Edward P. McCabe

Edward P. McCabe (October 10, 1850 – March 12, 1920), also known as Edwin P. McCabe, was a settler, attorney and land agent who became one of the first African Americans to hold major political office in the American Old West. A Republican office-holder in Kansas, McCabe became a leading figure in an effort to stimulate black migration into what was then the territory of Oklahoma, with the hopes of creating a majority-Black state that would be free of the white domination that was prevalent throughout the Southern United States. In pursuit of this goal, McCabe founded the city of Langston, Oklahoma.

Early life McCabe was born in Troy, New York, on October 10, 1850. As a child, he moved from Troy to Fall River, Massachusetts, Newport, Rhode Island, and Bangor, Maine. When his father died, he left school and began to work.

Eventually, he moved to New York City, where he worked on Wall Street. Finding no avenues for promotion beyond clerk and porter in New York, he then moved to Chicago in 1872, where he worked as a clerk for Potter Palmer. He was then appointed clerk in the Cook County, Illinois, office of the U.S. Treasury Department.

Life in Kansas Meanwhile, proposals were already being made at least by 1866 to use the land that is now Oklahoma as a settlement area for African Americans. In that year, U.S. Rep. William Lawrence, an Ohio Republican, introduced a bill creating the Territory of Lincoln from that land. He served two terms as the state auditor and failed to win a third nomination.

Life in Oklahoma He then moved to Washington, D.C., where he fruitlessly lobbied for an appointment for governor in the new Oklahoma Territory, from President Benjamin Harrison. McCabe supported the idea of making Oklahoma into an all-black state, and wanted to help with the efforts of the idea.

Black settlement efforts McCabe was also one of three founders of Langston, Oklahoma. "By 1881, several Negro leaders were planning for the potential resettlement of twenty or thirty thousand freedmen in Oklahoma". McCabe "acquired a tract near Guthrie, Oklahoma, which became the town of Langston about 1892". The efforts of McCabe and others "achieved impressive results. The black population of Oklahoma continued to grow until statehood in 1907".

Between 1900 and 1906 the black population at least doubled. and were "behaving in a manner directly contrary to the hopes and expectations of the whites. Past 1900 large numbers of Negroes began moving from the South and East sections to the interior part of the state. They left farming and the Oklahoma coal mines, and took urban service jobs".

Despite these gains, a black majority was not realized in Oklahoma, nor was McCabe able to secure any higher political office. Even though this never happened, McCabe played a big role in taking a stand for African-American rights in a time when there was a great deal of racial persecution.

Death McCabe died on March 12, 1920, in Chicago, Illinois, and was buried in Topeka, Kansas.