Oklahoma’s all-Black towns formed a distinctive chapter in American history as African American men and women built and governed their own communities in greater numbers than anywhere else in the nation. They grew after the Civil War as former slaves of the Five Civilized Tribes settled together for protection and economic security, and when tribal lands were allotted, many Indian freedmen chose land beside other African Americans, creating prosperous farming communities that could support towns. After the 1889 land run opened more land to non-Indian settlement, African Americans from the Old South rushed into the new territory for free land, and leaders such as Edwin McCabe promoted all-Black settlement, helping establish many communities on the rich topsoil of the territory and state. These towns prospered until the 1920s, then gradually declined under Jim Crow voting restrictions, the Great Depression, and movement from farms to cities after World War II, though a few still survive as a legacy of economic and political freedom. Clearview was founded in 1903 along the Fort Smith and Western Railroad and was first called Lincoln. The community quickly developed institutions and businesses, including a newspaper that began as The Lincoln Tribune and became the Clearview Patriarch, a Lincoln Townsite Company formed by J.A. Roper, Lemuel Jackson, and John Grayson to attract settlers, a general store and real estate venture organized by Grayson and Roper, a sawmill and lumberyard owned by Roper, a two-story hotel, a printshop, a brick school, and two churches. Grayson served as the town’s first postmaster. Around 1911 J.E. Thompson moved to Clearview, and by 1914 he told Booker T. Washington at a Business League meeting that he owned or managed 5,800 acres in Okfuskee County. In 1916 J.C. Leftwich opened a Creek and Seminole agricultural college northeast of town that operated for four years. Clearview’s population was 618 in 1907, 420 by the late 1930s, and 47 in 1990, and its early business owners and community leaders included numerous residents such as Mr. Sharp, L.W. Warren, Ernest Lynwood, J.C. Leftwich, A.M. Tomkins, L.H. Haynes, Susie Haynes, Mr. Ewing, Rev. C.F. Brokenburr, Charly Porter, Maggie Chilton, Mattie Lucas, Lincoln Gamil, Caroline Samuel, Lula Mayberry, West Mayberry, Mr. Norwood, Mr. Evans, Ruth Jones, Hattie Wright, Ruby Osborn, Elizabeth Gresham, Jessie Johnson, Rev. H.L. Marina, Nannie Talton, Langston Bush, and A.T. Golden.
