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In August 1908, a white mob attacked Springfield, Illinois’s Black community, destroying homes and businesses and lynching two Black men. National outrage over the violence helped spur the movement that created the NAACP the following year.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
The term Freedmen refers to descendants of people of African American descent who were enslaved by what are known as the Five Civilized Tribes. As sovereign nations within the United States, each tribe is at liberty to define their relationship to their Freedmen, with some allowing Freedmen petitions for enrollment in the tribe, and others explicitly forbidding the enrollment of Freedmen or outright disenrolling any that had historically at one point been enrolled. The Chickasaw Nation has never enrolled their enslaved. The term is also applied to those who are descended from those enslaved African descendants who voluntarily joined and/or held kinship with the Seminole Nation, including those who had fled from the Seminole Nation when it adopted the practice of slavery, to Mexico — these people today being known as Mascogos.) The term Freedmen is sometimes applied in literature as encompassing both the enslaved and emancipated, as well as either class' decendants. Freedmen, both enslaved and free, who were amongst these tribes, were forcibly deported alongside members of the tribes from the now-Southeastern United States westward to Oklahoma along the Trail of Tears.
Afro-Indigenous may refer to: Afro-Indigenous peoples – Ethnic groups that are both Black and Indigenous Afro-Indigenous people in Canada – People in Canada of combined African and Indigenous ancestry and identity Black Indians in the United States – Americans with both Indigenous American and Black identities Black Seminoles – Ethnic group Native American Freedmen – Descendants of people of African descent who were enslaved Cherokee Freedmen – People formerly enslaved in the Cherokee Nation and descendants Chickasaw Freedmen – Formerly enslaved African Americans Choctaw Freedmen – Afro-Indigenous ethnocultural group subject to long-term tribal membership dispute Muscogee Freedmen – Muscogee formerly enslaved people and their descendants Garifuna – Indigenous ethnicity in Central America Mascogos – Afrodescendant group in Coahuila, Mexico Miskito Sambu – Ethnic group in Mosquitia, Central America
The Choctaw Freedmen are former enslaved African and African Americans who were emancipated and granted citizenship in the Choctaw Nation after the Civil War, according to the tribe's new peace treaty of 1866 with the United States. The term also applies to their contemporary descendants. Similarly to some other "American Indian" tribes, the Choctaw had customarily held other Indigenous people hostage and at times, negotiated them to be sold through contracts of indentured servitude. The enslaved individuals were at times taken initially as captives from warfare. As they adopted elements of European culture, such as larger farms and plantations, the elite began to adapt their system to purchasing and holding chattel slave workers of African-American and Indigenous descent. Moshulatubbee held slaves, as did many of the European men, generally fur traders, who married into the Choctaw nation. The Folsom and Greenwood LeFlore families were wealthy Choctaw planters who held the most slaves at the time of Indian Removal and afterward. After signing the treaty for Removal, LeFlore withdrew from the Choctaw Nation to stay in Mississippi and take US and state citizenship. He owned 15,000 acres of plantation and 400 enslaved African Americans. Following the American Civil War, the United States negotiated the Treaty of 1866 with the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations as part of Reconstruction. The treaty abolished slavery within both nations and established a process concerning their former enslaved populations. Article 3 provided that the Choctaw and Chickasaw legislatures could enact laws granting qualifying Freedmen citizenship rights within two years. If they did not, the United States agreed to remove those Freedmen who wished to leave the nations and use funds associated with the cession of the Leased District for their benefit. The Choctaw Nation did not enact the citizenship provisions within the two-year period, and Choctaw officials initially declined adoption and requested that the United States carry out the treaty's removal provisions. The federal government did not fully implement that provision. In 1833, the Choctaw General Council passed An Act to Adopt the Freedmen of the Choctaw Nation, granting qualifying Choctaw Freedmen and their descendants citizenship rights within the nation. The current Constitution of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, ratified by Choctaw voters in 1983, defines membership as "Choctaw Indians by blood whose names appear on the final rolls of the Choctaw Nation" and their lineal descendants. During enrollment by the Dawes Commission, individuals were classified on separate rolls, including citizens by blood, intermarried citizens, and Freedmen. The Oklahoma Historical Society states that the Dawes Commission typically enrolled individuals of mixed African and Native ancestry as Freedmen and recorded no Indian blood quantum for them. Under the Choctaw Nation's current membership requirements, descendants whose connection to the Nation is solely through an ancestor enrolled as a Choctaw Freedmen are not eligible for tribal membership. The citizenship status of Choctaw Freedmen remains disputed; advocates have argued that the Treaty of 1866 guarantees citizenship rights, while the Choctaw Nation's Constitution requires descent from a Choctaw by blood enrollee. As of 2025, no tribal or federal court had directly ruled on whether Choctaw Freedmen descendants are entitled to Choctaw citizenship under the Treaty of 1866.
The Cherokee Freedmen are individuals, formerly enslaved in the Cherokee Nation and freed in 1863, and their descendants. They have African ancestry, and many also have Cherokee ancestry, making some Black Indians. Today, descendants of the Cherokee Freedmen on the Dawes Rolls are eligible for citizenship within the Cherokee Nation. During the early 19th century, some Cherokee and other Southeast Native American nations known as the Five Civilized Tribes held African-American slaves as property. Slavery was an important part of the Cherokee economy and culture; by 1860, Cherokee Nation members owned 2,511 slaves, largely taken from the Southeast thirty years before. This slave labor contributed to the redevelopment of Cherokee infrastructure. After the American Civil War, the Cherokee Freedmen were emancipated and allowed to become citizens of the Cherokee Nation in accordance with a reconstruction treaty made with the United States in 1866. In the early 1980s, the Cherokee Nation administration amended citizenship rules to require direct descent from an ancestor listed on the "Cherokee By Blood" section of the Dawes Rolls. The change stripped descendants of the Cherokee Freedmen of citizenship and voting rights unless they satisfied this new criterion. As a result, there were several legal proceedings between the two parties from the late 20th century to August 2017. On August 30, 2017, the U.S. District Court ruled in favor of the Freedmen descendants and the U.S. Department of the Interior, granting the Freedmen descendants full rights to citizenship in the Cherokee Nation. After Justice Shawna Baker of the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court published the opinion, Effect of Cherokee Nation v. Nash & Vann v. Zinke, CNSC-2017-07 in 2021, the Cherokee Nation's Supreme Court ruled to remove the words "by blood" from its constitution and other legal doctrines.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Shirley Chisholm, elected in 1968.