(wind whistling) [Ray] Blackdom was the first and only Black settlement in New Mexico.

Blackdom had a post office.

Blackdom had a church.

It was about 17 miles south of Roswell, New Mexico, and it was a community intended for Blacks to have an opportunity to own land.

[Carlyn] I think the founders set out to create a town where Black people did not have to walk around being subservient or feeling like they weren't equal citizens, which was the case in a lot of, hell, all Jim Crow (laughs) towns in the South.

[Dr.

Nelson] During the turn of the 20th century, Black folks were moving out in the Great Migration, moving out of South, moving out of the Midwest, even.

Now they're advertising Blackdom as a refuge for Negroes.

The important part here is no Jim Crow.

You know what it stands for, don't you?

(epic western music) (cowbells) (cattle lowing) [Sarah] Black people were recruited to move here, including my grandfather, and he went to school in Oklahoma.

He was recruited to be a school teacher, but ultimately he started homesteading the 160 that we still have in our family today.

My grandfather's name was Lloyd E. Allen.

E is for Earl.

The government gave him land long as he fulfilled the Homestead Act, which he did.

[Sarah] The Homestead Act was set up to grant certain federal lands to be opened up for occupation.

You had five years.

You had to fence it in, and you had to have a dwelling on it.

The current issue is we've owned the land for over 100 years, paid taxes on it.

But not being there, ranchers come in, and they just build a fence across.

[Sarah] We are bordered on all three sides by one person, and then to the north of us, we are bordered by another owner.

So there is no access because there are no roads or no easements.

We've searched the county, the state and we haven't found the easement that we know that our grandfather used to get to his property.

[Sarah] I've written letters to all the landowners about purchasing an easement.

Some responded.

Some did not.

Actually the only one that did respond, he hired a law firm here in Roswell (laughs) to tell us no.

"After careful considerations, my clients decline your order."

Unfortunately, a lot of this land is owned by people outside of the state that really don't understand the cultural significance of what we're talking about.

So, well within their rights, they've said, "No, you can't cross our property to access your property."

My ancestors would be pretty disappointed that we can't access the land that they left for us.

I don't think this state thinks it's important.

I really don't.

Otherwise, something could have been done and would've been done by now.

[Cliff] Some of the issues are getting the county clerk's office to dig a little deeper.

Let's go open those boxes that are sitting in storage somewhere.

Let's go find old deeds.

Let's see if there's documented on the deed an easement.

We're working on it involving the Department of Cultural Affairs because if we could prove just one property had it, I think we would have a really great argument to access these properties.

[Ray] I'm very proud to be a Blackdom descendant, and that's why I'm, at the age 79, I'm still in the fight since 1970 to try to get on the land, and I'm sure the other families have the same history.

(hinge squeaking) My father told me about this when I was a young boy.

I was probably about 10 or 12 years old, and it was always fascinating to me, but it was very abstract because I never saw it.

I had never been there.

It was always a mystery to us.

[Woman on phone] I read that there's no permits to get on the land, so are you just... Like, what, why are you visiting today?

[Dr.

Nelson] So you have a map-map.

- I have one here.

(Dr.

Nelson laughs) - I need a Google map, that tells me it's for sale!

(laughter) - Okay, so, the airport is right here, right?

So if you go directly south, you should end up at Blackdom.

There should be a black... I am helping the Herron family.

I am showing them how their land is attached to Blackdom.

If you zoom out, you can see all of those light poles.

You can count 'em if you want and see how far your land goes down, but it is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.

- Wow.

[Dr.

Nelson] The Herron family was the single largest land-owning Blackdomite family, and today they still own more than 1,500 acres, so they were significant then, and they're significant now.

[Richard] Right now I'm just taking in the, the magnitude of all this.

(exhales) Well, at the present moment, I want to get clear ownership of it, get with the family and see who's interested in retaining their land, the ones that aren't, if they're willing to sell it to other members of the family.

[Dr.

Nelson] Hopefully the state will start picking up a little urgency so that we can get access to all of Blackdom lands.

(bag rustling) And you wanted a strawberry (bell ringing) and a vanilla.

