Chapter 3:
Prophets, Profits, and the Proffit Family

This chapter returns to the master work of Kenneth Hamilton’s Black Towns and Profit to introduce a postscript: the Afro-Frontier extended beyond his construct of the trans-Appalachian West. Generally, Blackdom’s history provides a postscript to the Hamiltonian time frame of 1877 to 1915. The town of Blackdom existed into the Roaring Twenties. Through the exploration of documented activities, a collective unique Black consciousness emerged. As a Borderland study, Blackdom’s history and Blackdomite records suggests Afrotopia was inspired by a longer history of Black institutions that supported notions of Black sovereignty. Vividly, the townsite projected a conscious embrace of Booker T. Washington’s emphasis on Black labor as well as W. E. B. Du Bois’s ascribed significance of Black ontology. In this chapter we will also excavate Blackdom’s homestead-class intersection behind the corporate veil of Blackdom Townsite Company to contextualize the mundanity of homesteading and incorporation that transformed a rustic bourgeoisie.

Blackdom’s incorporation provided names to cross-reference Chaves County land records and gain access to learn more about the original townsite developers of the scheme. Developers homesteaded and promoters bought into the idea of Blackdom but may not have bought into the full scheme. Once cross-referenced with names on homestead records, Blackdom’s place in the region frames the window to view Blackdom. Detailed homestead records reflected the intentional pattern Black homesteaders adopted over time and helped tell this new story of Blackness in the Borderlands.

Black people on record was a sign of Blackdomite duality and reality as sovereign Black folks. Many residents of Blackdom experienced the institution of slavery or were the first born after the major institutions of slavery dissipated. The twoness of being recognized in a society that suggested they were second-class citizens sparked a cultural consciousness amongst Black folks with faith in God. Blackdomites believed and said “yes” to a fully immersive society built on intellectual growth and spiritual well-being as well as public social mobility. Blackdom was a proof of concept for the idea of self-governance and self-determination among “New Negro”: Black folks.

The Proffit Family

There was once a family named Proffit who migrated and became Blackdomites. The first in the family to complete a homestead, William D. Proffit, patented 158.65 acres in December 1910. Eleven years later, in January 1921, William completed a second noncontiguous eighty acres less than a mile south of his original homestead. How does one reconcile the popular framework of Blackdom’s abandonment in the 1920s and William Proffit’s long-term investment in the scheme? Documents leave little with which to bridge gaps in information. The framework of Afro-Frontierism helps to buttress the significance lost in the mundanity of documents.

Recognizing the uniformity of Blackdomite society in the Afro-Frontier framework, the Proffit family’s whole set of activities illuminates “Blackdom.” Family patriarch and ordained minister from Mississippi William Proffit led his family to Chaves County in 1907. William was born under the institution of slavery and at the age of 51 began his homestead patent process in 1908. His daughter, Luberta Proffit completed a 319.60-acre homestead in 1915, followed by his son David (320 acres) in 1918, and daughter-in-law, Belle Billue Proffit (320 acres) in 1919. The land occupation suggests the family’s ownership ambitions were fueled by the eventual development of a Negro oil company. A few months after Belle Proffit was granted her land patent, the Blackdom Township officially announced the organization of the Blackdom Oil Company.

Added to William Proffit’s eighty-acre patent, the family’s total land ownership included over one-and-a-half square miles of land. When Blackdom was in its revival post-1911, William Proffit was a pastor at Blackdom Baptist Church. The Proffit family thrived in Blackdom’s boom times during the Roaring Twenties. Throughout the 1920s, William also maintained a household in Roswell, New Mexico, twenty miles north of Blackdom.

