Dr. Kalenda Eaton, a Professor in the Clara Luper Department of African and African American Studies at the University of Oklahoma, is reconnecting Oklahoma’s past with the present through data collection and technology combined to create an accessible digital platform and archival database chronicling a part of the state’s connection to federal homesteading history.
In 2021, Dr. Eaton became the director of the Oklahoma Black Homesteader project, supported by funding from the National Park Service, the Center for Great Plains Studies (University of Nebraska-Lincoln), and seed funding from the Data Institute for Societal Challenges (DISC) at the University of Oklahoma. The DISC funding helped her research team identify, locate, and assess historical land ownership data in rural African American communities in western Oklahoma from 1889-1920.
Bringing Historical Settlement into Current Conversations
Dr. Eaton’s project focuses on the role Oklahoma Territory played in the federal land distribution program known as the Homestead Act. For thousands of people across the nation and in parts of Europe, Oklahoma territory was seen as a “land of opportunity” for farming, entrepreneurship, and self-sufficiency. Across 30 counties, the Oklahoma Black Homesteader project charts the inward migration of African Americans from other states and territories, locates areas in Oklahoma where many settled, and uses the data to uncover information about family size, distribution of labor, literacy rates, and gender roles, among other details.
“Through this research, we have a more nuanced understanding of Oklahoma’s role in tribal displacement, Black rural land ownership, and federal policies affecting environmental sustainability throughout the region,” said Dr. Eaton. “Viewing this movement through the lens of African American homesteaders provides a deeper understanding of freedom, national emigration patterns, social attitudes and norms in Oklahoma territory, and agricultural customs and practices relevant to current policies.”
The public-facing project builds on Dr. Eaton’s research and publications in African American migration and community-building in the Great Plains and larger western states and territories throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
An important part of the project is an in-progress digital site where the public can find homesteader names and census data, view an interactive property map, access interviews with descendants, learn more about the historical period and former communities through online exhibits, and access sample lesson plans for K-12 teachers.
