AAAD 252: Blacks in the West: Secondary Sources

The brave pioneers who made a life on the frontier were not only male--and they were not only white. The story of African-American women in the Old West is one that has largely gone untold until now. The stories of ten African-American women are reconstructed from historic documents found in century-old archives. Some of these women slaves, some were free, and some were born into slavery and found freedom in the old west.

The first major historical anthology on how African American women helped shape the West.

Although their total numbers in New Mexico were never large, blacks arrived with Spanish explorers and settlers and played active roles in the history of the territory and state. Here, Bruce Glasrud assembles the best information available on the themes, events, and personages of black New Mexico history. The contributors portray the blacks who accompanied Cabeza de Vaca, Coronado, and de Vargas and recount their interactions with Native Americans in colonial New Mexico. Chapters on the territorial period examine black trappers and traders as well as review the issue of slavery in the territory and the blacks who accompanied Confederate troops and fought in the Union army during the Civil War in New Mexico. Eventually blacks worked on farms and ranches, in mines, and on railroads, as well as in the military, seeking freedom and opportunity in New Mexico's wide open spaces. A number of black towns were established in rural areas. Lacking political power because they represented such a small percentage of New Mexico's population, blacks relied largely on their own resources and networks, particularly churches and schools.

Ten historians detail research in the various structures, voices, communities, and educational focuses of the black press in the Midwest. The contributors look at the history of African American newspapers from the mid 19th century to the present in Chicago, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesot

Looks at the history of Blacks in the American Western frontier.

In June 1867, the San Francisco Elevator-one of the nation\'s premier black weekly newspapers during Reconstruction-began publishing articles by a Californian calling herself \"Ann J. Trask\" and later \"Semper Fidelis.\" Her name was Jennie Carter (1830-1881), and the Elevator would print her essays, columns, and poems for seven years. Carter probably spent her early life in New Orleans, New York, and Wisconsin, but by the time she wrote her \"Always Faithful\" columns for the newspaper, she was in Nevada County, California.

Few Americans today, black or white, know about the incredible life of Cathy Williams. From her beginnings as a slave in Independence, Missouri, to her enlistment with Company A, 38th U.S. Infantry, in November 1866, the story of this remarkable woman deserves to finally be told. By disguising herself as a man and assuming the name William Cathay, Williams became a 'buffalo soldier,' serving in one of the six black units formed following the Civil War. Her story tells us much about prevailing attitudes toward both race and gender in post-Civil War America.

As a black Appalachian woman, Memphis Tennessee Garrison belonged to a demographic category triply ignored by historians. The daughter of former slaves, she moved to McDowell County, West Virginia, at an early age and died at ninety-eight in Huntington. The coalfields of McDowell County were among the richest seams in the nation. As Garrison makes clear, the backbone of the early mining work force--those who laid the railroad tracks, manned the coke ovens, and dug the coal--were black miners. These miners and their families created communities that became the centers of the struggle for unions, better education, and expanded civil rights. Memphis Tennessee Garrison, an innovative teacher, administrative worker at U.S. Steel, and vice president of the National Board of the NAACP at the height of the civil rights struggle (1963-66), was involved with all of these struggles. In many ways, this oral history, based on interview transcripts, is the untold and multidimensional story of African American life in West Virginia, as seen through the eyes of a remarkable woman. She portrays a courageous people who organize to improve their working conditions, send their children to school and then to college, own land, and support a wide range of cultural and political activities.