Epilogue

The epilogue provides an update on social, economic, political and environmental conditions in Black towns—including a water crisis, fracking, and the Trump election--after the author’s research concluded in 2012.

History Stories

Chapter One argues that history is a central way that Black towns are identified and narrated. The chapter discusses various narratives about Black towns that focus on particular aspects of the towns’ history and show a complicated appeal of the communities, including racial trauma, loss, and social and economic mobility. Highlighted topics include state narratives about Black towns as emblems of economic success and black social mobility in the past; town elders’ narratives about their family members’ traumatic experiences fleeing the Jim Crow South to seek freedom in a Black town; Black town residents’ narratives of Black businesses and land acquisition as a hallmark of Black town success and history; and community narratives of losing celebrated Black town schools to integration mixed with racism.

The Case for America

Chapter Two focuses on diverse tourism efforts for Black towns, showing how they make a different case about Black towns’ or Black people’s connection or disconnection to America. Exploring independent bus tours, state tourism plans for self-guided tours of Black towns, and tours of Civil War Battle sites adjacent to Black towns, the chapter highlights how tour narratives tell Black town history in diverse and sometimes contradictory ways. Some tours make a case for Black people as agents and pioneers in the making of America. Others seek narratives that narrate Blacks as triumphant over American racism; others largely exclude Black towns and Black people from prominent narratives about American history.

Community of Blackness

Chapter Four addresses the pull that various groups and individuals feel to connect with Black towns and argues that the pull is to connect with Black community, Black family, and the progress of the Black race. The Boley town rodeo parade draws in and recruits numerous and diverse Black social groups to participate in the annual event, which publicly presents a vibrant and inclusive Black space. Others relocate to a Black town. The chapter profiles a woman who moved to a Black town, motivated to connect with her family history in the place; and another woman who took up residence in a Black town, believing the Black space was prime for forwarding a project to bolster Black peoples’ racial sense of self and thereby improve race relations.

Introduction

The Introduction provides the main ideas that guide the book; explains the conventional narrative of Oklahoma’s Black towns as historically appealing places; argues that Black towns continue to hold an appeal in the present due to their economic and social possibilities; applies theoretical arguments on a Black sense of place to Black towns; and explains the general socioeconomic profile of today’s Black towns.

The Appeal of a Black Place

Chapter Five concludes the book by underscoring the significance and meaning of a Black-identified place. Despite structural inequality that Black communities face, they fulfil a purpose of community and affirmation of Blackness. The chapter argues that place can be a site for affirming Blackness and that that the appeal of a Black place like small, historic Black towns, is its Black identity and offering for community. The chapter situates the author’s own research and family history with the broader appeal that Black towns hold.

Economic Futures

Chapter Three is about Black towns’ fragile twenty-first century economies and the appeal of an economically insecure Black place as a site for remaking or rebuilding Black towns. It profiles the range of individuals and institutions that seek out Black towns for economic and housing development, business creation, or land and property acquisition. A mixture of ambitious residents who seek to improve the community profile and outside entities whose focus is profit or individual gain (sometimes at the expense and well-being of Black towners), is discussed. Also discussed is prison siting in some Black towns, the failure of prisons to provide employment opportunities, and the disconnect between prisons’ purpose and Black towns’ ethos and history of institutional commitment to local community.