Team

Dr. Timothy E. Nelson

PAST

Dr. Timothy E. Nelson was born in South Central Los Angeles, raised in Compton, California during the early 1990s, and went to Santa Monica Community College in the wake of race and class-based conflict with the Los Angeles Police Department. Dr. Nelson played football at Compton High School, Compton Community College, and Santa Monica College before transferring to New Mexico State University, where he was awarded a scholarship. He graduated from New Mexico State University with a Bachelor’s degree in U.S. History. Continuing to maintain ties with Compton, Dr. Nelson set up an admissions program to bring high schoolers from Compton to New Mexico State University.

During his time completing a Master’s degree in Black History at the University of Northern Iowa, Dr. Nelson also earned a commission as an Officer in the U.S. Army. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at El Paso. He was the Racial Justice Director at the YWCA El Paso del Norte Region—the largest YWCA in the United States. He is also a proud charter member of his chapter of Phi Beta Sigma, whose motto is “Culture For Service and Service For Humanity.”

PRESENT

Dr. Nelson’s multi-faceted work concerns ambition and the search for opportunity. Dr. Nelson’s dissertation, “The Significance of the Afro-Frontier® in American History: Blackdom, Bawdyhouses, and Barratry in the Borderlands, 1900-1930,” addresses and unpacks foundational issues in African American history, the history of the U.S. West, borderlands history, and the history of African diasporas. Dr. Nelson created his own school of thought and coined the term Afro-Frontier® (along with Afro-Frontierism and Afro-Frontierist).

Blackdom, New Mexico is one town he’s focused on as a micro-history and is changing how the history of has been framed. Instead of a story of a failed township made up of black people fleeing racial violence, lynching, and second-class citizenship, he found that the Blackdomites left the South to seek out opportunities and freedom in the creation of “autonomous Black communities.” Following their economic and social ambitions, Black people sought out literal and figurative spaces of freedom that afforded them the opportunity to develop their skills, aspirations, and dreams.

FUTURE

Through his 2015 dissertation as well as his current outreach, Dr. Nelson’s goal is uncovering and advocating for untold stories through various forms of art; academic books, trade books, screenplays, painting, photography, videography, and digitally applying his theory of colonization within the digital frontier. https://www.santafenft.io/vtours/drtimothynelson/

Dr. Nelson lives in Northern New Mexico.

Marissa R. Roybal

PAST

Marissa Roybal descends from14+ generations of Native New Mexicans (Iberia, Mexico, and North America Indigenous aka Mestiza/Genízaro) who were sheepherders and farmers. Marissa’s parents were raised and surrounded by family and community members in Santa Fe, Pojoaque, and Nambe who knew how to plant, grow, heal, make, build or fix most anything. In 1965, when Marissa joined the family, her maternal family continued to raise goats and chickens and cultivate fruit trees, vegetables, and flower gardens, so there was still some evidence of the homestead life that once sustained them fully. This upbringing has influenced Marissa to begin to explore how to create self-sufficient, intergenerational communities. 

Marissa’s parents moved to a multicultural, and socio-economically diverse community in 1965, Butterfield Park, New Mexico. The proximity to the border, West Mesa Organ Mountain Black Homesteaders and the White Sands Missile Range was a stark contrast to Santa Fe. Life in Butterfield, close to the border, was and the racial and economic differences were apparent and illuminated Marissa’s formative years.

Blackdom is a moment in history that has been all but erased and answers questions about her extended families. Amid the continued and heightened violence against Black bodies, Marissa understands the Afro-Frontier thesis is timely and relevant, and an invitation to CHALLENGE the “tri-cultural” narrative. Marissa has partnered with Dr. Nelson to manage, refine and share the history and historiography of Blackdom and mark its value to New Mexico, Borderlands, US, US West, and Black History, and promote the Significance of the Afro-Frontier (includes all Black settlements, communities, enclaves, colonies, and incorporated towns) into the next century.

Roybal has held production, promotion, budgeting and bookkeeping positions in the music industry, worked in the financial industry for a decade+, and owned and operated two small businesses in Santa Fe. Most recently, Roybal worked as a Program Coordinator/Community Outreach at a non-profit called the Academy for the Love of Learning, whose intent is large-scale culture change: the activation of a culture of learning through which new forms of education, leadership, and organizational practice emerge and thrive. The Academy for the Love of Learning allowed her to reflect, develop skills, and bring the culmination of all her experiences forward into her next chapter.

PRESENT

Roybal, imbued with the value of self-sufficiency and an entrepreneurial spirit, puts her skills to work to foster cultural change, with Dr. Nelson. As the Co-Founder and COO of Blackdom Productions LLC as well as the COO for Raxia Media Group, which produces short videos on the subject of Blackdom and the Afro-Frontier.

FUTURE

Roybal’s contribution to the Afro-Frontier is the ability to activate Dr. Nelson’s vision through her extensive representation, business, relationship building, and organizational skills as well as her own history and passion she brings to the project. Her belief in the values of self-sufficiency, alternative forms of education, and racial justice was forged at a young age and continues to drive Roybal’s contributions.

Through the lens of Dr. Nelson’s Colonization Continuum, Marissa reveals, “The #BlackdomRenaissance reveals a distinct racialization process and colonization of my Indigenous mixed people in New Mexico, and the greater Borderlands which includes Black people during the rural renaissance circa early 1900s.”

Marissa Roybal lives in Northern New Mexico.

Education

SANTA FE COMMUNITY COLLEGE
Business Admin and Mgt

ART INSTITUTE OF SEATTLE
Art Representation and Production

ACADEMY FOR THE LOVE OF LEARNING
Learning Practice

UNIVERSITY OF LIFE
Ph.D. in Experience, Thought, Reflection and Action