FROM ESTE BAN TO FIVE CENTURIES OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY IN THE WEST BY QUI NTARD TAYLOR

1 --:-' - - o S G~'----I

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The slave Esteban,

Drawingknown by name

This content downloaded from 161.7.59.20 on Wed, 07 Dec 2016 16:26:50 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms ROIDNEY KING IN APRIL 1992, SOUTH CENTRAL debates reinvigorated the field. Yet for all that is new in Los Angeles exploded in a maelstrom of anger the scholarship and of African Americans of the region, black rage. Although Los Angeles is by far the largest western historyme- is, in fact, nearly a century in the mak- tropolis in the West, those scenes of carnage, ing. Oneno thinks,less for example, of the early articles ana- than the city itself, belie the regional self-image lyzing most slavery in Texas, California, and Oregon, which westerners prefer-placid valleys or broad vistas appeared popu- in 1898, 1905, and 1908, respectively, or the lated by a proud, self-reliant citizenry,jealously essays guard- by W. Sherman Savage in 1928 and Kenneth W. ing its individual rights, equality, and freedom Porter "under in 1932, which initiated long careers of recon- an open sky."' Yet black western history, structingmuch Africanlike American history "on the frontier." Of the Los Angeles uprising, intrudes itself onto course,our sen- the post-1970 period witnessed the rapid pro- sibilities and forces reexamination of the liferationimagined of studies of discrete aspects of black western West.2 That history, with its examples of historyresistance, as historians ask, and answer, more profound negotiation, conflict, and cooperation between questions Afri- about the region's past.3 can Americans and other westerners, can be celebrated Much of New Western History scholarship easily rec- or critiqued, but no longer can it be ignored. onciles Asian American, Chicano, or most of nineteenth- It is tempting to credit the New Western and History, twentieth-century Native American history, which with its emphasis on race, class, and gender, are axiomatically as pri- "western" in orientation. Yet anomaly marily responsible for the growing recognition continues of the to define black western history. There is the African American past in the region. Indeed, uneasy any sense bib- that it is imposed on regional historiogra- liography on the black West would find most phy toof appease the contemporary sensibilities rather than entries dating from the because it is central to the historical narrative. Scholar- past two decades when ship on African American westerners continues to be new methodologies, viewed by many western regional historians and histo- interpretations, and rians of African America as an interesting footnote to a story focused largely on the rural South, the ur- *m 9 ban East, and the Midwest. The ghost of Walter Prescott Webb's 1955 comment that the West b is defined by its scarcity of "water, timber, cities, industry, labor, and *li:!;i % i? Negroes" continues to intrude - LjJ onto the region's popular con- sciousness. This "dearth" argu- mment, long a central tenet in the marginalization of black west- ern scholarship, is particularly surprising considering the size of the affected population. As If e early as 1870 African Americans constituted 12 percent of the region's inhabitants-some 284,000 people who resided in every west- ern state and territory. By 1910, the percentage had dropped to 5.7, but that still represented 941,000 blacks, fre rcr and in 1990, there were 5.2 million African Americans in the West, constituting 7.1 percent of the region's population. If the percentages have fluctuated Seattle freedom through the decades, marchers, they nonetheless show black June 15, 1963 westerners represented a substantial component of the western populace.4 S e a HSeattle Times

