African American Resources for Oklahoma: Difference between revisions

A few hundred black slaves had run away from their white masters and sought refuge in Creek, Seminole, and Cherokee settlements, where they were received as free people. While some Indian communities incorporated blacks as free people, American Indians in each of the nations, except the Seminole, began to purchase African Americans as slaves.  

A number of Indian farmers had large tracts of land under cultivation and used enslaved laborers to produce cotton and surplus crops for sale and profit. Most Indian slave owners, however, practiced subsistence agriculture, and both slaves and masters labored side by side in the fields. By the 1830s well over three thousand African Americans, mostly slaves, lived among the tribes.  

American Indians brought their slaves to the west in the 1830s and 1840s when the federal government removed the nations from the southern states. The Cherokee, with more than fifteen hundred, had the largest number. Slave populations removed with the other nations ranged from approximately three hundred in the Creek Nation to more than twelve hundred in the Chickasaw Nation. By the time the Civil War broke out more than eight thousand blacks were enslaved in Indian Territory, where they comprised 14 percent of the population. Slavery continued in the territory through the Civil War. <ref>http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/S/SL003.html</ref>  

'''All Black Towns of Oklahoma'''<br>

More than 50 African-American towns were established between the 1865 and 1920. Many of the towns were formerly held by one of the [[Five Civilized Tribes|Five Civilized Tribes]].  

*Aylesworth State Prison Farm, 1916-1925, Marshall County, Oklahoma<br>Schools "The Aylesworth State Prison Farm was an all black prison located in Marshall County and was in existence between 1916 and 1925." -- P. 1. (FamilySearch Catalog Film Number: {{FSC|1341762|item|disp=1838318 Item 14}})

*[http://www.worldcat.org/title/pioneer-newspaper-c1898-1905/oclc/71000957&referer=brief_results Pioneer newspaper, c[a.] 1898-1905]The Pioneer was an African-American newspaper published in Muskogee County.

*In the 1830s African American slavery was established in the Indian Territory, the region that would become Oklahoma. By the late eighteenth century, when over half a million Africans were enslaved in the South, the five southern Indian societies of that region Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole had come to include both enslaved blacks and small numbers of free African Americans <ref>[http://digital.library.okstate.edu/encyclopedia/entries/S/SL003.html Oklahoma State Digital Library]</ref>