Black History Month
Join the Celebration!
In celebration of Black History Month, Estrella Mountain Community College (EMCC) presents cultural and community events that honor the achievements of Black people and the importance of civil rights in America.
EMCC will be hosting a broad range of Black History Month events throughout February that feature learning, discussion, and support. See above for the full calendar of events.
Looking back at Allenville — Buckeye’s all-Black community
In honor of Black History Month, we’re looking back at Allenville, an all-Black community that lived in harmony from 1944 until 1978 when a devastating flood forced everyone to abandon the one-square-mile town for good...
Did you know...
One in four cowboys in the Southwest was Black? The most famous Black cowboy was Nat Love, whose autobiography was published in 1907.
Born into slavery in 1854, Love left Nashville, Tennessee at 15 years old and headed West. He decided to make his way to Dodge City, Kansas, a trip of about 900 miles, which he says he made “by walking and occasional lifts from farmers going my way." He had developed a talent for breaking horses, and he was able to use this ability to make a living in Dodge City and further West.
Love began working for the Pete Gallinger company, located on the Gila River in Southern Arizona, in 1872. Love explains that he “became one of their most trusted men” and “soon became well known among the cowboys[,] rangers, scouts and guides” he encountered along the cattle trails he followed from the Gila River to western Texas.
While Love was able to make a good living as a cowboy, historian Deborah M. Liles explains that the prevalence of Black cowboys in the West was no coincidence. She explains that slave narratives, letters, and journals describe how enslaved men, women, and children were often responsible for tending to cattle in the deep South, and they “used these valuable skills after emancipation in the era of the great cattle drives.” In fact, it is estimated that there may have been more than 9,000 working Black cowboys in the West in the 1880s.
To read a digital version of Nat Love's autobiography, visit https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/natlove/natlove.html.
Sundown Towns
Although they may at first blush sound vaguely pleasant, for Black Americans, sundown towns represent the worst threats of human existence—violence, injustice, and death.
The term “sundown” means, plainly, that Black Americans would face violence, unlawful arrest, or death if they remained in the town after dark.
In the early and mid-20th century, some towns, including Tempe, Scottsdale, and Prescott, put up offensive and threatening signs that warned Black travelers and workers to leave by dark. Other towns weren’t so forthright, which meant Black Americans had to quickly discover the threat levels or face violence.
The Arizona Territory had started as a Confederate outpost before being taken over by Union forces and claimed as a Union territory in 1863. But the switch from Confederate to Union did not guarantee freedom for Arizona’s Black residents, since many early settlers in Arizona were white Confederate transplants from the slave-owning South. These settlers brought their culture and prejudices with them to the desert Southwest.
In fact, just three years before it became a state, in 1909, Arizona passed a series of segregation and Jim Crow laws that made it illegal for Black and white people to share educational facilities or public places like restaurants and parks, and it required that all potential voters take a literacy test before being registered to vote.
These laws stayed on the books in Arizona until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but there are, even today, some towns in Arizona where it is not safe for our Black students and employees to travel.
To learn more about sundown towns, visit https://sundown.tougaloo.edu/sundowntowns.php.