Q: Do we know of any former slaves that fled the south and ended up in Boise?
A: In 1867 Elvina Moulton, a former slave freed during the Civil War, arrived in Boise after traveling across the Oregon Trail with the family of one Judge Gray. She was supposed to have walked a good portion of the trail in nothing but her bare feet, and when she arrived here in Boise she stopped, even as the Gray family continued on to California; she said she simply got tired of walking.
Aunt Viney, as she was later known, took to mending and washing for a living. Through these endeavors alone she was able to save enough money to purchase her own home, at the price of $575. It was located on Idaho Street between Tenth and Ninth, right next to the residence of James H. Hawley, Boise Mayor from 1903 to 1905. In the final decades of the nineteenth century Ms. Moulton was free to own her own home, and make her own living. She later sold that residence for $4500, and purchased another home on south Fourth Street. In 1878 she was the only African American among a number of prominent white women chartered in Boise’s First Presbyterian Church. Viney died in 1917 at the estimated age of 83—she was unsure what year she was born. By all accounts Viney was a respected member of Boise’s pioneer community.
It is necessary, perhaps, to point out how Viney’s experience in Boise cannot be taken as representative of the whole. Her experience differed greatly from many other blacks who lived in Boise. At various times the public school was closed to minorities, but there were also times when a number of black children attended Central School, the public school built just next to the statehouse. In the 1920s the Ku Klux Klan began to have a visible presence in Idaho. In 1924 Boise’s Mayor Sherman required that Klan members remove their hoods during their parade through the city. Their organization never fully materialized in Boise like they did in other areas, but perhaps their activities and their message influenced public opinion.
Erma Hayman (1907-2009), another long-time Boise resident, remembers when blacks were not allowed in restaurants and pool halls, and recalls that most of Boise’s blacks were living in the working class neighborhood in and around River Street south of Front. She remembers when it was known as “colored town.” Hayman attempted several times to purchase a home of her own north of town, but recalled that every time the realtor found out she was black, the house was immediately taken off the market. Unavailable. And so she settled on Ash Street in the house that the Hayman family resides in to this day.
Recent research reveals that as Boise grew, successful whites abandoned their homes near downtown and moved north towards the foothills. River Street neighborhood became the home to several minority ethnic groups of which blacks made up only a small percent. Boise was never home to a very large number of black residents; in 1870 there were only 60 blacks recorded for the whole Idaho Territory, out of a population of nearly 15,000. By 1940 there were only 80 black of nearly 109,000 individuals recorded as living in Boise.
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