Moved to Roswell for one primary reason, and that was to get access to our family land.

I was very happy in Arizona, (laughs) but I felt like it was just too hard to travel back and forth, and in just a few days, you couldn't get anything accomplished, so my husband and I felt like we needed to move here in order to actually work on it.

Good morning, everyone.

Sarah speaking.

We are walking down this fence line, and we have now crossed over into our land.

We might have been, I don't know if we was illegal or not, but we went over the gate, and here we are.

Somewhere out here, I'm thinking in this general area, Mama was born, and Grandpa Allen walked or drove a horse and buggy or whatever two miles down that fence line to Blackdom.

It boggles my mind when I think about the cruelty that they endured in the South.

I've experienced racism, but not to the extent that they experienced it.

And they wanted to leave and have a better life.

This is my father.

He was the oldest.

And I look at him, like, I see his face.

You know, I guess he's about 10, maybe 12 there, and they're always dressed to the nines, you know?

Even in this one picture we looked at earlier, I mean, my grandfather's in a tie, you know?

- This is my great-grandma, Velma Herron, and her husband, Adolphus Lightner.

She looks like the matriarch of the family, doesn't she?

(Kiara laughs) Yeah.

[Carlyn] The thing about being an arrivant, especially if you're the descendant of enslaved people, is that you're robbed of how your ancestors viewed land.

What society basically told them was land ownership is how you build wealth, and so Black people are sandwiched in the middle of Native people who were robbed of their land and settlers who took it from them.

My main goal for doing this since I'm retired is because when we get access to the land, the money that I save that I'm setting back from this bakery is gonna help me finance my solar system and my well.

[Ray] They had families.

They had farms.

They had crops until whatever happened to the land.

They couldn't grow crops.

They couldn't do what it took for them to live.

The beginning of the end was when the waters dried up.

[Dr.

Nelson] They had to deal with the vagaries of the desert.

So the economic shift was more to an extractive model.

(horses whinnying) With the 1920s and oil exploration becoming the center of Blackdom's attention, now it becomes a leasing of the land.

In fact, you don't have to even be on your land in order to make money.

[Sarah] My brother, he said he remembers that our grandmother was receiving royalties from the oil company for drilling for oil.

I knew that my grandmother got checks from there.

So that showed their entrepreneur spirit, pooling their money together and trying to still get something out of the land.

I'm hoping that the more families that we can get involved, that maybe that will move higher-ups to say, "Wow, you know, these people really do need to access their land."

There's strength in numbers.

(lively banjo music) Well, Ms.

King, it's a pleasure to meet you.

I understand our ancestors walked the same mile together.

[Sarah] Yes, sir.

It occurred to me, and you guys know more about what's going on in the community down here, was building a solar farm to produce electricity.

- You just touched my heart because I've been saying... But now your land may be conducive to do it.

[Richard] We have a substation on our land.

- Oh, okay.

- Yeah, it's right there, so it's just a matter of- - I wish you were two miles away from us.

(all laughing) - Speaking of which, I would like to exchange numbers so we can have further communication with each other because having, you know, a contact in Roswell is beneficial.

Having boots on the ground would be extremely helpful to us, as long as you guys don't mind.

- We don't mind.

Our forefathers, they came out here for a better world, better opportunity.

[Dr.

Nelson] And found it.

- And found it.

That's the crazy part.

They found it.

- Just to have it stolen away from them again.

That ain't nothing new.

- Unfortunately.

Same game, new players, right?

[Dr.

Nelson] You're the third generation, right?

- Yeah.

That came here, and you still own this?

- Yeah.

To stand on the land.

- Yep.

Yeah, I didn't know if I'd ever see it.

To be here, you know what I'm saying?

- It's different, right?

(laughs) [Ray] It was great to know that my grandfather and grandmother had lived on that land.

They would be enormously proud of us.

We're persevering.

We're not giving up.

(epic western music) Wow, this is amazing, walk where your forefathers walked.

[Carlyn] We know about Blackdom today because people remembered it.

It meant something to them.

It lives on.

In the memories of people, it lives on in its significance, in its meaning to Black New Mexico, Black America.

(epic western music continues)