Why I Developed Black Towns

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In a 2021 New York Times essay, Tom Hanks wrote that despite his lifelong interest in American history, he did not learn about the Tulsa Race Massacre until much later in life. He argued that leaving such events out of our shared history is more than an educational failure—it is a missed opportunity to become a wiser, stronger nation with a fuller understanding of its past.

I agree.

Many Americans now know something about Greenwood, the prosperous Black community in Tulsa that was devastated by a white mob in 1921. But it is easy to assume that Greenwood—often called “Black Wall Street”—was unique.

It was not.

After the Civil War, formerly enslaved people established Black towns and settlements throughout the South and beyond. Starting with little more than their freedom, courage and determination, they acquired land, built homes, opened businesses, founded schools and churches, and created vibrant, self-sufficient communities.

Consider Charles Clark, a man born into slavery who purchased two acres of land in 1871. He built a home, divided the remaining property among other freed people and helped establish Clarksville, now a historic neighborhood in Austin, Texas. It became a place where formerly enslaved people could reunite with their families, direct their own lives and build a community on their own terms.

Or consider Mound Bayou, Mississippi, founded in 1887 by formerly enslaved men led by Isaiah T. Montgomery and Benjamin T. Green. Mound Bayou grew into one of the nation’s largest and most self-sufficient Black towns, with farms, businesses, banks, schools and, eventually, the Taborian Hospital, which provided affordable medical care to thousands of Black residents of the Mississippi Delta.

These communities demonstrate that the history of Black America is not only a history of enslavement, oppression and violence. It is also a history of vision, enterprise, self-determination and extraordinary achievement.

Decades of racial violence, Jim Crow laws, discriminatory public policies and economic neglect caused many Black towns to disappear, decline or be absorbed into larger cities. Others survived and remain living communities today. Their stories deserve to be preserved.

That is why I developed Black Towns.

Black Towns is an archive created to discover, preserve and share the histories of these communities and the people who built them. Some of their stories are surprising. Some are painful. But all of them reveal something important about resilience, determination and the human desire to build a better future.

My hope is that Black Towns will introduce people to a part of American history they may never have encountered—and, by helping us understand our past more completely, offer perspectives that can make us collectively wiser and stronger.

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