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RICAN AMERICAN history in migrated to what now constitutes the West were far the West tests the validity of western more likely to move north from central Mexico than exceptionalism, originally advanced by west from the Atlantic seaboard. Their experiences call Frederick Jackson Turner and posited in a quite dif- for a reinterpretation of Spanish Mexican history in the ferent context by many New West historians. Was the Southwest to illustrate the enigmatic role of race in West significantly different for African Americans? That shaping social and cultural traditions in colonial and answer is a qualified yes as exemplified in the success post-colonial Mexican society. Those traditions, in of post-Civil War western blacks who gained and kept turn, confounded Anglo sensibilities on proper racial voting rights everywhere in the region except Texas, attitudes long after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo but no, if we consider the emergence of postbellum established American sovereignty over the region.6 discriminatory legislation symbolized by antimiscege- African American history in the West often reveals nation statutes and public school segregation in states paradoxes, as in revolutionary-era Texas where the lib- as diverse as Montana, Arizona, and Kansas. Such erty of Anglo slaveholders was in direct opposition to ambiguity surely renders more complex the region's the freedom of black people. Mexico's constitution of past.5 1821 renounced black slavery and proclaimed political That complexity begins with the earliest African equality for all the nation's inhabitants. The promise arrivals. Consider the lives of Esteban, the black slave of freedom and equality proved a powerful attraction who ventured to New Spain's northern frontier in 1539 for African Americans "from the states." Many were in a futile search for the fabled Seven Cities of Cibola, fugitive slaves, but the African American immigrants or of Isabel de Olvera, a member of the Juan Guerra de also included free blacks determined to live under what Resa colonization expedition to New Mexico in 1600, they viewed as Mexican liberty rather than American who became the first free black woman to enter the West tyranny. Samuel H. Hardin, for example, wrote that (predating by nineteen years the landing of twenty Af- he had moved to Texas because Mexico's laws "invited ricans at Jamestown). These accounts should be re- his emigration" and guaranteed his right to own prop- moved from the "contributions" school of ethnic history erty. Yet the aspirations of free blacks and their sup- and allowed to suggest myriad possibilities for porters for a free, racially tolerant Texas soon clashed reconceptualizing the region's past. Esteban's travels, with the goal of southern white planters to transform for example, initiated the meeting of Indian and Span- the Mexican province into an empire for slavery. By ish cultures, which in turn shaped much of the region's 1835 Texas slaveholders had duplicated the slave sys- history. Moreover, Esteban, Isabel de Olvera, and the tem of the United States, increasing the servile popu- hundreds of other Spanish-speaking black settlers who lation to 1o percent of English-speaking Texans. With populated cities and towns from San Antonio to San growing numbers of slaveholders demanding protec- Francisco, and who in 1781 comprised a majority of tion for their property while openly selling black slaves, the founders of what was to become the greatest of the Anglo Texans and the Mexican government were on a region's cities, Los Angeles, confirm the "multicultural" collision course that led to the Alamo.7 West as the meeting place of diverse races and cultures African Americans were soon engulfed in the tumul- long before the arrival of nineteenth-century English- tuous creation of an independent Texas. For many speaking settlers. From the sixteenth through the eigh- Texas slaves the flag of Mexico rather than the revolu- teenth centuries, persons of African ancestry who tionary "lone star" seemed the banner of liberty. In

1. Westerners disagree on whether Los Angeles should be in- cluded in the region. See Walter Nugent, "Where is the American eral Population Characteristics by States, (Washington, 1992), table West? Report on a Survey," Montana The Magazine of Western His- 3. The "scarcity" quote appears in Walter Prescott Webb, "The tory, 42 (Summer 1992), 8. American West: Perpetual Mirage," Harper's Magazine (May 1957), 2. I define the West as the nineteen states from North Dakota 30. south to Texas and west to Alaska and Hawaii. 5. See for example Donald A. Grinde,Jr., and Quintard Taylor, 3. The early articles on slavery are Lester G. Bugbee, "Slavery in "Red vs. Black: Conflict and Accommodation in the Post-Civil War Early Texas," Political Science Quarterly, 13 (September 1898), 389- Indian Territory, 1865-1907," American Indian Quarterly, 8 (Sum- 412; Clyde Duniway, "Slavery in California after 1848," American mer 1984), 211-29; and Quintard Taylor, "Blacks and Asians in a Historical Association Annual Reports, 1 (1905), 243-48; and T. W. White City: Japanese Americans and African Americans in Seattle, Davenport, "Slavery Question in Oregon," Oregon Historical Quar- 1890-1940," Western Historical Quarterly, 22 (November 1991), terly, 9 (September 1908), 189-253. See also W. Sherman Savage, 401-29. "The Negro in the History of the Pacific Northwest,"Journal of Negro 6. See Arnoldo De Leon, They Called Them Greasers: Anglo History, 13 (July 1928), 255-64; and Kenneth W. Porter, "Relations Attitudes toward Mexicans in Texas, 1821-1900 (Austin, 1983), 75- between Indians and Negroes within the Present Limits of the United 102. On Esteban see A. D. F. Bandelier, ed., The Journey ofAlvar States," Journal of Negro History, 17 (July 1932) 287-367. Nunez Cabeza de Vaca (New York, 1905), 8-9, 30-34, 53-54. On 4. On black western population see Bureau of the Census, Negro Isabel de Olvera see George P. Hammond and Agapito Rey, eds., Population in the United States, 1790-1915 (Washington, 1918), Don Juan de Onate: Colonizer of New Mexico, 1595-1628 (Albu- 43-45; and Bureau of the Census, 1990 Census of Population, Gen- querque, 1953), 560-62.

