The Oklahoma Historical Society has in its possession an archive of Territorial Newspapers that help researchers of the Choctaw and Chickasaw Freedmen discover an untapped source of information concerning the various aspects of their lives in the two nations.
Through these pages we can see how the fight for equality and citizenship in the nations were viewed by the publishers of the newspapers. One thing that has to be considered is that many of the papers were published by people other than the freedmen so much of what the freedmen had to say about their plight does not appear on the pages.
In many cased these newspapers were the official papers of the nations or were published by men who had a vested interest in spinning the story of the freedmen adversely against them.
The index housed at Oklahoma Historical Society should not be viewed as the definitive resource for articles on the freedmen because we have not discovered how the "black" press viewed the same events occurring in the territory.
Part of the Choctaw-Chickasaw Project will be too re-discover the black newspapers and contrast the views there with the opinions of the papers like the Vinita Indian Chieftain, Cheyenne Transporter, Chickasaw Enterprise, Purcell Register, Cherokee Advocate, and the Daily Oklahoman among others.