On July 15, 1929, the Roswell Daily Record ran William Proffit’s obituary:

“William Proffit Dies”

William David Proffit, aged seventy-two years, passed away at his home, 600 South Michigan Street, yesterday morning at 3 o’clock. Mr. Proffit came to Roswell about twenty years ago from Mississippi and has been a familiar figure about the city. He was ordained Minister many years ago and has been pastor of the Colored Baptist Church for many years. He is survived by three sons [although only two are mentioned], David Proffit of Roswell, Isaac Mathew Proffit, of Mississippi, also three daughters Luberta Coldvin of Roswell, Anna McCroy of Ft. Huachuca, Arizona, and Marie Anderson of St. Louis, Missouri. Also, one brother, James Proffit of Mississippi. No funeral arrangement have been made pending word from relatives. Talmage Mortuary in charge.1

In July 1929, William Proffit went from Slavery to Freedom and died sovereign, as well as wealthy, in his Roswell, New Mexico home on South Michigan Street. Prophetic of a pending end, the Talmage Mortuary was owned by a businessman and Ku Klux Klan (KKK) Grand Dragon. Frank Talmage was in charge of William’s funeral service and was a vocal leader in Roswell’s KKK chapter. A few months after William’s death, global financial markets collapsed and Blackdom’s fate, as a town, blew away in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.2

Fundamentally, Afro-Frontierism mutes notions of a “rise and fall” and leans into the notion of Black history as part of a continuum. The Blackdom townsite scheme lasted about thirty years. Conceding the critique of Blackdom’s brevity, the townsite was defunct shortly after the Great Depression began in the 1930s. Nevertheless, one must still grapple with the Blackdom Oil Company because the oil scheme continued into the post–World War II period.3 At the risk of pedestrian conversation, one must ask why and/or how a few years of Black history are significant in a larger context of regional Indigenous histories that span time itself. The Black colonization continuum, informed by the notion of Afro-Frontierism, entitles one to view Blackdom with a new lens. Blackdomite society was a postscript of Exodusterism.

Exoduster narratives were imbued with strong inferences to Moses and the Israelites in search of promised land. Referencing the biblical book of Exodus oozes from short stories to brilliant dissertations. Afro-Frontierism suggests Black colonizers of the twentieth century were also spiritually motivated by the Book of Joshua, 1:1–3 (King James Version):

1 Now after the death of Moses the servant of the Lord it came to pass, that the Lord spake unto Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ minister, saying, 2 Moses my servant is dead; now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel. 3 Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses.4

Frank Boyer was often understood through the lens of Moses, who died before reaching the Promised Land.5 Instead, the framework of Afro-Frontierism suggested, Francis Marion Boyer was inspired rather by the warrior Joshua. Frank was born free and, like Joshua, wasn’t at his final destination. Frank and Joshua were on the edge of their “promised land.” To possess God’s promise for their lives, both had to cross the river Jordan. In Frank’s case, locals called it the Pecos River.

A hundred years later, in the aftermath of a pandemic and on the verge of economic boom times, the current era echoes a not-so-distant past. As the postscript suggests, the Afro-Frontier thesis functions as a continuation, yet unique enough to pause and marvel at the organized improvisation of Africans in diaspora. The virtual community model was successfully employed by Blackdomites during the Roaring Twenties. The Blackdom Oil Company scheme sustained a minimum of two subsequent generations after 1929. Value in the intangible existence of African descendants in diaspora lack the “certainty” of a physical exploitation of old buildings and ruins. However, identifying the consciousness of Black folks in Chaves County reveals a lost story of generational wealth creation. Lost was the opportunity to replicate the successes and learn from the strategies Blackdomites used to endure and build until they began to thrive.

Frontier Sovereign

In consonance with race thinking, the Pecos Valley region was styled as a Southern oasis. Does a “Black” person reckon with the dehumanizing public discourse, the internal discourse of Blackness and the descent into the abyss? Blackdom was an atonement for White impositions: it constituted “freedom.” “Blackdom” was a conscious effort to employ freedom in search of sovereignty, a freedom to fully explore a spiritual striving. Ascent into Afrotopia was a sign of sovereign understandings of an existence in time and space along a messianic continuum. Provided Plessy was the law of the land, Black people had the right to maintain a segregated “exclusive Negro settlement” governed by the laws of a sovereign God who promised seed time and harvest time.