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February 1836, one month before his siege of the Alamo, African slavery was central to the political economy General Antonio L6pez de Santa Anna, commander of of Texas. Yet few western historians have ever linked the Mexican army, queried government officials in slavery with the rest of the region. When the Civil War Mexico City about the liberation of the slaves. "Shall began in 1861 only four western states had been admit- we permit those wretches to moan in chains any longer ted to the Union, and the Euramerican inhabitants of in a country whose kind laws the vast western territories con- protect the liberty of man with- sidered themselves physically out distinction of cast or and psychologically removed color?" Mexico's minister of from the labor system that gen- war, Jose Maria Tornel, pro- erated the turmoil engulfing the vided an answer on March 18. nation. The West's claims of in- While affirming that "the phi- nocence on slavery are muted, lanthropy of the Mexican na- however, by the presence of Af- tion" had already freed the rican American bond servants slaves, he directed commanding in virtually every state and ter- general Santa Anna to grant ritory in the region prior to the their "natural rights," including Civil War, and by the intense "the liberty to go to any point local debates about the suitabil- on the globe that appeals to ity of slavery in Oregon, Cali- them," to remain in Texas, or fornia, Utah, Nebraska, New to relocate to another part of Mexico, and particularly Mexico. The Mexican army "bleeding" Kansas, where po- seemed poised to become a le- litical discourse gave way to gion of liberation. As that army armed conflict in the 1850s. crossed the Colorado and The ninety-eighth meridian Brazos rivers, moving into the may have represented the far- region heavily populated by thest advance of slave-based slaves, the boldest of the plantation agriculture as it was bondspeople took flight toward practiced in the Old South, but Santa Anna's forces both when Photographer L. A. Huffman took the meridian was not an insur- they marched into Texas and this picture of "Auntie" Palmer in Miles mountable barrier to the devel- when they retreated. In return City, Montana, probably in the 188os, opment of some variation of the and noted that she was a slave for Mexican protection, fugi- servile institution in the West. "before the war." tives served as spies, messen- The region was saved from sla- gers, and provocateurs for their very by antislavery, antiblack liberators.8 "free soil" farmers, who were always more numerous than The victory of the Texas revolutionaries over the proslavery advocates or slaveholders, rather than any natu- Mexican army set in motion political events that in the ral environmental barrier or any particular commitment next decade resulted in all of Mexico's northern terri- by westerners to universal liberty or equality.9 tories being added to the United States. But it also ini- Yet the significance of the western debate over sla- tiated a decline in the status of free blacks who sought very extended far beyond the valleys of California and refuge in Texas, and fixed African slavery as the state's Oregon or the prairies of eastern Kansas and Nebraska. predominate labor system. With guarantees of govern- The arrival ofjust a few black slaves into western states mental protection, Texas's "peculiar institution" grew and territories often immediately transformed the in- from three thousand African Americans held in bond- tense political debate east of the Mississippi between age in 1835 to a quarter of a million slaves by the time sections into a contentious local struggle between neigh- of the Civil War almost three decades later. bors. By the 1850s the West remained the only region

7. The Hardin quote appears in George Ruble Woolfolk, The Ramsdell, "The Natural Limits of Slavery Expansion," Mississippi Free Negro in Texas, 1800-1860: A Study in Cultural Compromise Valley Historical Review, 16 (September 1929), 151-71; Allan Nevins, (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1976), 23. See also Paul Lack, The Texas Revo- Ordeal of the Union, 2 vols. (New York, 1947), 116-24; and Charles lutionary Experience: A Political and Social History, 1835-1836 Desmond Hart, "The Natural Limits of Slavery Expansion: Kansas- (College Station, Tex., 1992), 238-52. Nebraska, 1854," Kansas Historical Quarterly, 34 (Spring 1968), 8. Quoted in Lack, Texas Revolutionary Experience, 244. 32-50. On the race-slavery-politics nexus in antebellum West see 9. The "natural limits" of slavery debate has a long history and Eugene Berwanger, The Frontier against Slavery: Western Anti-Negro only a slightly shorter historiography. See for example Charles W. Prejudice and the Slavery Extension Controversy (Urbana, Ill., 1967).

