Black Separatist

 

The Watoga Land Association (often phonetically rendered as Watauga) and t

he historic African American settlement around Seebert (and nearby Hillsboro) represent two distinct but neighboring chapters of Black history in southern Pocahontas County.

The Watoga Land Association Venture

• Origin & Purpose: Organized in 1921 by Black coal miners and community leaders from Mercer County (led in part by the Rev. A. B. Farmer), the association purchased roughly 10,000 acres of cut-over timberland formerly owned by the Watoga Lumber Company along the Greenbrier River, just north of Seebert.
• Separatist Vision: Spurred by rising racial tension, Jim Crow laws, and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in southern West Virginia, the project aimed to build an independent, self-sustaining Black town with its own farms, stores, churches, and schools.
• Eventual Dissolution: The venture struggled because the mountainous, logged-over terrain was poorly suited for sustained agriculture, and the area offered few alternative economic opportunities. Peak residency never exceeded a few dozen individuals, and by the 1950s the settlement had emptied out. Most of the acreage was absorbed into Watoga State Park and the Monongahela National Forest.

Relationship to the Seebert Black Settlement

• Pre-Existing Community: Unlike Watoga's planned settlement in the 1920s, the African American community along Seebert Lane (between Seebert and Hillsboro) formed decades earlier following the Civil War, anchored by the Pleasant Green M.E. Church (1888) and the Seebert Lane Colored School (c. 1898).
• Social and Commercial Ties: When families briefly settled in the Watoga colony just up the river, Seebert and Hillsboro served as the closest established hubs for commerce, kinship ties, and regional rail transit along the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway's Greenbrier Division.
• Demographic Trajectory: The collapse of the Watoga project did not directly dismantle Seebert’s established community, but both faced similar economic pressures. As regional timber mills closed and mechanization reduced agricultural labor needs, younger generations migrated toward urban industrial centers.
• Current Population: Today, neither Watoga nor Seebert retains an active, concentrated Black enclave. The descendants of the original Seebert and Little Levels families are largely dispersed, with the physical legacy preserved primarily through surviving historic landmarks, the Pleasant Green cemetery, and state historical markers along the Greenbrier River Trail.