Exodus Of African Americans From The South- Post Civil War
During a fifty-five-year period following the end of the Civil War, African Americans built more than fifty identifiable communities in Oklahoma
African Americans left the South for the âpromised landâ of the West in ever-increasing numbers after the Civil War. Economic hardship, racial violence, and intolerance prompted this vast migration from states such as Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Texas, and Arkansas.
During a fifty-five-year period following the end of the Civil War, African Americans built more than fifty identifiable communities in Oklahoma. Some sprouted and quickly vanished; others still survive. Achieving freedom after the Civil War, former slaves of the Cherokees, Creeks, Seminoles, Chickasaws, and Choctaws also formed towns in Indian Territory. When the U.S. government allotted land to individual Native Americans, most Indian âfreedmanâ chose land next to other African Americans. Their farming communities sheltered self-governed economic and social institutions, including businesses, schools, and churches. Enterprising businessmen set up every imaginable kind of business, including publishing concerns whose newspapers advertised in the South for settlers.
Immediately after statehood in 1907 the Oklahoma legislature passed Jim Crow laws, and many African Americans became disenchanted with the new state. A large contingent relocated to western Canada. Another exodus of African Americans from the United States occurred with the âBack to Africaâ movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A large group of Oklahomans joined the illfated Chief Sam expedition to Africa. Other Plains African Americans migrated to colonies in Mexico.
Today, only a few all-black towns survive, but their legacy of economic and political freedom is well remembered.
Larry O'Dell Oklahoma Historical Society-/Crockett, Norman. The Black Towns. Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1979.
http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.afam.006
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