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in the nation where the fate of slavery had not been servile institution on a daily basis. Peter Lester, a former determined. Both pro- and antislavery interests feltPhiladelphia abolitionist who arrived in San Francisco compelled to compete for its allegiance in a contest that in 1850, invited black slaves into his home to lecture ultimately brought on the Civil War. them on their rights. "When they left," he declared, The first significant numbers of African Americans "we had them strong in the spirit of freedom. They who entered the West from the older states came as were leaving [slavery] every day." The active role of slaves. The largest servile population resided in Texas, blacks in challenging slavery prompted one contem- where the federal 1860 census reported 182,556 porary German observer to remark: "The wealthy Cali- bondspeople comprising slightly over 30 percent of the fornia Negroes . . . exhibit a great deal of energy and state's total population.'0 Like Texas, the Five Indian intelligence in saving their brethren."' Nations in what would become Oklahoma had an Kansas blacks challenged slavery through flight. In- economy that rested on slave labor. Eight thousand deed black Kansas was virtually created by the Civil bondspeople in Indian Territory in 1860 comprised War 14 itself. Although the late 185os battle for "bleeding percent of the total population. Their subjugation Kansas"by resulted in a victory for free state partisans, another "people of color" cautions our propensity the to territory in 1860 had only 627 African Americans. view the institution only in terms of white masters Byand 1865 more than 12,oo000 blacks resided in Kansas, black slaves. (In yet another irony of western comprising 9 percent of the population. A combina- exceptionalism, black slavery in New Mexico was ren- tion of politics and geography explains the explosion dered superfluous by the availability of Mexican ofpe- black population Kansas. As a sparsely populated ons and Indian slaves.) Slavery was legal in only one territory adjacent to the Missouri counties with the larg- other western territory-Utah-yet the historical record est slave populations, Kansas was an obvious destina- is replete with accounts of black bond servants held tion.Y3 After passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in illegally throughout the region." 1854, the territory attracted a small group of ardent abolitionists who established Underground Railroad "stations" in the region. Although only a minority of Euramericans approved of their actions, antislavery At ESTERN SLAVEHOLDERS partisans such as James H. Lane, James Montgomery, Wi did not anticipate the role that a dedicated and John Brown, who briefly resided in Kansas before ry minority of black and white abolitionists, returning east to direct the fateful raid on Harper's particularly in California and Kansas, would play Ferry, in led bands of"Jayhawkers" into Missouri in the undermining the "peculiar institution." Through late the 185os on raids for slaves who were then led back 185os white abolitionists such as Cornelius Cole,across the border and directed toward northern states, Joseph C. Zabriskie, Edwin Bryan Crocker (brother creating of what one historian described as the "golden Charles Crocker), and Mark Hopkins utilized the courts age of slave absconding." If northern black and white to free Californians illegally held in bondage. Their abolitionists mounted rhetorical campaigns against sla- efforts were joined by an aroused African American very and occasionally protected fugitives who fled the community willing to employ legal and extra-legal South, some white Kansans actually entered a means to ensure the freedom of black slaves. Unlike slaveholding state to rescue black men and women from Texas and the Indian Territory, where abolitionist bondage.14 sen- timent was virtually nonexistent, California slaves and Slaves also acted on their own, seeking to cross the antislavery activists resided in the same urban commu- Kansas-Missouri border and then reach Lawrence, "the nities or worked side by side in the mining fields. best The advertised antislavery town in the world." While close proximity of slave and abolitionist gave bond both ser- Kansas abolitionists and Missouri slaveholders vants direct contact with their champions, a position exaggerated the figures of escaped slaves for their own virtually impossible in the eastern United States. purposes, That it was clear that the western Missouri proximity also heightened the sense of urgency for slaveholding an- counties, isolated from other major tislavery activists who could witness the horrors of slaveholding the regions and in close proximity to free,

10. Campbell, Empire for Slavery, 55-56, 251. 11. On the extent of slavery in nominally free states and territories Revisited: The Fate of a Kentucky Slave in Gold Rush California," see James A. Rawley, Race and Politics: "Bleeding Kansas" and Pacific the Historian, 29 (Spring 1985), 17-21. Coming of the Civil War (Philadelphia, 1969), 87;James R. Harvey, 12. The Lester quote appears in the Pennsylvania Freeman, De- "Negroes in Colorado" (master's thesis, University of Denver, cember1941), 5, 1850. The quote of the German observer is in Ruth Frye 15-17; Quintard Taylor, "Slaves and Free Men: Blacks in the Ax, Or-ed., Boundfor Sacramento (Claremont, Calif., 1938), 144. See egon Country, 1840-1860," Oregon Historical Quarterly, 83 also(Sum- Rudolph Lapp, Blacks in Gold Rush California (New Haven, mer 1982), 165-69; and Albert S. Broussard, "Slavery in California 1977), 137-39, 155-56.

