The Ordinary within the Extraordinary: The Ideology and Architectural Form of Boley, an “All-Black Town” in the Prairie

Abstract

In 1908, Booker T. Washington stepped off the Fort Smith and Western Railway train into the town of Boley, Oklahoma. Washington found a bustling main street home to over 2,500 African American citizens. He described this collective of individuals as unified around a common goal, “with the definite intention of getting a home and building up a community where they can, as they say, be ‘free.’” The main street was the physical manifestation of this idea, the center of the community. It was comprised of ordinary banks, store front shops, theaters, and social clubs, all of which connected to form a dynamic cosmopolitan street— an architectural collective form. Each building aligned with its neighbor creating a single linear street, a space where the culture of the town thrived. This public space became a symbol of the extraordinary lives and ideology of its citizens, who produced an intentional utopia in the middle of the prairie. Boley is one of more than fifty “All-Black Towns” that developed in “Indian Territory” before Oklahoma became a state. Despite their prominence, these towns’ potential and influence was suppressed when the territory became a state in 1907. State development was driven by lawmaker’s ambition to control the sovereign land of Native Americans and impose control over towns like Boley by enacting Jim Crow Laws legalizing segregation. This agenda manifests itself in the form and ideology of the state’s colonial towns. However, the story of the state’s history does not reflect the narrative of colonization. Instead, it is dominated by tales of sturdy “pioneers” realizing their role within the myth of manifest destiny. In contrast, Boley’s history is an alternative to this myth, a symbol of a radical ideology of freedom, and a form that reinforces this idea. Boley’s narrative begins to debunk the myth of manifest destiny and contrast with other colonial town forms. This paper explores the relationship between the architectural form of Boley’s main street and the town’s cultural significance, linking the founding community’s ideology to architectural spaces that transformed the ordinary street into a dynamic social space. The paper compares Boley’s unified linear main street, which emphasized its citizens and their freedom, with another town typology built around the same time: Perry’s centralized courthouse square that emphasized the seat of power that was colonizing Cherokee Nation land. Analysis of these slightly varied architectural forms and ideologies reorients the historical narrative of the state. As a result, these suppressed urban stories, in particular that of Boley’s, are able to make new contributions to architectural discourse on the city and also change the dominant narratives of American Expansion.