A Chance to Build for Our Selves

Abstract

Black Press Boosterism in Oklahoma, 1891-1915 I 1891, the editor of the Langston City Herald, an Oklahoma-based black newspaper which circulated in the South, asked: How long, oh! how long will the thrifty people of our race put up with the treatment they receive in many, and in fact, most parts of the south. The article added: Why not come to Oklahoma where are [sic] peace, happiness and prosperity, coupled with that best of all blessings, absolute political liberty.You have ten chances of success here where you have one in the south.1 Editor William L. Eagleson was one of several black newspaper editors in Oklahoma who used their journals to promote migration to Oklahoma. Eagleson's call struck a chord with many African Americans, almost 100,000 of whom migrated to Oklahoma from 1889 to 1910.2 African American migration to the Plains was part of a broader, regular pattern of migration from the South toward the North and West following the Civil War. occurred within the South and across state lines as people searched for work and land and sought to escape from violence and restrictive laws.3 The westward movement attracted African Americans who saw the West as a promised land-largely unpopulated, free from the well-established racial norms and policies of the East, and thus, they believed, a land where they could live in peace and receive all the inherent rights and promises of a democratic society. Thousands of African Americans made the decision to move west on their own. Others were encouraged by ministers, town site promoters, and the black press. Many of the leading African American editorial voices, including the Washington, D.C. New National Era, the Indianapolis Freeman, the New York Freeman, and the Baltimore American Citizen, encouraged southern blacks to move to the Plains, first to Kansas in the 1870s and then to Oklahoma and the Dakotas a decade later.5 These publications' editors promoted migration as the only means by which African Americans could potentially gain equality, political franchise, and self-determination.6 Editors noted that only when large numbers of blacks left the South, thus draining the labor pool, would white attitudes and behaviors change.7 Although it is impossible to ascertain the full impact these newspapers had in encouraging western migration, historians note that the black press played a significant role in encouraging the Great Black March Westward8 The black press's ability to encourage migration can be attributed to the fact that the press and the church are the only two institutions blacks have historically controlled thus providing crucial pulpits, of sorts, for African American views.9 The black press that emerged in Oklahoma, particularly in the area's all-black towns, also encouraged the migration by boosting their town sites and the region as well as telling settlers what awaited them. Copies of these newspapers were distributed throughout the South by land salesmen.10 Readers who received the publications from these Oklahoma towns discovered communities run by African Americans who welcomed most blacks.11 his study examines the promotional rhetoric used by the editors of four newspapers to help settle, then expand, their communities.12 The research attempts to help fill voids in both black press history and black migration history, first by examining some largely understudied publications to determine how journalism and promotion intersected to encourage largescale social migration. Much of the scholarship on the postCivil War black press's role in encouraging migration has focused largely on one paper, the Chicago Defender, and the Great Migration that occurred when thousands of African Americans left the South largely for northern cities around the time of World War I.13 Less attention has been paid to the parallel role the western black press played in encouraging the earlier western migration. …