Langston City Herald: Race and Representation in the Construction of a Black Promised Land

Abstract

The ratification of the 13th amendment and the emancipation of African-Americans from slavery radically transformed the Reconstruction-era American landscape. Black southerners seeking to flee the institutional oppression of the south and its Jim Crow laws fled to places like Kansas and Oklahoma to form their own communities and give life a fresh start. These communities were called �all-black towns� and were established from the 1880s through the early 1900s across the American West in an effort to create socially, politically, and economically autonomous black communities. No other state or territory had as many of these all-black towns as Oklahoma Territory, with more than 50 dotting the landscape. Of these, Langston City rose to prominence due to the publication of a newspaper called The Langston City Herald, which was circulated throughout the Deep South. My research analyzes these newspapers to understand how Langston was represented as a black utopia and a racial haven from southern oppression. Importantly, I place this representation within the context of Booker T. Washington�s racial ethos and explore the role of Christianity in constructing a compelling racialized narrative about Langston. Ultimately, my results demonstrate the heavy influence of Washington�s identity politics and the Christian influence is so strong that I suggest Langston be thought of as an historical �black promised land.