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Quote of the Week…“The destruction of our national monuments only impoverishes our sense of history.”
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The Seminole State College GEAR UP grant program team would like to congratulate Wetumka student Jackson Reid for being one of eight students selected to attend the 2020 National Council for Community and Educational Partnerships (NCCEP) Youth Leadership Summit (YLS) that was to be held in Washington DC in the month of July. The focus of YLS is to help students identify and maximize their leadership skills, create a national network of peers, and obtain the tools and training to make positive change happen in their communities and around the world. The eight students selected were among 200 out of 100,000 students across the U.S. invited to attend the summit. The application was rigorous including two essays. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, NCCEP notified the Seminole State College GEAR UP program on May 18th that the Youth Leadership Summit would be cancelled. Please help us congratulate and commend Jackson Reid for his hard work and dedication. Jackson is the son of Darrell and Jennifer Reid.
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Mickie Lee Roark, 76, of Fitzhugh, Oklahoma passed away Saturday, July 11, 2020 in Fitzhugh.
Read moreThe All-Black towns of Oklahoma represent a unique chapter in American history. Nowhere else, neither in the Deep South nor in the Far West, did so many African American men and women come together to create, occupy, and govern their own communities. From 1865 to 1920 African Americans created more than fifty identifiable towns and settlements, some of short duration and some still existing at the beginning of the twenty-first century. For the next several weeks, we will focus on the following surviving towns, also known as the Thirteen Original All-Black Towns of Boley, Brooksville, Clearview, Grayson, Langston, Lima, Red Bird, Rentiesville, Summit, Taft, Tatums, Tullahassee, and Vernon.
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Tullahassee is considered the oldest of the surviving All-Black towns of Indian Territory. In 1850, Reverend R. M. Loughridge opened the Tullahassee Mission, a Creek Nation school, along the ruts of the Texas Road. The school was established as an educational institution in the Creek Nation, Indian Territory. Near the school, a large population of Creek freedmen was increasing while the Creek Indian population was decreasing. The school was destroyed by fire in 1880 and rebuilt in 1883. The Creek council decided to transfer their Indian students to another school and gave Tullahassee Mission to the freedmen on October 24, 1881 and opened it as the Tullahassee Manual Labor School to educate their former slaves. Three African Americans, Henry C. Reed, Snow Sells, and Sugar George were appointed trustees of the school. In 1899, the all-black town was established near the Tullahassee Mission which is was named after. It was located northwest of Muskogee in Wagoner County and was incorporated in 1902 and planted in 1907.
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