On the New Mexico side of the Pecos, however, there was no Jim Crow law enforcement in 1903. The new city of Roswell had streets, parks, and military installations named after states of the former Southern Confederacy as well as former military personnel. Jim Crow laws were not anchored in the local judicial system in the early 1900s because New Mexico was a territory. Black people felt the intentions of hegemonic society and responded with occupation of space between White New Mexican territorial racism and legalized racial segregation to enforce the impositions of White colonizers. The corporate veil of municipal governance in the US territory afforded Blackdomites collective land lordship that shielded them from a White superiority complex that hovered over socioeconomic transactions. The Blackdom Townsite Company’s incorporation revealed Black intentionality as well as Blackdomite duality in their relationship to hegemonic society.

New Mexico’s statehood loomed as Blackdomites feared a loss of autonomy as individual Black people. New Mexico’s jurisdictional change from an incorporated federal territory to a US state of the union forced Black people to abide by local laws created by local people. Statehood threatened not only the Black body in Chaves County but also their children’s future. Moreover, Black folks had little to protect their spiritual striving once the shift in power occurred. New Mexico’s pending statehood was a backdrop for Blackdomites. The conditions of American Blackness were less adversarial in Southeastern New Mexico, but Black people were locked into a permanent underclass. A new set of White colonizers increased the social projection of supremacy in Whiteness. Building a Black town was one of the few significant opportunities to change the familial and social life trajectory by embracing the vagaries of the desert.

Early Blackdomites embraced the reality of America’s racial nadir and the promise of God-like sovereignty. Also, Blackdomites maintained a collective notion of a spiritual kingdom of God undergirded by biblical prophecy. Blackdom was an insurance against local invasions on their God-given sovereignty. Blackdom was motivated by speculative future profits. Behind the corporate veil, Black people increased their individual and communal capacity to achieve Afrotopia as they transformed into frontier sovereigns. In the Borderlands, Blackdom was a story of people under the conditions of American Blackness, who devised a legal way to achieve God’s sovereignty. Full manifestation of Blackdom included physical and spiritual autonomy; land and wealth accumulation were a few of the opportunities to directly experience God’s promise. The Afrocentric autonomy project opened new and profound opportunities beyond simple profit-taking. In the Afro-Frontier of Chaves County, an all-Black municipality elevated believers/doers to sovereigns.

Blackdomites envisioned a 10,000-person county of Black folks. According to the Articles of Incorporation, the Blackdom Thirteen bought stock to form the company. In 1903, the Blackdom Townsite Company became one of the newest institutions within the Black community of Chaves County. However, unlike for a church or a school, the effort necessary to be successful required belief and, eventually, a lifestyle change. Half of the Blackdom Thirteen were in a position to develop a new town from the ground up. In the case of 1903 Blackdom, it seems as though there was little to no commitment from its founders. Four were absent from public accounts such as census records but remained with the thirteen names on the Articles: Charles W. Clifton, Benjamin Harrison, George White, and Joseph Cook. Although the Blackdom project had thirteen men listed on its public documents, there was no record of anyone homesteading explicitly for the purpose of building Blackdom before 1909.

The objectives were as follows:

Article III

To establish a Negro colony and to found and erect the town of Blackdom, and to lay off the lands covered by said town into a townsite under the laws of the Territory of New Mexico and to lay out additions thereto, and to plat said townsite and additions into blocks, lots, streets, alleys, avenues, commons, parks and public grounds and to own, hold, sell, and convey said lots and blocks and improve the same.

To purchase, sell, improve, cultivate and colonize lands in connection with the matter mentioned in paragraph 1 of these purposes.

To purchase, build, erect, construct and operate one or more irrigation plants by means of a system of artesian wells, or appropriating the now unappropriated waters of any natural stream in the County of Chaves and Territory of New Mexico and the construction of reservoirs, canals, ditches and pipes for the purposes of irrigation and reclamation of lands, and the sale of waters and water rights in connection therewith.