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This content downloaded from 161.7.59.20 on Wed, 07 Dec 2016 16:26:50 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Blacks experienced the West in both civilian and military capacities. Above, the town of Nicodemus, shown about 1885, was founded by ex-slaves in Kansas in 1877 on land they advertised "To the Colored Citizens of the United States" as "pleasing to the human eye." sparsely populated western territories, were particu- When word of Lane's action as a "liberator" spread, larly susceptible to servile flight. Freedom for such other Missouri slaves as well as refugees from Arkan- bondspeople, unlike their counterparts in the Deep sas and Indian Territory made their way toward Kan- South, lay a short trip to the west rather than a long, sas. Henry Clay Bruce, the brother of future Mississippi circuitous journey through slaveholding states to the Senator Blanche K. Bruce, recounted in his autobiog- north.15 raphy how he and his fiancee escaped from Missouri Opportunities for flight increased dramatically with to Kansas in 1863. Bruce strapped around his waist "a the coming of the Civil War. Kansas entered the Union pair of Colt's revolvers and plenty of ammunition" for onJanuary 29,1861, barely two months before Lincoln's the run to the western border. "We avoided the main inauguration and five weeks after South Carolina se- road and made the entire trip ... without meeting any- ceded. The state legislature chose as one of its two one," he wrote. "We crossed the Missouri River on a United States senators James H. Lane, a passionate, ferry boat to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. I then felt volatile abolitionist who assumed leadership in the myself a free man."17 defense of his adopted state and quickly fused his mili- After 1862, both Lawrence's established white resi- tary responsibilities with his antislavery goals. In Au- dents and black newcomers engaged in activities that gust 1861 Lane mounted a brief incursion into southwest suggested their recognition of the permanence of black Missouri. News of his presence encouraged fugitive settlement. "The Negroes are not coming. They are slaves to seek out his military camp near Springfield. here. They will stay here," asserted abolitionist Without authorization from higher military or civilian Richard Cordley. "They are to be our neighbors, what- authorities, Lane enlisted the male fugitives into his ever we may think about it, whatever we may do about command and arranged for the women and children to it."18 The newcomers certainly heeded Cordley's be sent to Kansas "to help save the crop and provide words. Despite their relatively short residence in the fuel for the winter." His impetuous and largely sym- Sunflower State, African American men soon demanded bolic act emancipated slaves and unofficially created the right to vote and to serve on juries. Both black the first African American troops in the Union army women and men called for an end to discrimination in during the Civil War.16 public transportation and accommodations, initiating

13. See Richard B. Sheridan, "From Slavery in Missouri to Free- 15. Sheridan, "Slavery in Missouri to Freedom in Kansas," 29- dom in Kansas: The Influx of Black Fugitives and Contrabands into 31. Kansas, 1854-1864," Kansas History, 12 (Spring 1989), 30-31, 37; 16. The quote is from H. D. Fisher, The Gun and the Gospel: Early and Gunja SenGupta, "Servants for Freedom: Christian Abolition- Kansas and Chaplain Fisher (Chicago, 1896), 42-43. ists in Territorial Kansas, 1854-1858," Kansas History, 16 (Autumn 17. Quoted in Henry Clay Bruce, The New Man: Twenty-Nine 1993), 200-13. Years a Slave, Twenty-Nine Years a Free Man (New York, 1969), 14. The "golden age" quote is from Harrison Anthony Trexler, 108-9. "Slavery in Missouri, 1804-1865," Johns Hopkins University Stud- 18. The quote is from Richard Cordley, Pioneer Days in Kansas ies in Historical and Political Science, 32 (no. 2, 1914), 384. (New York, circa 1903), 150-51.

