Silence hung so thickly in the church yard that it was hard to breathe.

There had been yet another lynching, and the black families in the nearly all white

community were exhausted.

It was too much.

They had to go.

But where?

This is two-minute black history, what you didn't learn in school.

Empire Wyoming wasn't always just a few tombstones left at the edge of a prairie.

At one time it was a thriving black community.

For people were so successful that it drove white terrorists to madness.

Well-educated and affluent black pioneers, sick of the racism they experienced in the

south, decided to take advantage of free land as America expanded westward.

They looked forward to life in a hard-working, difficult, but peaceful, all black settlement.

The lifestyle they saw it was not to be.

White settlers intimidated by black people minding their lucrative businesses, attending

excellent schools and worshiping in beautiful churches, refuse to leave our people be.

Racists consistently attacked and harassed empire citizens.

After a prominent black man from empire was lynched by the local police who accused him

of vandalizing the door of a local bank, many of the residents began to disperse.

Within two decades, only four residents were left in empire.

Their graves are the only evidence the once thriving town ever existed.

This has frequently happened in history.

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