This episode looks at one of the strangest political experiments in American history: a late-nineteenth-century movement to create an officially Black state in the land that would become Oklahoma. At its center was Edward McCabe, a charismatic but elusive figure who envisioned Black self-government within the United States at a moment when Reconstruction had collapsed and white supremacy was hardening across the country.
My guest is Caleb Gayle, professor of history at Northeastern University and the author of Black Moses: A Saga of Ambition and the Fight for a Black State (2025). We talk about the nature and the limits of McCabe’s vision, and what this failed effort reveals about debates over Black politics, specifically regarding the conflict between separatism and inclusion, in post-Civil War America—and why the story still matters.
Music by Akiko Sasaki (“The Union,” by Louis Moreau Gottschalk) and Zachary Solomon
