Starting before statehood, Oklahoma has been home to more than 50 all-Black towns and settlements. Around a dozen still remain, but many have faded due to urbanization, redlining and Jim Crow laws. A new project shares firsthand accounts from residents of these lost Black neighborhoods in the OKC metro.
The new oral history project titled "Oklahoma City's Forgotten Black Communities: Where safe spaces, equity, culture, and creativity lived," works to preserve these stories and honor OKC's history.
The project is a partnership between OKC Arts, the Oklahoma Oral History Research Project at Oklahoma State University Libraries and the Oklahoma Black Museum and Performing Arts Center.
The groups worked together to identify residents with stories about these neighborhoods that no longer exist, including West Town, Sandtown and Walnut Grove.
One of the residents they spoke with is Marvin Steele. He and his eight siblings lived in the historically all-Black neighborhood of West Town in the 1940s. He's one of the many interviewees who reminisced on these tight-knit communities.
"It was this little Black town," Steele said. "Get outside of it, you're in a different world. It made us stronger. It made us more together."
Stories like Steele's help to capture not only the kinship created in these communities, but also some of the experiences of Black youth in early Oklahoma.
The stories are available for watching or listening on YouTube or the Oklahoma State University Library Digital Collections' website.
This report was produced by the Oklahoma Public Media Exchange, a collaboration of public media organizations. Help support collaborative journalism by donating at the link at the top of this webpage.
