Information about Buxton, Iowa by Rachelle Chase
“Hi! This is United States Senator Cory Booker with one of the great authors I know in my life, Ms. Chase, because she’s writing books about my family’s history. Not my particular family, but about Buxton, a town here in Iowa that greeted my family from poverty from Alabama that gave us promise and possibility.” […]
I recently became a deltiologist. This new obsession is thanks to John Taylor, who introduced me to the word, and to John Taylor and John Jacobs who have shared their knowledge, fun of postcard collecting, and fascinating postcards. Both are among those who have allowed me to include their rare Buxton images in my books. […]
“At a revival we used to have, I remember this little boy was preaching,” said Gertrude Stokes, an African American resident of Buxton, Iowa. “He used to wear a little white robe. He ran our revival and that’s when I joined the church.” The little boy was eight-year-old Lonnie Lawrence Dennis. On November 16, 1902, […]
In 2017 and 2018, I traveled throughout Iowa speaking about Buxton, Iowa and why it was a coal mining town ahead of its time. Marshalltown Community Television/McTV aired my May 2018 presentation, which was held at the Marshalltown Public Library. New 2019 presentations with information from my new book, CREATING THE BLACK UTOPIA OF BUXTON, […]
Leroy Wright, an African American resident of Buxton, Iowa in the early 1900s stated that Jack Brookins, also African American, invented a railroad signal. “He made a patent on the railroad trap out of a mouse trap and they tried to get people to take out shares but they wouldn’t do it but it […]
In 1906, Robert Gilbert Wells, an African American author and publisher in Buxton, Iowa ran ads soliciting agents to sell his new book, “Anthropology Applied to the American White Man and Negro.” The ad placed in the March 3, 1906 issue of the Richmond Planet provided a summary of the book: AGENTS WANTED. To […]
Buxton, Iowa—a 1900s coal mining town of 5,000 in which blacks and whites lived and worked side by side and blacks received equal pay and thrived—is an amazing story of inclusion and equality. I’m doing my part to make sure it is not forgotten. A HUGE “thank you” to everyone I have — and have […]