Acres of Aspiration: The All Black Towns in Oklahoma

Beulah Land. Paradise. Shangri-la. Oklahoma seemed to be all of these in the hostile, racist, post–Civil War South. Seeking both refuge and respect, pioneers such as Edward P. McCabe championed the idea of Oklahoma as an all-Black state. And all-Black towns proliferated there. Some sixty all-Black towns, along with Tulsa’s Greenwood District, bear witness to the deep creativity and incredible human spirit of the people who built them.