The Lost Tribe of Black Okies

“…James Dixon sleeps on a 50-year-old bed of iron with a barley sack for a pillow.  The bed isn't quite long enough for his 5-foot, 5-inch frame, so the 95-year-old Dixon rests his pillow on a beekeeper's wooden box.  He draws heat from a potbellied stove, burning the last limbs of a pecan tree his uncle planted years ago.”

This depiction of dire poverty comes from former Los Angeles Time reporter Mark Arax’s 2002 story A Lost Tribe's Journey to a Land of Broken Promises.  It is the story of James Dixon, his neighbors Beulah Benton, Martha Williams, Robert “Boots” Parker, Luke Etta Hill and the other Black Okies who in the 1940s settled in Teviston, California, “a glorified squatters’ village” about  12 miles east of Allensworth.

Mark Arax and photographer Matt Black spent nearly two years chronicling the lives of the Teviston residents.  During this time Mark and Matt spent countless hours with the Teviston residents; listening to their life stories, visiting their homes and attending their church services.

This past weekend (July 6-7) was Bakersfield’s Weekend on C-SPAN.  Bakersfield Weekend is part of the C-SPAN 2013 Cities Tour.  During these week long tours, the Book TV and American History TV staff and crew visit local literary and historic sites and interview historians, authors and civic leaders in the selected cities.  During the C-SPAN team’s week long visit to Bakersfield Mark Arax took the team on a tour of Teviston. 

After watching the Teviston segment of the Bakersfield Weekend (below) take a few minutes to view Matt Black’s riveting “The Black Okies” exhibit at his online gallery which happens to include three photos taken in Allensworth.