Buxton

About this book

"From 1900 to the early 1920s, an unusual community existed in America's heartland: Buxton, Iowa, established by the Consolidation Coal Company. The majority of Buxton's five thousand residents were African Americans - a highly unusual racial composition for a state which was over 90 percent white. At a time when both southern and northern blacks were disadvantaged and oppressed, blacks in Buxton enjoyed true racial integration - steady employment, above-average wages, decent housing and minimal discrimination. For such reasons, Buxton was commonly known as 'the black man's utopia in Iowa.' Now, eighty years after the town's demise, this truly interdisciplinary history of a unique Iowa community remains a compelling story."--Jacket.