Acres of Aspiration: The All-Black Towns of Oklahoma, Paperback/Hannibal B. Johnson

Beulah Land. Paradise. Shangri-la. Oklahoma seemed to be all of these in the hostile, racist, post-Civil War South. Seeking both refuge and respect, pioneers such as Edward P. McCabe championed the idea of Oklahoma as an all-Black state. And all-Black towns proliferated there. Some sixty all-Black towns, along with Tulsa's Greenwood District, bear witness to the deep creativity and incredible human spirit of the people who built them.