To maintain and establish irrigated farms and to handle, sell and dispose of the products thereof.

To establish a system of education among the inhabitants of the town of Blackdom and surrounding country and to improve the health, welfare and prosperity of such inhabitants.

In general it is proposed to gain control of a large body of land in the County of Chaves and Territory of New Mexico under the laws of the United States of America and there to establish and maintain a colony of Negroes by means of the cultivation of crops, the growing of town and settlements and the general improvement of the inhabitants of such colony; to build, erect and equip schoolhouses, colleges, churches and various educational and religious institutions for the improvement and upbuilding of the moral and mental condition of said colony.

Notable in Article IV, Blackdom Townsite Company’s incorporation documents, is “Capital Stock: That the amount of capital stock of this corporation shall be ten thousand dollars, which shall be divided into five thousand shares of the par value of two dollars each.”

The Blackdom Thirteen

On September 5, 1903, Blackdomites established their intentions as a company and invested. The collective projections of Blackdom encouraged Blackdomites to advance the cause. Black folks, who were a permanent underclass in Roswell, became co-founders of a new “Exclusive Negro Settlement.” Under the guise of municipality, through incorporation of the Blackdom Townsite Company, Blackdomites became rulers of their own domain—from second-class citizenship to land lordship.

There were Black people who homesteaded before Blackdom was an idea in Chaves County. Incorporation served as a declaration of frontier sovereignty for all who believed and solidified the authority of Black folks to project their new reality. According to Article VI, “Provided however, that until such town is established the business of said company shall be transacted in the town of Roswell, in the County of Chaves and Territory of New Mexico.” Blackdomites did not wait for the town to be built before they declared their autonomy; again, belief was all that was necessary to be a Blackdomite. Thirteen Black men signed Blackdom Townsite Company’s articles of incorporation. Women were significant in a Black folks–centered microcosm of a patriarchal hegemonic society. Amongst themselves as town’s people, they negotiated their worth and position. The newest influx of Black people motivated the earlier wave of migrants to consider township. Separate-and-equal, Black people were allowed to fully engage the macro marketplace behind the veil of legal authority. The investment of capacity, time, money, and resources in service to the idea of Blackdom was a gamble on rains that often didn’t come.

Burrel Dickerson

Five of the Blackdom Thirteen ascended to Afrotopia in the form of homestead patents, connected to the idea of Blackdom. Six of them were homesteaders by 1908. Burrel Dickerson, however, was a homesteader prior to the establishment of Blackdom. Isaac Jones, Charles Childress, John Boyer, Frank Boyer, and Daniel Keys all homesteaded on 160 acres of land, the maximum allotment at the time. The treasurer and co-founder of Blackdom Townsite Company, Burrel Dickerson, completed his final homestead proof on August 4, 1890. Isaac and Charles were residents in Roswell and watched the town grow exponentially—economically and socially—around Burrel’s quarter of a square mile of the city. Burrel financially benefited from the growth and served as a model for the Blackdomite homestead class. He was also proof of the potential for conversion on desert prairies into power, capital, and sovereignty.

Burrel Dickerson had become an early homesteader in the development of the newly incorporated City of Roswell that transitioned from a village on April 25, 1903. Possibly, Isaac Jones was inspired by these events; he began his homestead paperwork the same month. Vice President Jones homesteaded about fifteen miles south of the city on land adjacent to Highway 285. The roads and the nearest train station in newly incorporated Dexter, New Mexico, led 200 miles north in a direct route to Santa Fe. From Blackdom to the territorial capital and home of the Montezuma Freemason Grand Lodge of New Mexico, Blackdomites had direct access to power in a world colonized by Freemasons, railroads, and modern communication. Another possible catalyst for Isaac Jones’s action (as well as the collective decision to locate Afrotopia and themselves in the general area twenty miles south of Roswell), in January 1903, Dexter incorporated as a village. Chaves County was bustling with activity and in September 1903, Blackdomites incorporated.

