"Afrotopia:" How Black Americans built an ideal community in the Old West
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Photo: Courtesy of Texas Tech University Press
Less than 40 years after emancipation, a group of Black Americans headed West with the dream of setting up an "Afrotopia" in New Mexico.
The big picture: Historian Timothy E. Nelson's forthcoming book, "Blackdom, New Mexico: The Significance of the Afro-Frontier" documents that migration and the rise and fall of a multiracial community known as Blackdom.
- Nelson sheds light on what "Afrofrontierism" is, which describes the lives and conditions of Black people in the American West in the late 19th and early 20th centuries — an often overlooked part of American history.
Details: The book follows the creation of a vibrant town of Black churches and Black-owned businesses in a state populated largely by Hispanic and Indigenous residents.
- Nelson tells Axios that Blackdom residents came from the Old South, New York, and the Midwest with the hopes of starting anew amid a rise in racial violence at the time.
- "Here were Black folks in a sovereign space occupying their sovereign mind with what they wanted instead of having to deal with the impositions of white people."
For about 30 years, the town served as a haven for Black people and their allies, until the Depression struck and younger residents wanted to move to the cities.
- Though the town was founded by Black residents, Nelson says it was inviting to Irish immigrants, Mexican Americans, and Indigenous people, and gave clues to what a multiracial democracy could look like.
- The town thrived even though nearby New Mexico towns were founded and run by white former Confederates, Nelson writes in the book.
- Over time, the surrounding racial segregation and the economic downturn led to the demise of Blackdom.
- By the early 1930s, the town was largely empty of full-time residents.
Zoom out: Nelson says that Black conquistadors, Afro-Mexican cowboys and ranchers and Afro-Indigenous people lived in northern Mexico and present-day New Mexico long before the first enslaved Africans disembarked in Virginia in 1619.
- They converged with Black Americans from the South in the 1800s, creating new identities and experiences, which partly led to Blackdom.
Of note: The book is expected to be released on July 15 by Texas Tech University Press.
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