Founding New Towns, Creating new Opportunities

[Reprinted from Issues & Views Summer 1991]

In an informative and enlightening book, Black Towns and Profit, historian Kenneth Hamilton describes the early origins, development and promotion of five towns that were founded by American blacks between 1877 and 1915. Below are excerpts from his account of the founding of Mound Bayou, Mississippi by Isaiah Montgomery and his family.

Using the promotional skills he learned during his many years as a merchant, [Isaiah] Montgomery first attempted to sell parcels of land to his natural constituency--family members and friends from the Davis Bend area. During the summer of 1887, he persuaded several men to inspect the proposed townsite. They disliked the wilderness location, but Montgomery, "a very good orator," made an impromptu speech appealing to their racial pride and belief in self-help: "Why stagger at the difficulties confronting you? Have you not for centuries burned the miasma and hewn down forest like these at the behest of a master? Can you not do it for yourselves and your children unto successive generations, that they may worship and develop under their own vine and fig tree?"

So effective was his peroration that he convinced the men to stay and investigate further the many opportunities offered by this locale. Eventually, he sold Mound Bayou property to fourteen members of the inspection party.

Two of the purchasers, Joshua P.T. Montgomery and Benjamin Green, Isaiah's cousins, possessed skills and experience that would aid substantially in the development of Mound Bayou. Joshua, born a slave in 1854, had learned to read and write from his master's children. During his teens, he had moved to Davis Bend and later studied law under J.J. Whitney, a Bolivar County lawyer and former Confederate army captain. Joshua practiced law, mechanical and civil engineering, and land surveying.

Green, Isaiah's maternal cousin, also had lived his early years as a slave. After his father's death when Green was 13, he lived and worked with Isaiah's family until he reached the age of 26. During those years, he acquired promotional and managerial skills and held several positions, including manager, with Montgomery and Sons General Store.

Joshua, Benjamin, Isaiah, and 12 other members of the original inspection party left their families behind in the fall of 1887 and returned to the proposed site of Mound Bayou. Under Joshua's and Isaiah's guidance, they surveyed the colony land, designating a 40-acre townsite and 40-acre plots, the minimum amount Isaiah intended to sell as farmland to Mound Bayou settlers.

The pioneers prepared for the arrival of their families by selecting farmsites or, in a few cases, town lots, clearing small areas for gardens, and crafting small log cabins. Isaiah's wife, Martha, and his cousin, Benjamin Green, jointly bought two town lots and 840 acres of land that adjoined three sides of the townsite. One woman, Delia Wilbert, joined her husband at the colony in 1887, but most of the families did not arrive until February 8, 1888. At least 15 more blacks bought land in the colony later that winter.

At the start of the colonization process, Isaiah Montgomery and Benjamin Green formed a legal partnership to open a sawmill, a venture which earned them profits for several years while also helping provide income for other settlers. As they cleared their lands, farmers used Montgomery's and Green's service to turn their wood into building timber, railroad crossties, stove bolts, spoke timber, and other products they could sell to the railroad and other buyers. In many instances, these sales produced money for the settlers' required down payments on their lands or helped Montgomery in his efforts to renegotiate contracts with the railroad for colonists who had fallen behind in payments.

Montgomery's relationship with the railroad gave the partners a head start in launching other money-making ventures. The first three businesses in Mound Bayou belonged to the Montgomery or Green families. In addition to the sawmill, they owned the general store, which Benjamin Green founded in 1888, and the country emporium, which Isaiah and his wife opened the following year. Green located his store and his home in Green's Square, the more northerly of the two townsite blocks belonging to the families. Montgomery named the other block, where he built his own home, Montgomery Square.

Read the rest of the early history of Mound Bayou in Black Towns and Profit, along with the experiences of the black founders of Nicodemus, Kan.; Langston City, Okla.; Boley, Okla.; and Allensworth, Cal. Contact: University of Illinois Press, Champaign, IL; (217) 333-0950.

Copyright 1991 Issues & Views