, according to Tulsa World stories. This all-black town was home to the late famed blues man D.C. Minner, who annually hosted the Dusk 'Til Dawn Blues Festival in Rentiesville, a festival that attracts blues artists and fans alike. Also defining the small town, which was established in 1903, is its pivotal role in the Civil War. Oklahoma's most significant Civil War event, the Battle of Honey Springs, was fought in Rentiesville and is known as the "Gettysburg of the West."
9. Summit - Platted as South Muskogee in 1910 and had a post office as early as 1896. The town is in Muskogee County, 6 miles southwest of the city of Muskogee. The Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway had a depot in the community. The town may have been named Summit because it was the highest point on the railroad between Arkansas and the North Canadian rivers. Rev. L. W. Thomas organized the St. Thomas Primitive Baptist Church in 1923; in 1929, the congregation constructed a church building that still stands. Although not incorporated until 1980, the town has always been self-governed.
10. Taft - Started as the community of Twine, which had a post office by 1902. In 1904, citizens named the town Taft in honor of then Secretary of War (later President) William Howard Taft. The settlement developed in the Creek Nation on land allotted to Creek freedmen. Early in the town's history, the citizens promoted their new community throughout the South. The Reaves Realty Company advertised Taft as the fastest growing black community in Oklahoma. Before 1910, the community supported three general stores, one drugstore, a brickyard, a soda pop factory, a livery stable, a gristmill, a lumberyard, two hotels, a restaurant, a bank and a funeral home.
11. Tatums - Lee Tatum and his wife, Mary, applied for a post office designation in 1895, beginning the town of?Tatums?in Indian Territory. A hotel was built in 1899, a blacksmith shop in 1900, a cotton gin and sawmill in 1910, and a motor garage in 1918. Oil wells were drilled in the area in the 1920s, bringing wealth to several of Tatums' farmers and landowners. The Julius Rosenwald Fund helped build a brick school in 1925–26, and the WPA built another in 1936. Tatums' Bethel Missionary Baptist Church, which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places, was completed in 1919.
12. Tullahassee - The oldest of the surviving all-black towns of Indian Territory. The roots of the community were planted in 1850 when the Creek Nation built a school along the ruts of the Texas Road. Near the school, the population of Creek freedmen increased while the population of Creeks declined. The council transferred the American Indian students to another school and gave Tullahassee to the freedmen on Oct. 24, 1881. The town was incorporated in 1902 and platted in 1907. The Missouri, Kansas, and Texas Railway line ran through the town, helping to attract settlers.?
13. Vernon - An all-black town in southwestern McIntosh County,?Vernon?was established in 1911 on the Tankard Ranch in the Creek Nation. Thomas Haynes secured much of the land for the townsite and played a large part in organizing the community. Its name honored Bishop W. T. Vernon of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. When the Julius Rosenwald Fund provided money to help build a public school, Vernon became one of the first communities in Oklahoma to receive assistance from that philanthropic source.

Tulsa Race Riot

In 1907, Oklahoma became a state and blacks prospered despite Democrat controlled Governors and legislatures that fiercely guarded segregation Jim Crow laws for the next 50 years. Black children had to go to separate schools from white children. Blacks were required to go to segregated businesses and even separate railcars from whites on trains. By law, blacks and whites could not marry. Blacks often weren't allowed to vote.

In 1915, Progressive Democrat President Woodrow Wilson showed a screening of "Birth Of A Nation" in the White House depicting the plight of the common man against carpet baggers and free black slaves, which revived the Ku Klux Klan as the terrorist arm of the Democrat Party all over the United States. By the end of World War I in 1918, Jim Crow oppression flourished and there were Jim Crow laws in virtually every major city in the nation North and South.

By 1921, blacks in Tulsa were very prosperous and built a business district called Greenwood which was also dubbed "Black Wall Street" consisting of various restaurants, theaters, clothing shops and hotels. Unfortunately, Greenwood became the site of one of the most devastating race?disturbances in the history of the United States.

