Spotify Link to Conversations Different with Inez Russell Gomez

Inez Russell Gomez made us all feel like we were “listening to a conversation at her kitchen table”, —Gloria Roybal.

“And her knowledge and somatic understanding of the history came through.” —Marissa Roybal

Santa Fe New Mexican Article: Join the conversation today Aug 23, 2023 Updated Feb 12, 2024

History behind the town of Blackdom, New Mexico

Local historian provides new research into the town

https://www.koat.com/article/blackdom-new-mexico-history-dr-nelson-new-research/46688452

In this episode, Doña Ana County Clerk Dr. Amanda López Askin, Chief Deputy County Clerk Caroline Zamora, and County Clerk's Office Researcher Bernadine Caporale talk to Timothy E. Nelson, P.h.D., Author of Blackdom, New Mexico: The Significance of the Afro-Frontier, 1900 - 1930. They discuss the importance of the Afro-Frontier, a term coined by Dr. Nelson, along with why Frank Boyer and Daniel Keyes chose Chaves County for the Blackdom Townsite, why some Blackdom families ultimately settled in Doña Ana County, and why sovereignty was the goal of the community.

Please send any questions or feedback to dacclerk@donaanacounty.org

Marissa Roybal, COO, Blackdom Clothing and Productions Ltd. is imbued with the value of self-sufficiency and an entrepreneurial spirit. Her extensive representation, business, relationship building, and organizational skills along with her passion is her contribution to the development of Blackdom: The Afro-Frontier. Her values, and passion for alternative forms of education, and racial justice were forged at a young age and continue to drive her work and vision to foster cultural change.

Dr. Timothy E. Nelson’s multi-faceted work concerns racism, ambition, and the search for opportunity. These themes were revealed in his 2015 Ph.D. dissertation The Significance of the Afro-Frontier. Dr. Nelson was born in South Central LA, raised in Compton, during the early 1990s in the wake of race and class-based conflict with the LAPD. He earned his Ph.D. from (UTEP) the University of Texas at El Paso.

https://youtu.be/qgPt1PZlB6Y

by Megan Sayles AFRO Business Writer February 9, 2023

Notice the hesitation to use Afro-Frontier; booming “African American frontier in New Mexico.”

Check out State Historian of New Mexico, Rob Martinez on his YouTube channel!

New Mexico State Historian Rob Martinez mentions Blackdom at 07:00:00 Published August 16, 2021

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]]>New Mexico Black HistoryAfro-FrontierEducationAfrican DiasporaMarissa RoybalThu, 05 Aug 2021 18:31:00 +0000https://www.blackdomthesis.com/newsandcommentary/article-from-african-loverz-by-frank-siekyi-closest-articulation-of-dr-nelsons-work-yet5d4c497ceaa8c80001255cec:5dcdbfc396a35c7993c3cdf8:61b4f5c79fc3313394c9dab4WE ARE SHARING THIS ARTICLE AS AN EXAMPLE OF HOW DR. NELSON’S WORK HAS HAD AN INFLUENCE ON SHAPING A NEW NARRATIVE OF NEW MEXICO BLACK HISTORY. [Frank Siekyi is an African Scholar]

“Closest articulation of Dr. Nelson's work yet.” ~M. Roybal

by Frank Siekyi - August 5, 2021

BLACK OIL COMPANY: Blackdom Oil Organization began in 1919 during the Red Summer which denoted a time of cross country savagery against Individuals of color. That year Blackdom, New Mexico’s just all-dark town, gone into contracts with Public Investigation Organization and Mescalero Oil Organization. Oil was first found in southeastern New Mexico in 1907, acquiring the district the epithet “Little Texas,” however the main fruitful business wells started creating in 1922.

In 1919, “Blackdomites” [Dr. Nelson’s coined term] profited with the hypothesis bubble that happened before the principal all around was bored when a portion of its residents fused the Blackdom Oil Organization. Conspicuous families locally including the Boyer, Ragsdale, Eubank, Entryways, and Collins families consented to store their territory with the Roswell Picacho Venture Organization to open it to oil investigation.

Blackdom started in September of 1903 when 13 African American men, driven by Isaac Jones and Blunt Boyer consolidated the townsite organization. The early years were tormented with dry spells in a dry-cultivating farming society. By 1918, for those delayed to demonstrate upland, possibilities for an oil blast in the area expanded their desperation to demonstrate up (acquire power) over their homesteaded lands.

