Read complete books and articles on: African-Americans in the Old West

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11 of the Best Books and Articles on: African-Americans in the Old West

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528-1990 » Read Now
by Quintard Taylor. 415 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

A groundbreaking history of African Americans' role in the development of the American West.
The American West is mistakenly known as a region with few African Americans and virtually no black history. In Search of the Racial Frontier challenges that view in a rich, complex chronicle of western...
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A groundbreaking history of African Americans' role in the development of the American West.
The American West is mistakenly known as a region with few African Americans and virtually no black history. In Search of the Racial Frontier challenges that view in a rich, complex chronicle of western African Americans that begins in 1528 with the Spanish explorer Esteban's arrival in Texas, followed by hundreds of Spanish-speaking blacks.
In 1848 English-speaking blacks arrived -- as slaves -- creating the nucleus of post-Civil War communities. Thousands of African Americans thereafter migrated to the high plains while others drove cattle up the Chisholm Trail or served on remote army outposts. Mormon slave Bridget "Biddy" Mason reached Utah in 1847, gained freedom in California, and in 1872 founded Los Angeles's first black church. The West's black civil rights movement began in San Francisco during the Civil War when women challenged the city's streetcar segregation.
This richly peopled story carries forward to the twentieth century when World War II migration increased black populations in western cities tenfold and intensified the region's civil rights movement during the 1960s, paving the way for black success in Western politics and a surging interest in multiculturalism.
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2.

Blacks in the West » Read Now
by W. Sherman Savage. 230 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...brought with them old attitudes that...sometimes given the sanction of...Nevertheless, the West did offer blacks...law was passed in 1839 at the...The Saga of Old Tuolumne...
3.

African American Cowboys on the Western Frontier, in Negro History Bulletin » Read Now
by Roger D. Hardaway. 4 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...Billington and Roger D. Hardaway, eds., African Americans on the Western Frontier (Niwot, Colorado...an African American who settled in the West after his cowboy days were...
4.

Seeking a New Life: Blacks in Post-Civil War Colorado, in The Journal of Negro History » Read Now
by Jesse T. Moore, Jr. 22 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...force by African Americans."(15) In contrast...regions - the Northeast...of the Far-west - tended...15 years old) was enrolled...War era. In Colorado...did not see the...
5.

The Life and Adventures of Nat Love, Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" » Read Now
by Brackette F. Williams, Nat Love. 168 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

Thousands of black cowpunchers drove cattle up the Chisholm Trail after the Civil War, but only Nat Love wrote about his experiences. Born to slaves in Davidson County, Tennessee, the newly freed Love struck out for Kansas after the war. He was fifteen and already endowed with a reckless and...
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Thousands of black cowpunchers drove cattle up the Chisholm Trail after the Civil War, but only Nat Love wrote about his experiences. Born to slaves in Davidson County, Tennessee, the newly freed Love struck out for Kansas after the war. He was fifteen and already endowed with a reckless and romantic readiness. In wide-open Dodge City he joined up with an outfit from the Texas Panhandle to begin a career riding the range and fighting Indians, outlaws, and the elements. Years later he would say, "I had an unusually adventurous life". That was rare understatement. More characteristic was Love's claim: "I carry the marks of fourteen bullet wounds on different parts of my body, most any one of which would be sufficient to kill an ordinary man, but I am not even crippled". In 1876 a virtuoso rodeo performance in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, won him the moniker of Deadwood Dick. He became known as DD all over the West, entering into dime novels as a mysteriously dark and heroic presence. This vivid autobiography includes encounters with Bat Masterson and Billy the Kid, a soon-after view of the Custer battlefield, and a successful courtship. Love left the range in 1890, the year of the official closing of the frontier. Then, as a Pullman train conductor he traveled his old trails, and those good times bring his story to a satisfying end.
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6.

What They Didn't Teach You About the Wild West (Chap. 9 "America's Black West: Buffalo Soldiers and Maroons") » Read Now
by Mike Wright. 370 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

Mike Wright exposes the hidden events of the growth and development of the Wild West. His unique approach to research has brought to life a wealth of bizarre and curious facts.
7.

Tracing Trails of Blood on Ice: Commemorating "The Great Escape" in 1861-62 of Indians and Blacks into Kansas, in Negro History Bulletin » Read Now
by Willard B. Johnson. 1 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...101 years old when she died in 1990), and...proposed as the place for...connections between African Americans and Native...territory West of the Mississippi...the pioneer...
8.

Negro Soldiers on the Frontier: The Ninth and Tenth U.S. Cavalry, 1866-1891, in Griot » Read Now
by Tim Cipriani. 10 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...Anderson LaVere, Saddles and Sabers. Black Men in the Old West (Champaign, Garrard Publishing Company, 1975...Anderson, LaVere. Saddles and Sabers. Black Men in the Old...
9.

Black Soldiers at Winnemucca, in Griot » Read Now
by Garna L. Christian. 7 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...the winning of the West, the expulsion of Spain...Infantry mattered little in the racially hardening...and took up arms in Waco and Houston...C. Vann Woodward, The Strange...
10.

The Texas Military Experience: From the Texas Revolution through World War II (Chap. 5 "Black Regulars on the Texas Frontier") » Read Now
by Joseph G. Dawson III. 248 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

Ever since the Alamo, the military has been a vivid part of the Texas experience. The Battle of San Jacinto, exploits of the Texas Rangers, the Indian-fighting Cavalry of the Texas High Plains, and the World War II campaign of the 36th Infantry Division up the spine of Italy all have formed part of...
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Ever since the Alamo, the military has been a vivid part of the Texas experience. The Battle of San Jacinto, exploits of the Texas Rangers, the Indian-fighting Cavalry of the Texas High Plains, and the World War II campaign of the 36th Infantry Division up the spine of Italy all have formed part of the state's history and image. Other aspects of the military experience are less well known but have also contributed to Lone Star history: the role of Hispanics in the Texas Revolution, the contributions of African-American soldiers on the frontier, the activities of army wives in the late nineteenth century. In this first scholarly collection to focus on Texas' military heritage, prominent authors reevaluate famous personalities, reassess noted battles and units, call for new historical points to be considered, and bring fresh perspectives to such matters as the interplay of fiction, film, and historical understanding. Edited, and with an introduction by, Joseph G. Dawson III, The Texas Military Experience offers the best overview of the subject available. The engaging writing styles of the various authors will make this book valuable to the reading public interested in popular aspects of the Texas military tradition, and the solid research will make it indispensable to scholars of military and Texas history.
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11.

Rascals on the Antebellum Mississippi: African American Steamboat Workers and the St. Louis Hanging of 1841, in Journal of Social History » Read Now
by Thomas C. Buchanan. 21 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...the broader, coercive relationship between African Americans and the law in this period. (15.) Selected books that...recognize that they do not reveal all the ways in which...