After May 31, 1921, Greenwood would never be the same. The tension mounted between the black and white communities over an incident that allegedly occurred in an elevator at Drexel building in downtown Tulsa involving Sarah Page, a 17-year-old white elevator operator, and Dick Rowland, a 19-year-old black man. There are several versions of what supposedly transpired, but the most common being that Dick Rowland accidentally stepped on Page's foot in the elevator, throwing her off balance. When Rowland reached out to keep her from falling, she screamed. Many Tulsans came to believe through media reports that Rowland attacked Page although no sufficient evidence surfaced to substantiate the claim. The incident was further escalated by a local newspaper headline that encouraged the public to "Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in Elevator."

Heightened jealousy of the success of the Black Wall Street area and the elevator encounter led to the Tulsa?Race Riot. Armed white Klansmen looted, burned and destroyed the black community. When the smoke cleared, mere shells of buildings were all that remained of the business district. The Red Cross estimates that more than 300 people were killed and approximately 1,200 homes were destroyed.

By the end of World War II, the KKK and white supremacy were largely eradicated due to the horrifying Jewish holocaust. The Klan has no standing in politics today and any parades or recruitment is not tolerated anywhere in the nation. In 2015, Virginia Commonwealth University published "Mapping the Second Ku Klux Klan, 1915-1940". Widely discredited as having no verifiable source and as a false liberal narrative, the study is often referenced portraying the Klan as active in Oklahoma (and 15 other states) today with Klaverns in these towns:

1. Shamrock
2. Elmer
3. Tuskahoma
4. Devol
5. Camargo
6. Ames
7. Caney
8. Kaw City
9. Bennington
10. Wakita

The list is all very small towns with little or no population that most Oklahoman's don't recognize with no Klaverns. Tulsa and Oklahoma City are also often falsely listed with active Klaverns. There are no Klan organizations listed at the Oklahoma Secretary State since becoming a state. Similarly, there are no Klan websites or physical addresses for Oklahoma. Even the Daily Oklahoman was duped in 2016 by false Klan story.

Oklahoma Black Culture

Ardmore is the home to one of the first all-black theaters, built during the time of segregation so blacks in the community who were barred from patronizing whites-only theaters could enjoy entertainment.

The city had a sizeable black community at the time, as more than 2,000 blacks created their own business district out of necessity. The building still stands today but hasn’t been a theater since 1944. It is currently a church, and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Black culture made Deep Deuce what it was during the mid 1900s. Just a few blocks away from Bricktown, Deep Deuce was the place to be if you needed your jazz music fix.

Sadly,?only one business in the area was still black-owned?as of March 2014. Much of the residents moved out of the area during the Civil Rights movement, then the creation of the Interstate 235 interchange caused buildings to be cleared away. Now what you’ll find are apartment buildings and other developments that leave little remnants of the original Deep Deuce.

6 Notable Black Oklahomans

Oklahoma wouldn’t be the state it is today without the involvement of the black community. With a history as rich as rich gets, black Oklahomans from all walks of life have contributed to Oklahoma’s identity since statehood.

Here are six notable black Oklahomans you should know about. And though some aren’t Oklahoma-born, they all once called this place home and helped shape the state into what it is today.

#6 Charlie Christian - One of the all-time greats of jazz guitar who got his start in Oklahoma City when he was a young boy. In order to help his family out with finances, Christian would tag along with his brothers and blind father to some of the more affluent neighborhoods where they’d work as buskers — street musicians/entertainers.

Christian began learning jazz guitar and would perform in the Deep Deuce area of Oklahoma City to enlivened crowds. From there he began playing alongside jazz great Benny Goodman, who was one of the first four bandleaders to play with black musicians.

#5 Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher - Chickasha’s own Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher was a key figure in Oklahoma’s civil rights movement. She challenged segregated higher education by applying to the University of Oklahoma law school in 1946.