On October 1, 1903, the Santa Fe New Mexican followed up the story of Blackdom’s incorporation with an in-depth article, “The Blackdom Townsite,” subtitled, “An Exclusive Negro Settlement to be Located in Southern Part of Chaves County”:

A town and settlement exclusively for negroes are being organized in the southern part of Chaves County, within the artesian belt, some few miles from Pecos valley railroad. The promoters of this settlement expect to settle 10,000 people at one time, so as to avoid the enactment of a special law by Congress, debarring anyone but colored settlers from certain townships.

The settlement promoters style themselves the Blackdom Townsite company, and May 1, 1904, has been decided upon as the opening day. The officers of the company which is capitalized at $10,000, are F. M. Boyer, A.M., president; Rev. I. N. Jones, vice president: Professor D. G. Keyes [sic], secretary; and Burrell [sic] Dickerson, treasurer. The address of President Boyer in Dexter, N.M.

While artesian wells are to form the basin of the water supply for the town site, the company expects to operate a large number of irrigation pumps. With pumping system in charge of expert machinists and engineers.

The president of the company has written to the secretary of the bureau of immigration asking for 500 or more of the Chaves County pamphlets. He also wished information regarding pumping systems, and the pumps best adapted to irrigation in New Mexico.

The company is also desires [sic] of securing concessions from the railroads on which their colonists will have to travel. Most of the colonists will come from the South and bring with them cattle and swine. A tanning factory is also to be erected on the Blackdom townsite.6

From Santa Fe, newspapers across the colonized US echoed Blackdom’s Afrotopic striving across America. Blackdomites announced officers who represented the institution.

Isaac Jones

Beyond notions of a US trans-Appalachian West and the centrality of the Mississippi River, in the Borderlands, Mexico’s northern frontier and the Rio Grande River were more helpful tools to orient Blackdom’s narrative. Isaac Jones was born in North Carolina during the US Civil War. In the postbellum period, Isaac migrated to the Borderlands as the US empire lurched westward to establish state and territorial corporatocracies. Isaac Jones went to Texas where he met Mollie, who was ten years younger than he. Mollie agreed to marry in the late 1890s; they had a son and moved to Roswell.7 The resettlement of the Jones family was significant because they transitioned from a Jim Crow Texas to the New Mexico territory. Although the Pecos River was not a recognized border, occupation on the New Mexico side signified in hegemonic society a border that released Black people from the recognizable White supremacist oppression tactics that oozed from incorporated states and local governments.

The Jones family settled on the New Mexican side of the Pecos River, in Roswell. Provided one was willing to stay in the servant class, a Black person had a relatively good chance there to grow old and, possibly, support and raise a family. As a minister, Isaac harbored a longing for Afrotopia as well as income and residual profits. In the time before he was introduced to Blackdom, as a literate Black man in his early forties, he found the city life adequate in the furtherance of its ancestral trajectory from slavery to relative freedom. Behind the corporate veil of Blackdom Townsite Company, Isaac repositioned himself in hegemonic society from colonized/free to colonizer/sovereign. As a Roswellian, Isaac was free to participate in a stable society. As a Blackdomite, Isaac employed his freedom in the creation of a society promised by God to those who believe in the kingdom. Isaac’s beliefs outweighed the enormity of proving up a desert homestead, in part because he found a cohort of similar thinking people. Once “Blackdom” was introduced at the intersection of ambitious Black folks, all who believed became more resilient and bolder in their striving as Blackdom became a matter of faith in a perceived reality.

As vice president of the Blackdom Townsite Company, Isaac Jones was the highest-ranking member to build a homestead before and during the inception of the company. Jones’s existence prior to the advent of the company was typical of Black people in the region. He was born in the South and migrated to the Borderlands, where he married. Living on Kentucky Avenue in Roswell in 1900, Jones was a cook while his wife Mollie worked at home taking care of their six-year-old son.8

Isaac Jones began his homesteading process in April 1903, but homesteading required significant investment of a few thousand dollars with no guarantee of success. Without significant cash reserves, Jones did not have any margin for error, building his homestead with his family in tow. Making a mistake in the choice of crops or any aspect of homesteading would lead to a yearlong march toward economic disaster with very little means of recovery. For several months, he made little progress on his homestead while still working in Roswell.

