“What Must Be Preserved”

While in Oklahoma for my book signing, Enslaved on the Trail of Tears: Race, Removal and the Transformation of Indian Territory, I had the opportunity to speak with several people about our shared Choctaw and Chickasaw Freedmen history and ancestry. Visiting historic places, some for the first time, also gave me a deeper sense of the culture in which our ancestors lived and the importance of preserving that history for future generations.

 

After years of research, I was struck by how fragile our history remains. Too often, the urgency of pursuing citizenship overshadows the equally urgent need to preserve the communities, records, and cultural legacy of our ancestors. As historical sites deteriorate and elders pass away, we risk losing irreplaceable pieces of our past. Meanwhile, narratives that distort or misrepresent the history of Indian Territory and Freedmen continue to gain attention, threatening to erase the documented presence of our ancestors among the Five Civilized Tribes.

 

During my talk, I asked those who generously took time to attend an important question: “What are we doing to preserve our history and protect the communities at risk of being neglected or forgotten while we pursue citizenship and recognition?” For more than 150 years, Freedmen and their descendants have faced contested or restricted citizenship within some of these nations. That struggle is real, and the pursuit of recognition is both understandable and admirable.

 

But we must ask ourselves what we stand to lose while we wait.

 

When the preservation of our churches, schools, cemeteries, historic settlements, and family histories takes a back seat to the pursuit of citizenship, we risk doing a disservice to the generations that follow us. We cannot allow the history of our people to deteriorate while we wait for others to recognize our rightful place in it.

Calvary Baptist Church, Berwyn, OK 

Terry J. Ligon © 2026
 

The purpose of my talk, and of my book, is to demonstrate that Choctaw and Chickasaw Freedmen history did not begin with the Civil War, emancipation, the Reconstruction Treaty of 1866, land allotment, or Oklahoma statehood. Our history with these nations reaches back before removal and is inseparable from the broader history of Indian Territory. Yet the pursuit of citizenship and recognition can sometimes overshadow that longer history. We must therefore ask ourselves: “At what cost?”

 

Choctaw and Chickasaw Freedmen developed a distinct culture shaped by survival, family, community, and their place within societies that often sought to exclude them from the very institutions in which they were deeply embedded. Women bore children fathered by men who signed the Treaty of 1866, yet those descendants were sometimes denied the citizenship and recognition that many continue to seek today.

 

I would never discourage anyone from pursuing the rights their ancestors fought to secure. But preservation and citizenship are not opposing goals. They are connected, even though the work required to achieve each is different.

Fieldstones of Unmarked Graves, Jehovah Baptist Church Woodford, OK

  Terry J. Ligon © 2026

 

Our communities have not disappeared from public memory entirely. The many comments and discussions I encounter demonstrate that people still care deeply about this history. Yet caring about our past is not enough. We must take responsibility for documenting it, protecting its physical remnants, and ensuring that Choctaw and Chickasaw Freedmen are recognized as an essential part of the history of Indian Territory and Oklahoma.

 

We live in a time when records can be lost, historic places can disappear, and elders can pass away carrying knowledge that may never be recovered. With the resources, technology, research skills, and collective knowledge available to us, allowing these losses to continue should no longer be acceptable. We need a network of descendants, researchers, historians, and community members committed to preserving this legacy.

 

What Must Be Preserved

 

Preservation must extend beyond genealogy, though genealogy remains indispensable. “Genealogy establishes descent; community preservation reconstructs the social worlds in which our ancestors lived.”

 

Freedmen descendants should document former settlements, churches, schools, burial grounds, newspapers, businesses, farms, political organizations, mutual aid societies, and the lives of teachers, ministers, midwives, landholders, veterans, litigants, and community leaders.

 

Census schedules, Dawes enrollment materials, Freedmen enrollment cards, allotment records, court files, family photographs, letters, oral histories, and cemetery inscriptions are more than individual pieces of evidence. Together, they help reconstruct the history of our families and communities, how our ancestors lived, worked, worshipped, organized, and contributed to the nations and territories they called home.

Mount Pleasant Baptist Church, "Berwyn" Room of History & Prayer

 Terry J. Ligon © 2026 

This work is not separate from the pursuit of citizenship and recognition. It strengthens our understanding of the past, preserves evidence for future generations, and helps establish the historical record upon which meaningful recognition can be built.

 

If citizenship and recognition are what you seek, then preservation must be part of that effort. We must do more than establish who our ancestors were. We must also preserve the communities they built, the lives they lived, and the history they left behind.

 

“We cannot afford to preserve only our ancestry while allowing our culture and communities to disappear. The responsibility to protect that history belongs to us.”

Terry J. Ligon © 2026