Two years later the United States Supreme Court ruled that the college must provide the same level of education to blacks as they do to whites.

Ada was the first black person to be admitted to OU’s law school, but she still dealt with racism and segregation on a daily basis. She was given a chair labeled “colored” to sit in, which was located in a roped-off area of the classroom, and had to eat in a chained-off section of the cafeteria, separate from other students. She graduated in 1951 with a law degree, and her fight and struggle made waves throughout the nation.

#4 Clara Shepard Luper - Educator and Civil Rights leader Clara Shepard Luper was born in Okfuskee County, Oklahoma. The daughter of Ezell and Isabell Shepard, she married Charles P. Wilson and had three children, Calvin, Marilyn Luper Hildreth, and Chelle Marie. In 1944 Luper received a bachelor's degree from Langston University. She later attained a master's degree from the University of Oklahoma in 1951 and was the first African American admitted to the graduate history program in the University of Oklahoma. Luper taught history and public relations at Dunjee High School in Spencer, Oklahoma, and at John Marshall and Classen High Schools in Oklahoma City. While teaching, Luper wrote, directed, and produced?Brother President,?a play based on the life of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Luper became the advisor for the Oklahoma City National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Youth Council in 1957. The following year the Youth Council decided to stage a "sit-in" at Oklahoma City's Katz drugstore. On August 19, 1958, walking into the store and ordering Cokes, the youth, under Luper's guidance, demonstrated their discontent with segregation and launched the nation's sit-in movement. The Youth Council continued to conduct sit-ins throughout the early 1960s, helping to end segregation in public accommodations in Oklahoma. Maintaining her adherence to nonviolence, Luper participated in marches and demonstrations and was often jailed in her Civil Rights struggle.

From 1960 to 1980 Luper hosted her own radio show, and she chronicled her fight for Civil Rights in her autobiography,?Behold the Walls. A member of Zeta Phi Beta sorority, the Oklahoma Education Association, and the National Education Association, Luper received 154 awards, including the Langston Alumni Award, Zeta Phi Beta Woman of the Year Award, the Oklahoma Confederated Women's Club Award, and the National Voter Registration Award. She died on June 8, 2011, in Oklahoma City.

#3 John Hope Franklin - Rentiesville, Oklahoma, is historical for many reasons, two of them being: It’s one of the original 50 all-black towns in the state, and it’s the birthplace of civil rights activist and historian John Hope Franklin.

Franklin was alongside many other people during the voting rights march in Selma, Ala., and he rose above racism to earn a doctorate from Harvard.

He also wrote the important historical text “From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans,” which looks at American history from the black perspective.

He went on to become the first black person to lead the American Historical Association and, in 1995, President Bill Clinton awarded Franklin the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

#2 Ralph Ellison - Ralph Ellison, an Oklahoma City native, used the written word as a tool of moral philosophy and his most important work, “Invisible Man”, took a hard look at the issues blacks faced in the early 20th century.

The book was borne out of Ellison becoming disillusioned with the Communist Party, a group he and friend/mentor Richard Wright both associated with before World War II. It was then that the pair realized the party had turned its back on the black community. In 1975, Oklahoma City named one of its public libraries after Ellison.

#1 Hannah Atkins - Hanna Atkins was a people person who fought for civil rights, women’s rights, child welfare, mental health reform and more during her tenure in the Oklahoma House of Representatives from 1968 to 1980.

And she did it all as the first black woman elected to the Oklahoma House.

Then President Jimmy Carter named Atkins to a United Nations assembly where she worked on social and economic issues.

Then she came home to Oklahoma where she did a little bit of everything: Consulted the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, became Assistant Director of the Department of Human Services, was named Secretary of State, and supervised various large Oklahoma departments such as the Department of Mental Health and the Department of Corrections.

Moving Forward

This is a crazy time of confusion, division, and lies. We need great voices of reason, understanding and truth. Thank you for reading this contribution to Black History Month.

For more thought leadership, follow?Kevin Fream