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Apr 15, 2007 · In the early twentieth century Boley, Oklahoma was the largest predominantly black town in the United States. Boley was officially opened for settlement in 1903 in Creek Nation, Indian Territory along the Fort Smith and Western Railroad.
Many in search of freedom and better opportunities flocked to Boley and the town grew to become the largest predominantly black town in the United States. During the early part of the 20th century, it was one of the wealthiest Black towns in the nation, according to online reports.
Boley, Indian Territory, is the youngest, the most enterprising, and in many ways the most interesting of the negro towns in the United States. A rude, bustling, Western town, it is a characteristic product of the negro immigration from the South and Middle West into the new lands of what is now the State of Oklahoma.
On 9 March 1905, Boley Progress editor Oniel H. Bradley asserted that the newspaper’s namesake, a black town founded in Creek Nation, Indian Territory, was “the Haven of the Negro.” The editor further predicted that Boley would “ever be the most famous Negro town in the United States.”1 Bradley made these declarations at
BOLEY. Located halfway between Paden and Castle in Okfuskee County, Boley is the largest and most well known of the more than fifty All-Black towns of Oklahoma and one of only thirteen still existing.
Volume 102, Number 4 Fall 2017 African American Migration and Mobility After the Civil War, 1865–1915
Boley is a town in Okfuskee County, Oklahoma, United States. The population was 1,091 at the 2020 Census. [4] Boley was incorporated in 1905 as a predominantly Black pioneer town with persons having Native American ancestry among its citizens. [5]
