“Indian Territory Will Be a Colored Man’s Paradise”

This is a headline during in the local paper during the height of the Dawes land allotment process in 1898 and the article does not provide enough contexts to understand the status and history of Chickasaw Freedmen in the nation of their ancestor’s birth.

Clearly the sentiment in the area about formerly enslaved people receiving land from the Chickasaw nation was a hot button topic and the views of the local population was divided along racial lines that was at best dismissive of the process when it involved the enrollment of formerly enslaved people, specifically those enslaved in the Chickasaw Nation. 

 Implied in the article is the idea that “whites” were more deserving of “enrollment” but if you were black and claimed to be a Chickasaw Freedmen you were being given an easier road to a land allotment. 

The last article from this date provides the real thoughts of the community when they viewed the possibility and response to Chickasaw Freedmen receiving a land allotment while “rejecting white Chickasaws.” The idea that “enrolling negroes who claim to be Chickasaws” while “refusing to enroll white Chickasaws” demonstrates how race played a role in determining land allotments and how the simple act of giving Black people land could incite violence by whites.