¡Colores!; Roosevelt Boyer Jr. at Blackdom : Blackdom
Description:
Roosevelt Boyer Jr. visits the site of his grandmother's house at Blackdom with his wife and granddaughter. He shares his feelings about what he sees and his ansestors who immigrated from Georgia. They also look at a water tank and well with a pump. This is raw footage for ¡Colores! #806 “Blackdom.” Blackdom is the virtually untold story of Black pioneers Frank and Ella Boyer dream to create a “colony” for Black people in the prairie of Southeastern New Mexico. It was a community of 300 people, “The Only Exclusive Negro Settlement in New Mexico” as the official township letterhead stated. Blackdom existed in New Mexico from 1908 to the mid-1920. Walking form Georgia to New Mexico, Francis Boyer left behind the oppression and racial violence of post Civil War Georgia to found this separatist community where he said “there was no one to help us and no one to hinder.” Boyer was a catalyst for change. He believed that Blacks should choose a course of self-determination and fulfill their own destinies. He created Blackdom so his dream could be realized. In the words of historian Andrew Wall, “Boyer was a pathfinder who had the seeds of freedom in his veins and equality at the center of his soul.” The founding of Blackdom was not an isolated event. The story of Blackdom is told in the larger context of the western migration of Blacks from the south after the Civil War.