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a century-long struggle to extend the prewar promise of either could spell disaster. Gilbert Fite did not have of freedom for slaves into the post-Civil War prospect African American farmers in mind when he wrote that of equal rights for all of the state's citizens. homesteaders "battered and defeated by nature and African American agricultural history on the high ruined by economic conditions over which they had plains during the post-Civil War decades provides no control... who filed on government land soon found another opportunity to explore the western promise of that natural and human-made barriers defeated their success and upward mobility for the freed people. On hopes and aspirations." Yet the statement reflected the a thousand-mile frontier from North Dakota to Okla- experience of a disproportionate number of African homa, African American homesteaders, propelled by American agriculturalists on the high plains as well. twin desires for land and political freedom, confronted Statistics indicate that the general poverty of black the Great Plains. The Langston City Herald, the news- homesteaders from the South prevented their acquir- paper for the famous all-black town in Oklahoma Ter- ing the land necessary to sustain farming in the West. ritory, proclaimed as much in 1893 when it called on In Oklahoma, which received the largest number of African American southerners to avail themselves of the African American homesteaders, black farm ownership last chance to secure "free homes" on government do- peaked at thirteen thousand in 1910. Perhaps more tell- main. "Everyone that can should go to the [Cherokee] ing, 38 percent of these farmers had less than 50 acres. strip ... and get a hundred and sixty, all you need ... In a region where large landholding was a necessity, is a Winchester, a frying pan, and the $15.00 filing fee." the small size of these farms ensured a rapid exit from In Graham County, Kansas, in 1879, Logan County, western agriculture.20 Oklahoma, in 1891, or Cherry County, Nebraska, in 1904, African American women and men tried and of- ten failed to "conquer" the plains. A sense of the daunt- ing challenges they faced are found in the words of one HE EXPERIENCES OF BLACK settler, Willianna Hickman, who wrote of navigating homesteaders in northwestern Nebraska sug- across Kansas by compass in the summer of 1878, des- gests that farm size alone did not ensure suc- tined for Nicodemus, the first of the high plains black cess. The Kinkaid Homestead Act of 1904, which threw settlements. When fellow emigrants exclaimed: "There open thousands of acres in the Nebraska Sandhills, pro- is Nicodemus!" she anxiously surveyed the landscape. vided the last opportunity for black homesteading in Expecting to find buildings on the horizon, she said, the state. Recognizing the land's aridity, the federal "I looked with all the eyes I had. 'Where is Nicodemus? government provided homestead claims of 640 rather I don't see it."' Her husband pointed to the plumes of than 160 acres. The first African American to file a smoke coming out of the ground. "The families lived claim, Clem Deaver, arrived in 1904. Other blacks fol- in dugouts," she dejectedly recalled. "We landed and lowed and by 1910 twenty-four families filed claim to struck tents. The scenery was not at all inviting and I 14,000 acres of land in Cherry County. Eight years later began to cry."19 185 blacks held 40,000 acres. Yet much like Oklahoma Success for black western farmers rested on a tenu- and Kansas, black farm families, unable to render the ous foundation of ample credit and rain. The absence land productive enough for sustainable incomes, began

The Jerry Shores family, pictured here in 1887, homesteaded in Custer County, in central Nebraska, as did a number of other former slaves.

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This content downloaded from 161.7.59.20 on Wed, 07 Dec 2016 16:26:50 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms bI)

The passengers and crew of the Missouri River steamer Helena posed (right) for photographer F.Jay Haynes at Milk River Landing, Montana Territory, in 1880. Among them are several African American men visible on the lower deck.

K) X ii Below, twenty-one-year-old Private James D. Cowan of Company E, 25th Infantry, Fort Custer, Montana, 1888, was one of thousands of black infantry and cavalry men stationed in the region.

