Empire was founded in 1908 by African American settlers who came from Nebraska to build a racially self-sufficient, politically autonomous community in the Equality State. Empire thrived for about a decade, but vanished from the map in the mid-1920s.
![](https://32m019.p3cdn1.secureserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/empirecemetery.jpg?time=1722044898)