Timothy E. Nelson insists. The Santa Fe–based historian introduces his book about the early 20th-century Black homesteader colony in Chaves County with the simple fact of its onetime existence 15 miles south of Roswell—because, in Nelson’s retelling, even his own brother thought he made the town up. (Never mind the decade of research Nelson did to write his doctoral dissertation on the place for the University of Texas at (Texas Tech University Press), Nelson sifts through the historical record and finds it lacking, particularly the long-held notion that Blackdom was a failed Afrotopian experiment. New source materials now suggest that the oil-rich town built generational wealth for its Black founders. Along with his speaking engagements, Nelson’s company, Blackdom Productions LLC, is devoted to increasing awareness of the history, spirit, and resonance of this frontier boomtown.