Two ladies were noticeable in these endeavors in 1919. Ella Boyer was quick to exploit the hypothesis, finishing her patent on 160 sections of land neighboring Blackdom’s 40-section of land townsite (land prior licensed by her significant other Straightforward). Sometime thereafter Mittie Moore Wilson [Dr. Nelson’s research and work] homesteaded a square mile of land three miles south of Blackdom. Moore was a peddler who ran a place of prostitution twenty miles north of the town and was one of the space’s most affluent residents.

In January of 1920, Blackdomites reported in the Roswell Every day [Daily] Record, “Will Bore at Blackdom,” welcoming wildcatters and other oil examiners to take part in the blast that guaranteed wealth for Blackdomites who had lands made accessible for oil penetrating.

The whirlwind of promotions for Blackdom Oil [Dr. Nelson’s research and work] topped in the late spring that year as nearby occupants marked agreements with oil investigation organizations from New York to California. On September 1, 1920, The Roswell Day by day Record detailed that an unidentified California organization had “Made Area at Black dom.” The number of wells and barrels were created by Blackdom’s venture is at present lost to history.

During the 1920s, the actual town shriveled even as Blackdomites in the locale accumulated oil sovereignties. Eustace and Francis Boyer Jr., of the Boyer family, were a piece of The Second Great War partner of returning troopers who demonstrated up residences for the oil blast. Their dad Forthcoming Boyer, nonetheless, left Chaves Province where Blackdom was found and resettled in Vado, Doña Ana District, New Mexico in 1920. The Ragsdale family, in any case, remained and benefitted from the windmills they built on close-by properties and the oil income they acquired from the well on their property.

By 1930—and the beginning of the Economic crisis of the early 20s—Blackdom stopped to exist. Blackdom Oil, be that as it may, kept on creating sovereignties for conspicuous dark families nearby. Nearby papers detailed in 1930 that the Blackdom Oil Organization bored investigation wells no less than 1,600 feet down. Forthcoming Boyer, in a 1947 meeting, said that sovereignty installments to Blackdomites streamed all the way into the post-The Second Great Wartime.

Blackdom was located in the backyard of Dexter, a small farming community in Chaves County where I was raised. It was about two years ago or so when a researcher came to the Caroline E. Stras Research Room seeking information about the settlement and soon after I was consumed and I wanted to know more about the establishment.

With the current Black Lives Matter movement, I thought that this post was timely and believe it was the ideal time to share information about the settlement. I would like to point out that it is critical that within the archival profession to capture the history of underrepresented/marginalized groups. With that being said, I would like to share the history of Blackdom.

University of Northern Iowa's History Club Invites Alum Dr. Nelson to present his research of the Afro-Frontier in American history

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]]>Marissa RoybalSun, 04 Oct 2020 17:55:00 +0000https://www.blackdomthesis.com/newsandcommentary/oct-4-20205d4c497ceaa8c80001255cec:5dcdbfc396a35c7993c3cdf8:61e1c71288b27a0533c76fe1Planting Seeds of Freedom in the Pecos Valley of New Mexico: How Blackdom Grew Its Roots through Dry-Farming

Blackdom in the Borderlands: Significance of the Afro-Frontier (1903-1929)

El Palacio Magazine | March 2021 | Introduction:

In the early 1900s, the North American continental interior hosted two different centuries-long global colonization schemes. The Pecos Valley region’s economic surge underwent the largest infrastructure projects in the world at the time and brought exploitation of people and land. African descendants under the conditions of American Blackness (Black people) sought opportunity in the colonization collision at Mexico’s northern frontier and the United States’ western frontier. Through the homestead process in the southeastern section of the New Mexico Territory, Black people became colonizers. After the discovery of oil in New Mexico, they fully participated in the bonanza and received royalties that extended through the post-World War II era. In this essay, we explore an intersection of African descendants in diaspora, who quarantined themselves to achieve the goals of their ancestral strivings.

Dr. Richard Edwards haD been diligently working on this matter since 2008. See the link for his article below.

This unfortunate decision would leave the important homesteading states of Colorado, Montana, Kansas, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, New Mexico, Washington, and California back in the hard-to-access and costly-to-access paper records regime. I believe NARA’s decision is mistaken, and that it should be a HIGH priority to finish digitizing these records. Richard Edwards, Director, Center for Great Plains Studies, Professor of Economics, August 31, 2018

An interview with Gwenyth Doland.

Passionate about the significance of the Afro-Frontier in American history, Dr. Timothy E. Nelson uncovers the forgotten history of New Mexico’s Blackdom.

New Mexico Black History Black History Month 2020

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