I see you Boley

Photographs from one of Oklahoma’s last historic all-black towns

“Welcome to Boley. We don’t got a grocery store. We don’t got a school. But we got a prison.”

About an hour’s drive southwest of Tulsa, Boley is one of the last remaining, predominantly black pioneer towns in Oklahoma. Once one of the wealthiest all-black towns in America, it’s been on a steady decline since losing its school and nearly all of its businesses. Now Boley is in danger of disappearing like the other 37 out of the more than 50 all-black towns that once thrived in Oklahoma. 

This ongoing project attempts to highlight the beauty in a small forgotten town that refuses to give up, and the people in the community who fight to keep their history and future alive.