Tullahassee

Tullahassee is counted the oldest surviving All-Black town of Indian Territory, and it grew where a school changed hands. The Muscogee (Creek) Nation opened the school in 1850 along the ruts of the Texas Road. As Creek Freedmen near it increased and Creek families declined, the national council transferred its Indian students to another school and gave Tullahassee to the Freedmen on October 24, 1881. The Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway line through town helped draw settlers. The population, steady near two hundred for decades, fell to 145 in 1970, and the April 2020 census counted 95 residents.

What the plaque says

Tullahassee All-Black Towns of Oklahoma History of Tullahassee By 1850, Presbyterian missionaries established the Tullahassee Manual Labor School under rules and guidelines set by the Muscogee (Creek) National Council. After a fire destroyed the main school building in 1880, the council designated Tullahassee a school for Muscogee (Creek) and Seminole Freedmen. The school reopened in 1883, and the population of Freedmen and their descendants grew near the mission site. A post office for Tullahassee was established in 1899. Lewis E. Willis was the first postmaster. In 1902, A. J. Mason and L. C. Hardridge incorporated the Tullahassee Townsite Company and advertised town plots for sale. The townsite was platted in 1907. A business district developed that included the A. J. Mason Building (built 1912), which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The African Methodist Episcopal Church acquired the Tullahassee mission site and established Flipper-Key-Davis University, the only private Black institution of higher education in Oklahoma until it closed in 1936. The population of Tullahassee reached approximately 200 people by 1920 and held steady at this figure through the mid-twentieth century. In 1939, the Works Projects Administration (WPA) constructed Carter G. Woodson School. The school closed in 1990 following consolidation with a neighboring district. The All-Black Towns of Oklahoma All-Black towns first emerged in Indian Territory after the Civil War, when Freedmen (those formerly enslaved by the Five Tribes) settled together for mutual protection and economic security. During the forced subdivision of tribal lands into individually owned parcels, a process known as allotment, many Freedmen selected allotments next to each other. African Americans also migrated to Oklahoma to participate in the Land Run of 1889 and other land openings. Edwin P. McCabe, who founded the All-Black town of Langston, urged thousands of African Americans to participate in the land runs. African Americans established more than fifty identifiable All-Black towns in Oklahoma by 1920, a number unparalleled in any other region of the United States. Most towns were rural centers that provided a market to Black farmers who raised livestock or grew cotton and other crops in the surrounding area. African Americans created their own communities for several reasons. They sought to live free from the prejudice and violence they encountered in other regions, notably the Deep South. The opportunity to own land was another incentive, as was the ability to depend upon neighbors for assistance. Settlement within a town brought benefits such as owning a business, establishing a church, or participating in a social organization. Migration to Oklahoma and the creation of All-Black towns represented an attempt to achieve individual and social advancement amid a racially segregated society. Text and images provided by the Oklahoma Historical Society (2024).

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Gibson Historic Site — 11 mi
  The army's first post in what became Oklahoma, built at Three Forks in 1824, where removed nations arrived; deeded to the Cherokee in 1857, it later housed the Dawes Commission.
• Honey Springs Battlefield — 22 mi
  The July 17, 1863 battlefield on the Texas Road, the largest fight in Indian Territory, where Cherokee and Muscogee regiments fought on both sides and the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry held.

More markers nearby

• Tullahassee Mission — 2.0 mi
• Chief Pushmataha — 2.0 mi
• Wigwam Neosho — 2.0 mi
• Fort Davis — 6.6 mi