Charles C. Childress

Charles Childress was one of the Blackdom Thirteen about whom little is known. Charles was, however, the only Blackdom Townsite Company co-founder to begin a homestead patent between the 1903 incorporation and May 1904 scheduled open. A rustic bourgeoisie standardized. The highest Afrotopic achievement was a land patent and membership in Blackdom’s society. Keeping pace with Isaac Jones, Charles Childress succeeded early and completed his homestead in October 1905.9 Blackdomite society separated into those with patents and those looking to do so in the future. The Chaves County Afrotopia developed a third tier in its social strata to include non-homesteaders.

Roswell resident Charles Childress, co-founder of the Blackdom Townsite Company, was mature in age with his peak laborer days behind him. Nevertheless, on October 2, 1905, in less than three years, he completed his first homestead a mile east of highway 285 at Township 013S - Range 025E, Section 24, in Chaves County. Childress’s land was half of the way between Dexter, New Mexico, train station and the Blackdom Townsite official location. Nine years passed before Blackdom had a town square, and Blackdomites all faced different circumstances from age to capacity. Through the Blackdomite system, their united consciousness bore increasingly more fruit each season. However, between 1903 and 1909, the steep learning curve and harsh homesteading conditions may nearly have prevented the first few families from following through with Afrotopia. In the early years, Blackdom was almost a lost cause.

Childress was the only member to file a homestead patent between September 1903 and May 1904 in the afterglow of the Blackdom Townsite announcement. Childress built on his homestead and improved it enough to complete the final stage of the patent process in 1905. Although Charles Childress was the only one of the Blackdom Thirteen immediately to homestead after 1903, it was not to build Blackdom; it was to build “Blackdom.”

John A. Boyer

On August 16, 1907, John Boyer became the first in his family to achieve frontier sovereignty. John was born under the major institutions of US slavery. At the age of 51, he became a homesteader along with wife Pinkie and three sons Porter (11), Ethon (12), and Berry (15). John was born and raised in Pelham, Georgia, on the plantation of Elias Boyer at the start of the US Civil War. Following his younger brother Frank, John migrated to Chaves County and began a life in Roswell, establishing a household on South Main Street. After completing his homestead, he had a ranch in Blackdom at Township 014S - Range 024E, Section 14, in Chaves County and a life in the hub city. His dual reality, as part of Roswell’s servant class, reflected little of his existence as co-founder of an “Exclusive Negro Colony.” His postscript to freedom, separate and equal, set a standard in the Boyer dynasty that followed.

Daniel Keys

Daniel Keys married into the Boyer family, to Frank’s sister. Daniel and Frank homesteaded on two contiguous 160-acre lots, the equivalent of one-half of a square mile. The president of the Blackdom Townsite Company, Frank Boyer, did not seek to begin the homesteading process until 1906, but he did use the name of the somewhat famed Blackdom for his own personal interests before that time. On June 11, 1908, Daniel and Frank completed the homestead process and lived in Afrotopia on land near the Pecos River as well as the Dexter train station. In 1909, all major officers in the Blackdom Townsite Company were landlords in a generalized area. However, growth and public entrance decelerated as the rigors of desert toil dissuaded those with little capacity and/or resources to endure. If drought conditions were not enough to discourage the mostly Southern farmer class of Black migrants to Blackdom, the time constraints and bureaucracy broke the will of unbelievers.

