Exhibit at Albuquerque Museum highlights first African American homesteaders in New Mexico

By Kalyn Norwood

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    ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (KOAT) — Some call homesteading the United States’ attempt to inhabit the land it had acquired through wars and acquisitions, but for many African Americans in the 1800s and early 1900s, it was much more than that.

Homesteading began in the mid-1800s under President Abraham Lincoln and gave citizens 160 acres to later 640 acres of public land to live on and improve.

“There were over hundreds of African Americans who came to the west and homesteaded in different parts of the state,” said Rita Powdrell.

Powdrell, the director of the African American Museum and Cultural Center of New Mexico said for African Americans living under Jim Crow Laws, moving to New Mexico and homesteading meant safety and a fresh start.

“People were coming here looking for new opportunities, trying to get away from the Ku Klux Clan, the red shirts,” said Powdrell.

That was the case for Robert Allen Pettes. Originally from Texas, he came to New Mexico in the early 1920s.

“The red coats were threatening the family,” said Marilyn Pettes Hill, his granddaughter, who now lives in the Albuquerque metro.

But her family’s homesteading opportunity came in southern New Mexico, just outside of Las Cruces nearly a century ago.

“Someone from the government came and took people out to the East Mesa to see if they wanted to homestead land,” said Pettes Hill.

“There were a number of that they looked at and my grandfather kept saying, ‘No, I don’t want that one, no, I don’t want that one,'” she said. “And finally, he saw a piece of property and he said, ‘Ah, that’s the piece of property that I saw in my dream’ and he said, ‘There is a river running under it.'”

They later found an underground aquifer, which led to a water system that served about 300 families.

The Pettes’ story is just one of several families from Albuquerque, Las Cruces, and Vado mentioned in the Facing the Rising Sun Exhibit at the Albuquerque Museum. This high-tech exhibit is a collaboration between the city, African American museum, and Electric Playhouse.

“People have an opportunity to see what families have done in New Mexico, how you can go from being a farmer with basically nothing to all of a sudden you have a community,” said Pettes Hill.

“We want people to take away the importance of everyone’s history in this state, that it’s not just a history we celebrate for Black History Month,” said Powdrell. “It’s not just a fleeting history that stays at the Albuquerque museum six months, and then it’s torn down. This is a history that’s permanent, it’s here, it’s ongoing and it should be known.”

This exhibit will be in Albuquerque until July, but it’s a moving exhibit, so it’s expected to pop up in other New Mexico cities.

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