Black History : History's Lost Black Towns

[Amnat77]

Blackdom, N.M.: The Black Ghost Town

Located southwest of Roswell, Blackdom, established by Frank and Ella Louise Boyer, was the first all-black settlement in New Mexico. The heyday for the town was around 1908, when there were about 300 residents. They had set up a post office, a blacksmith, stores, a hotel and the Blackdom Baptist Church, which also served as the schoolhouse. By the 1920s a severe drought led settlers to abandon the town.

 

[cherryblossom]

Fazendeville was a small community in Saint Bernard Parish, Louisiana (USA) which was dismantled in the 1960s.

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1951 United States Geological Surveymap showing Fazendeville and its geographic relationship to the Chalmette Battleground and the town of Chalmette.​

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Fazendeville was located on land that had been a portion of the battlefield of The Battle of New Orleans, between the Chalmette National Cemetery and the Chalmette monument.
In 1854 the land was listed as part of the succession of Jean Pierre Fazende, a "free man of color", and was inherited by his son of the same name. At the end of the American Civil Warthe younger Fazende divided what had been agricultural land into lots and sold them to recently freed slaves.
The African-American community was started by 1867, with the Battle Ground Baptist Church established on 16 April 1868.
The self-contained community had its own general stores, a one-room schoolhouse which taught first through eighth grades, two benevolent societies and the Battle Ground Baptist Church. The main street was Fazendeville Road, which ran from St. Bernard Highway to the River Road which formerly ran along the base of the Mississippi levee.
The community ended in 1964 when the St. Bernard Parish Government expropriated the rights to the land for expansion of the park around the battlefield site. Allegations were made at the time (and continue to be made) that the expropriation was motivated at least as much to displace the Parish's largest concentration of African Americans as for need to expand the park.
More than 50 families were forced to relocate when the National Park Service obtained the land. Fazendeville Road was closed on 24 November 1964 and the demolition of Fazendeville was completed in 1966.
Some of those families relocated to the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans, and built a new "Battleground Baptist Church" there in 1964. That area was severely damaged in Hurricane Betsy in 1965 and even more so by the Hurricane Katrina levee failure disaster of 2005.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fazendeville,_Louisiana

 

[Omowale Jabali]

Blackdom, N.M.: The Black Ghost Town

Located southwest of Roswell, Blackdom, established by Frank and Ella Louise Boyer, was the first all-black settlement in New Mexico. The heyday for the town was around 1908, when there were about 300 residents. They had set up a post office, a blacksmith, stores, a hotel and the Blackdom Baptist Church, which also served as the schoolhouse. By the 1920s a severe drought led settlers to abandon the town.

Frank and Ella Boyer.