Creek Freedmen, Historic Developments out of Oklahoma with Angela Walton-Raji

Today's episode will focus on the Creek Freedmen, News from Oklahoma with Angela Walton-Raji.

Creek Freedmen are descendants of African-Americans who were enslaved by the Muscogee Creek Nation and granted freedom and citizenship under an 1866 treaty with the U.S. government. A 1979 Muscogee Nation constitution limited citizenship to those "by blood," leading to decades of disenfranchisement for Freedmen. However, in July 2025, the Muscogee Nation Supreme Court struck the "by blood" requirement, ordering the nation to enroll Freedmen and restoring their legal citizenship, which was a landmark victory for the community.  

Angela Walton-Raji a native of Fort Smith Arkansas is known nationally for her genealogical and historical research and work. In 1991 she located her family records among the Freedmen of Oklahoma and discovered a plethora of records reflecting families from both western Arkansas and Eastern Oklahoma. That put on her a trajectory that launched a second career as a specialist in Black and Indian records from the greater Fort Smith region. This has placed in her the genealogy community as a unique specialist in the more then 20,000 people classified as Indian Freedmen who were both in Oklahoma and many who relocated to western Arkansas.  Today, her specialties are Oklahoma Native-American records, Arkansas Black history, and Civil war history on the western frontier. Walton-Raji is the author of several books, the most recent being the Oklahoma Freedmen of the Five Tribes by the History Press.

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