Other Indians and Freedmen: The Legacy of Black Migration in Oklahoma, 1840-1910

Abstract

“Other Indians and Freedmen: The Legacy of Black Migration in Oklahoma, 1840-1910” analyzes African Americans’ westward migration from the Deep South and the development of predominately black towns throughout Indian Territory, Oklahoma Territory, and the state of Oklahoma during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. My project poses deeper questions regarding the formation of Oklahoma’s black town movement by placing the movement and its participants within the larger context of Native law, American constitutional thought, and large scale black migration throughout the American South and West.