Fulton Street Books & Coffee and Magic City Books are proud to welcome back Caleb Gayle for a free launch event to celebrate Black Moses on Tuesday, August 12, 2025 at 6:30pm. This event will take place at All Souls Unitarian Church, 2952 S Peoria Ave in Tulsa.
Caleb Gayle will be in conversation with Mayor Monroe Nichols. You won't want to miss it!
"In this enthralling saga, journalist Caleb Gayle resurfaces the little-remembered late-19th-century effort to turn Oklahoma into a Black state... Gayle's stylish, brisk account elegantly incorporates many tangents (including spotlighting the Native nations being dispossessed by McCabe's efforts). It's one not to miss." --Publishers Weekly, STARRED review
"When the true history of America's west is written, Black Moses will stand as a flagship bearer of that accounting. Caleb Gayle is a gifted writer who rolls out this splendidly researched, spell-binding yarn with grace, honest grit, and full-on immediacy. Wonderfully done." --James McBride, author of The Good Lord Bird and The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
Black Moses will be published by Riverhead Books on August 12, 2025, and you can pre-order a copy through Magic City Books.
About Black Moses
The remarkable story of Edward McCabe, a Black man who tried to establish a Black state within the United States.
In this paradigm-shattering work of American history, Caleb Gayle recounts the extraordinary tale of Edward McCabe, a Black man who championed the audacious idea to create a state within the Union governed by and for Black people -- and the racism, politics, and greed that thwarted him.
As the sweeping changes and brief glimpses of hope brought by the Civil War and Reconstruction began to wither, anger at the opportunities available to newly freed Black people were on the rise. As a result, both Blacks and whites searched for new places to settle. That was when Edward McCabe, a Black businessman and a rising political star in the American West, set in motion his plans to found a state within the Union for Black people to live in and govern. His chosen site: Oklahoma, a place that the U.S. government had deeded to Indigenous people in the 1830s when it forced thousands of them to leave their homes under Indian Removal, which became known as the Trail of Tears.
McCabe lobbied politicians in Washington, D.C., Kansas, and elsewhere as he exhorted Black people to move to Oklahoma to achieve their dreams of self-determination and land ownership. His rising profile as a leader and spokesman for Black people as well as his willingness to confront white politicians led him to become known as Black Moses. And like his biblical counterpart, McCabe nearly made it to the promised land but was ultimately foiled by politics, business interests, and the growing ambitions of white settlers who also wanted the land.
In Black Moses, Gayle brings to vivid life the world of Edward McCabe: the Black people who believed in his dream of a Black state, the white politicians who didn't, and the larger challenges of confronting the racism and exclusion that bedeviled Black people's attempts to carve a place in America for themselves. Gayle draws from extraordinary research and reporting to reveal an America that almost was.
About the Author
Caleb Gayle is an award-winning journalist and the author of We Refuse to Forget: A True Story of Black Creeks, American Identity, and Power. A professor at Northeastern University, he is a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine, and his work also has appeared in The Atlantic, TIME, The Guardian, Guernica, The New Republic, and The Boston Globe. He lives near Boston.
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