New Buxton Book Just Released!

Available now at Amazon, Arcadia Publishing, Barnes & Noble and more! I’m excited to announce CREATING THE BLACK UTOPIA OF BUXTON, IOWA—published by The History Press—was released January 28, 2019. While LOST BUXTON, my 2017 release published by Arcadia Publishing, was a pictorial history of Buxton told primarily in the words of former residents and newspaper […]

Buxton’s Emancipation Day Celebrations Didn’t Commemorate Juneteenth

Juneteenth, celebrated on June 19th, commemorates the end of slavery—specifically, June 19, 1865, the day Union soldiers traveled through Galveston, Texas announcing that the Civil War had ended and enslaved African Americans were free. While I have not yet found any indication of Juneteenth celebrations in Buxton, I discovered that Buxton residents (and other Iowans) […]

Madam CJ Walker

Madam C.J. Walker Visited Buxton, Iowa in 1918

While anxiously awaiting Netflix’s release of “Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madame C.J. Walker,” the question popped into my head, “Had Madam C.J. Walker ever visited Buxton, Iowa?” The question was a plausible one. People—especially African Americans—beyond Iowa had heard of this amazing town. Buxton was a coal mining town of 5,000 residents […]

Lottie Armstrong

Lottie Armstrong: African American VP, Director and Stockholder in Buxton Bank

Lottie Armstrong Baxter, a daughter of successful African American businessman Hobe Armstrong, was born in Muchakinock, Iowa in March 1876. When she was fifteen, she graduated from a business school and began her career with the Consolidation Coal Company, first working as a secretary for superintendent J.E. Buxton. On February 27, 1901, she married John […]