Charles Thompson

Charles (Charlie/Charley) Thompson signed the Blackdom Townsite Company’s Articles of Incorporation. In 1903, Thompson was new to Chaves County and a newlywed; “Blackdom” was a chance for him to build something substantial. With no children, Thompson was a prime candidate for developing “Blackdom.” Living in Roswell, Thompson and his wife Emma, who was a seamstress, had the opportunity to sacrifice one of their incomes to build a desert homestead. Still, they chose not to do so. It was not until the revival of the Blackdom idea that the Thompsons established a homestead near the future townsite. Charlie’s patience proved to be a virtue when he homesteaded at Township 013S - Range 025E, Section 12 in Chaves County’s 13th Draw on January 23, 1914, in the midst of Blackdom’s revival period.

James Jackson

Another co-founder of the Blackdom Townsite Company, James Jackson, was in his sixties when he invested in the idea of “Blackdom.” Jackson, however, was not a prime candidate expected to invest fully due to his advanced age. Because Chaves County was mostly desert prairies, one required significant investment, along with initiative, to drill a well for irrigation among other investments in livestock, feed, and building materials for living quarters. Jackson spent his life as a laborer and could hardly maintain the rigors of desert homesteading for an extended period.

Albert Hubert

For literate Texan and co-founder of the Blackdom Townsite Company Albert Hubert, homesteading was “iffy.” Hubert began his time in Chaves County around 1900 when he was “about 30.” Even though Hubert had a family of his own, in census records he was also identified as the “servant” of the Travis Ellis family. Travis Ellis was a 29-year-old railroad auditor from Kentucky. Travis’s 27-year-old wife Maude was born in Indiana but migrated from Kentucky as well. In 1900, with the help of Hubert, Maude worked from home taking care of two daughters under the age of ten.

Hubert, like most Black people in the county, was securely in the servant class for his entire existence in Roswell. He lived the majority of his years on East Third Street, growing his family every three to five years. When Hubert became a member of the Blackdom Thirteen in 1903, his family consisted of his 20-year-old wife Pearl, his 2-year-old daughter Sadee, and a 9-year-old daughter Bernice from a previous relationship.

By 1920, Hubert’s family comprised of his wife and six children: Bernice (24), Juanita (18), Linwood (14), Valerie (12), Burt (10), and Mattie (7). From 1900 through 1920, he remained a cook as he added to his family. There were very few opportunities for him to change his economic status over the course of his tenure, until the signing of the Blackdom Townsite Company’s Articles of Incorporation in 1903.10

Building the town of Blackdom was an opportunity that required a tremendous amount of work before yielding a profit. Full investment in Blackdom required that one homestead. Hubert never homesteaded and well into his forties was still a cook. For a brief moment, however, the Ellis family cook became a co-founder and board member of New Mexico’s only all-Black townsite company. Nevertheless, Hubert decided to continue focusing his attention on providing for his family rather than investing in the Black colonization venture.

In 1920, Hubert was a 48-year-old hotel cook still living on East Third Street. In 1903, Albert Hubert was one of thirteen founders of the Blackdom Townsite Company who didn’t fully invest and stayed “a servant” his whole life. According to three decades of census records, Albert was a stable head of household in Chaves County, New Mexico. Abiding was no easy feat. Albert’s life strategy sustained him as a Black man at the chaotic intersection of Mexico’s northern frontier and America’s western frontier, as borders crossed people.

Blackdomites occupied space virtually by maintaining a home “in town” and proving up a homestead connected to the idea of Blackdom. At the will of the people, dual existence allowed Blackdom to assemble, disassemble, and reassemble. Blackdom’s nimble concept allowed the township to weather times of tumult and thrive in boom times. In 1914, Blackdom Townsite’s original forty-acre plot was officially patented, but the process began in 1909 after a lackluster attempt in 1903. The homestead class dictated Blackdom Township’s agenda; meanwhile, the townsite languished for years while they struggled to produce a sovereign life on subsistence dry farming. Many Black folks had to leave their families on homesteads for long periods of time to make ends meet. Albert’s side hustle in the city became his main hustle, and Blackdom Township lost him to a consistent paycheck as well as the responsibility to his blossoming family.