At the end of the Reconstruction Era in 1877, newly-freed Black Americans' hopes of social, political and economic integration dwindled, and they began to flee west.
Edward McCabe, who would become the Kansas state auditor in 1882, saw it as an opportunity to organize all-Black towns, such as Nicodemus, Kansas, with the eventual goal of making Oklahoma a "Black state."
But recognition of his unfulfilled mission would be largely lost to time.
"I was being beckoned to write about this person who I felt like only existed in the fragments of other people's stories," said Caleb Gayle, author of the recently published book about McCabe, Black Moses: A Saga of Ambition and the Fight for a Black State.
Gayle spoke about his book at the Kansas City Public Library-Central Branch, as part of a series by the Watchdog Writers Group, a journalism fellowship program at the University of Missouri.
"History oftentimes overlooks the people who try really hard and fail," Gayle said. "I think McCabe's lesson is, for all of us, that trying is its own sort of salvation."
- Caleb Gayle, journalist, author, associate professor at Northeastern University and fellow of the Watchdog Writers Group