leaving the isolated region in the early 192os for Den- ver, Omaha, or Lincoln. The disappearance of black homesteaders from the high plains constitutes one of many crucial areas in need of scholarly investigation.21 No debate in black western history has been more contentious than that surrounding the "buffalo sol- diers," the approximately 25,000 men who served in four regiments, the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry and the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth Infan- try, between 1866 and 1917. Along with cow- boys, these troops were the first African American western historical figures to cap- fertile white fields and leave no real monu- ture public attention in the 196os when ments to the memory of brave, but deni- a nation eager to accept black heroes grated-in-their-lifetime soldiers."22 embraced the saga of the western regi- Forbes's critique rests on the pre- ments. Indeed, long before the na- sumption of an Indian-fighting army. Until tion recognized them, some black 1890 that presumption was generally correct, soldiers were highly conscious of although on occasion black soldiers defended their role in the "pacification" of Indian people from the depredations of the region. "We made the West," Euramericans, as black troops did in 1879 when boasted Tenth Cavalry Private Henry they were dispatched to protect Kiowas and McCombs. "[We] defeated the hostile Comanches from Texas Rangers or when they re- tribes of Indians; and made the country peatedly removed hundreds of the white "boomers" safe to live in." William Leckie, the first who illegally occupied Indian lands between 1879 biographer of the black cavalry regi- and 1885. After 1890 black soldiers were far more ments, reiterated that view when he likely to confront angry white strikers than native wrote in 1967 that "the thriving cities warriors. Beginning with the Coeur d'Alene min- and towns, the fertile fields. and the ing district shutdown in 1892 through the national natural beauty [of the West] are railroad strike two years later, and the second con- 0. S. Goff, photographer, monuments enough for any buffalo MHS Photograph Archives, Helena frontation in the Coeur d'Alene district in 1899, soldier." But by the 1970s Jack Forbes African American troops were called upon to and other historians began to probe the moral dilemma defend life and property and to maintain law and or- posed by the actions of these men. Were they not in- der, a curious paradox in light of antiblack violence struments in the subjugation of native peoples for a so- common in the South during this period. At the height ciety that went on to "erect thriving white cities, grow of the Johnson County War in 1892, for example, the

19. The Hickman quote appears in Glen Schwendemann, 21. Bish, "Black Experience in Selected Nebraska Counties," 157, "Nicodemus: Negro Haven on the Solomon," Kansas Historical 209-20. Quarterly, 34 (Spring 1968), 14. 22. The Leckie and Forbes quotes are taken from Lawrence B. 20. The Fite quote appears in Gilbert C. Fite, "A Family Farm De Graaf, "Recognition, Racism, and Reflections on the Writing of Chronicle," in Major Problems in the History of the American West, Western Black History," Pacific Historical Review, 44 (February ed. Clyde A. Milner (Lexington, Mass., 1989), 431-32. See alsoJimmie 1975), 37; McCombs's statement appears in Frank N. Schubert, ed., Lewis Franklin, Journey toward Hope: A History of Blacks in Okla- On the Trail of the Buffalo Soldier: Biographies ofAfrican Americans homa (Norman, 1982), 22-23. in the U.S. Army, 1866-1917 (Wilmington, Del., 1995), xviii.

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This content downloaded from 161.7.59.20 on Wed, 07 Dec 2016 16:26:50 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Military service did not preclude families. Here, African American soldiers from Fort Keogh, Montana, pose with their wives near the Yellowstone River, probably in the early 189os.

Wyoming Stockgrowers Association exploited the soldiers and their families settled in towns such as longstanding hostility between black soldiers and white Havre, Montana, near Fort Assinniboine, and Douglas, Texans as well as the belief that poor whites' hostility Arizona, near Fort Huachuca, or they augmented black toward black workers would ensure African American populations in larger communities such as Salt Lake loyalty in the coming battle between the social classes. City and Spokane.24 When local law enforcement officials sided with small ranchers, the stockgrowers association wired Wyoming Senator Joseph M. Carey, on June 1, 1892, asking him to arrange for stationing black troops in the area. "We E ALSO KNOW NOW that want cool level-headed men whose sympathy is with black soldiers were not always "heroic," us," the telegram read. "Send six companies of Ninth nd that boredom, isolation, and racism Cavalry.... The colored troops will have no sympa- emanating from both officers and civilians took a toll thy for Texan thieves . . . these are the troops we in alcoholism, desertion, suicide, and internalized vio- want." 23 lence such as the 1887 murder of Sergeant Emanuel Historians have provided nuanced accounts of black Stance, a Congressional Medal of Honor winner. soldiers in the West that reveal the texture of military Stance's repeated verbal and physical abuse of his men life. We know now, for example, that as soldiers were at Fort Robinson, Nebraska, led to his death at their posted at various forts, wives and children accompa- hands. The historical record even occasionally shows nied them as did single black women and men-laun- soldiers in sympathy with those they were sworn to dresses, cooks, prostitutes, gamblers, and laborers. As fight. Private W. H. Prather, one of the Ninth Cavalry Virginia Scharff has written elsewhere, these military troopers who guarded the Sioux in the winter of 1891 communities resembled a "traveling village, more like after the Wounded Knee confrontation, summarized his the bands of Plains Indians who inhabited the same territory." Eventually the traveling stopped as retired 24. Virginia Scharff, "Gender and Western History: Is Anybody Home on the Range?" Montana The Magazine of Western History, 41 (Spring 1991), 62. 23. Quoted in Frank N. Schubert, "The Suggs Affray: The Black 25. The Prather quote appears inJack D. Foner, The United States Cavalry in the Johnson County War," Western Historical Quarterly, Soldier between Two Wars: Army Life and Reforms, 1865-1898 (New 4 (January 1973), 60. On the Coeur d'Alene strikes and other civil York, 1970), 135. disturbances see United States Senate, Federal Aid in Domestic Dis- 26. See Ruthe Winegarten, Black Texas Women: 150 Years of Trial turbances, 1787-1903, 57th Cong., 2d sess., 1902-1903, Senate andDoc. Triumph (Austin, 1995); Paul Spickard, "Work and Hope: 209, pt. 10, pp. 222-25,246-53; and Clayton D. Laurie, "The United African American Women in Southern California during World War States Army and the Labor Radicals of the Coeur d'Alenes: Federal II," Journal of the West, 32 (July 1993), 70-79; and Gretchen Lemke- Military Intervention in the Mining Wars of 1892-1899," Idaho Santangelo,Yes- Abiding Courage: African American Migrant Women and terdays, 37 (Summer 1993), 14-17, 24. On the protection of Native the East Bay Community (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1996). On California American land see "Oklahoma," Harper's Weekly Magazine, population 29 see Bureau of the Census, Seventh Census of the United (March 28, 1885), 199; and William L. Leckie, Buffalo Soldiers: States: A 1850 (Washington, D.C., 1853), xxxiii; Bureau of the Cen- Narrative of the Negro Cavalry in the West (Norman, 1967), 28, sus,166- Eighth Census of the United States, 1860, Population (Washing- 68, 246-51. ton, D.C., 1864), 33.

