Many believed that Blackdom was simply abandoned. However, new evidence shows that the scheme to build generational wealth continued to exist throughout the twentieth century in other forms. During Blackdom’s boom times, in December 1919, Blackdom Oil Company shifted town business from a regenerative agricultural community to a more extractive model. Nelson has uncovered new primary source materials that suggest for Blackdom a newly discovered third decade. This story has never been fully told or contextualized until now.

Reoriented to Mexico’s “northern frontier,” one observes Black ministers, Black military personnel, and Black freemasons who colonized as part of the transmogrification of Indigenous spaces into the American West. Nelson’s concept of the Afro-Frontier evokes a “Turnerian West,” but it is also fruitfully understood as a Weberian “Borderland.” Its history highlights a brief period and space that nurtured Black cowboy culture. While Blackdom’s civic presence was not lengthy, its significance—and that of the Afro-Frontier—is an important window in the history of Afrotopias, Black Consciousness, and the notion of an American West.

“This focus and interconnecting of Borderlands history with the interdisciplinary-transdisciplinary nature of Africana scholarship gives Blackdom the potential to be the model for our understanding of Black Town formation and function in the twenty-first century.” Herbert G. Ruffin II, Associate Professor Syracuse University, Arts & Sciences, African American Studies, Syracuse, New York, January 3, 2023

“The most energetic and persistent promoter of remembering Blackdom, however, is Dr. Timothy E. Nelson, who in addition to his pioneering scholarship has organized or partnered with others to create various multimedia presentations about Blackdom.” Chp. 13. Struggles at Blackdom, Page 327, The First Migrants, Richard Edwards and Jacob K. Friefeld June 17, 2023