OTTUMWA, Ia. —The Iowa caucus season is reviving a century-old story, about a long-lost town near here where thousands of African-American miners from the South lived side-by-side with poor white immigrants from Europe.
People all over Iowa are learning about the ghost town of Buxton from U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, who is running for president. In campaign stops, the New Jersey Democrat often describes his family’s experiences in the southeast Iowa community, which sprang up in 1900 and disappeared less than 25 years later.
“My family came here as immigrants from a far-off land called Alabama,” Booker jokes to Iowa voters.
His great-great-grandmother, Adeline McDonald, was a widow, struggling to raise 10 kids, he said. The family wanted to escape the poverty and racial oppression of Alabama. They heard they would be welcomed in Buxton, founded by a coal company known for treating black miners fairly.
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McDonald took a chance, moving to Iowa with nine of her children. They found the claims about Buxton were true, Booker tells Iowa audiences.
“In Buxton, you had these European immigrants and black migrants from the South, who all joined together in an integrated community,” he said Saturday in Ottumwa, about 30 miles southeast of the Buxton site. “…They went down in the coal mines together, trying to scratch from that earth a living for their families, their American dream.”
When a miner died, other workers wouldn’t attend the funeral, Booker said. Instead, they would work all day and donate their wages to the mourning family, no matter which race they were.
Buxton residents also held community quilting bees, he said.
“It is literally and metaphorically a story of America,” he said. “People with different backgrounds — Eastern European, western European, African — bringing together their stitches of cloth, unique and distinctive, but using the string and their hands to weave it together into one fabric.”
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Rachelle Chase, who wrote two books about Buxton, is pleased to see Booker draw attention to the story. The town existed fewer than 25 years, but it showed how Americans of different races can live together with the right leadership, she said.
“It’s not just a feel-good story about something that happened in the past,” Chase said in an interview.
Railway roots
The town was founded in 1900 by the Consolidation Coal Co., which was owned by the Chicago & North Western Railway. The region was dotted with coal mines, where workers dug up fuel for railroad steam engines and other uses.
The company began recruiting black workers from the South in the late 1800s. The first few hundred workers were brought to southeast Iowa as strikebreakers, Chase wrote. After labor strife eased, black workers continued to migrate to Monroe County and neighboring areas, where they were hired as full-fledged mine workers.
African-Americans made up fewer than 1 percent of Iowa’s overall population at the time. But thousands were attracted to the Albia area by Consolidation Coal’s policy of paying equal wages and offering the same accommodations to workers of all races, Chase wrote.
The coal company, looking to attract and keep miners, purchased 10,200 adjoining acres in Monroe and Mahaska counties, where it set up the planned community of Buxton. The town was named after the family managing the company, which spent $6 million on buildings, mine equipment and mining rights, Chase wrote.
From the outset, she said, the company made clear that white and black workers would live and work together.
“The Buxtons would not accept racism and intolerance,” Chase said. “If you could not handle that, you were gone.”
Within a few years, the town had at least 5,000 residents. More than half, including many community leaders, were black. The Iowa Bystander, a newspaper for black Iowans, described it as “The Negro Athens of the Northwest,” Chase wrote.
Other residents included immigrants from Sweden, Slovakia, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Italy.
Buxton soon had three elementary schools, a high school, several parks and a YMCA. Residents formed a brass band and several sports teams. They attended 11 churches, including eight predominantly black congregations. Alcohol was prohibited.
Five-room houses rented for $7 per month, Chase wrote. The homes were well constructed, and the company kept them freshly painted and repaired.
“This was much different than other coal mining towns, in which residents lived in little more than hastily constructed shacks,” she wrote. Workers also were given the option of leasing land for 50 cents per acre per month, so they could build their own homes.
‘Maybe they just didn’t have time to fight over anything’
The interracial town sprang up amid racial tensions in much of the country. The Ku Klux Klan was gaining strength, including in southern Iowa, Chase wrote. But the people of Buxton got along with few racial problems.
Dave Johnson, treasurer of the Monroe County Historical Society, speculated on the reason for the residents’ cooperative spirit.
“I think they were so busy working — they worked six days a week and it was tough, tough work. Maybe they just didn’t have time to fight over anything,” said Johnson, whose father was born in Buxton to a Swedish immigrant family.
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The mines around Buxton ran out of coal in the early 1920s, and the town was dissolved. Several buildings burned down. Others were moved to nearby towns. The rest were left to decay.
Little is left of Buxton today but a few old foundations and a small cemetery. The Monroe County Historical Society leases 5 acres where the downtown used to stand. The group keeps the grass mowed, and it doesn’t mind if sightseers stop by, Johnson said. The Historical Society also has an exhibit about Buxton at its museum in Albia.
Chase first heard about Buxton in 2008, while she was visiting friends in southern Iowa. Although she has no family ties there, she became so enthralled with the story that she moved from California to Iowa so she could research it.
Chase, whose day job is as a business consultant, now lives in Ottumwa. She has published two non-fiction books on Buxton, and she plans to write a historical novel set there. She also hopes to help erect a small visitors’ center at the site, which is already listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Booker’s Buxton ties
Several members of Booker’s family moved to central Iowa after Buxton folded. His grandmother was raised in Des Moines, and he still has relatives in the area. He often points them out in crowds when they attend his campaign appearances.
Booker said in an interview that he sees the Buxton story as more than an opportunity to brag about his Iowa roots. The Iowa town became a steppingstone for his impoverished ancestors. “I owe so much of my existence to the fact that they found solid ground in Iowa,” he said.
Booker is focusing his campaign on a pledge to unify the country, at a time when many Americans are fractured over political lines. He portrays Buxton as a place where even people who are struggling can welcome strangers into their midst.
“For my family at least, it was this ideal of what our country really stands for,” he said. “We’re not a nation bound by a common ancestry or a common religion, but we’re really bound by a common cause, a common purpose.”
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Buxton details
The ruins of Buxton are in a field about 11 miles north of Albia, on the border of Monroe and Mahaska counties. The sparse site at 6464 102nd Lane is maintained by the Monroe County Historical Society. The group also has a display about Buxton at its museum in Albia, which is open from 1 to 4 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays from May through October. At other times, visitors can request tours of the museum by calling 641-932-7046. Information about Buxton also is available at lostbuxton.com.