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This content downloaded from 161.7.59.20 on Wed, 07 Dec 2016 16:26:50 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms WINTER 1996 ' QUINTARD TAYLOR anger over the inadequate supplies left for both the We know a great deal more about nineteenth- Indians and the soldiers in a poem, the last lines of century urban black women. Accounts of Mary Ellen which read: "In a warm barracks our recent comrades Pleasant in San Francisco, Biddy Mason in Los Ange- take their ease, while we poor devils, and the Sioux les, Lutie Lytle in Topeka, when coupled with studies are left to freeze."25 of organizations such as the black women's clubs in The explosion of scholarship on Euramerican Colorado, Kansas, Wyoming, and Montana, help pro- women in the West in the 1970s shattered the myth vide a composite image of African American women as that the region, even in its "pioneering" period, was crucial a pillars in the maintenance and defense of the particularly male preserve. Several historians are ex- black community. Bridget "Biddy" Mason, for example, amining the region's African American women com- founded Los Angeles's First African Methodist Epis- prehensively to answer the often unstated assumption copal Church in 1872, the oldest black church in the that their history simply parallels the experiences ofcity, and singlehandedly supported it during the cru- white women or of black men. As with many funda- cial first years by paying all taxes and expenses, includ- mental assumptions concerning the West, the evidence ing the minister's salary. Businesswoman Mary Ellen indicates otherwise. Isabel de Olvera's saga, for ex- Pleasant challenged streetcar segregation in San Fran- ample, shows black women in the West from the sev- cisco in the 1860s and used her influence with promi- enteenth century in various roles and capacities. Sex nent white politicians such as California governor ratios suggest that African American women were nei- Newton Booth (who was elected while a resident of her ther isolated from other women of their race or over- boardinghouse) to promote civil rights for African whelmingly outnumbered by black men. By 1860 Americans. Lutie Lytle, only the second black female African American women comprised half of the black attorney in the nation, was a Populist campaigner and population in Texas, Indian Territory, Utah Territory, organizer in Topeka, Kansas. African American women and the Pacific Northwest. Only in gold rush Califor- in Lawrence organized the Ladies Refugee Aid Soci- nia was there initially a huge imbalance between black ety in 1864 to collect food, clothing, and money and women and men. Of the 952 blacks counted in the 1850 to assist destitute ex-slaves. A decade later, the Col- census, only 90 were women. Ten years later, when ored Ladies Legal Rights Association, a group of black California numbered slightly more than 4,000 middle-class black Denverites, made highly visible pro- inhabitants, black women comprised 31 percent of the tests of racial discrimination such as the exclusion of total population. Post-Civil War settlement patterns African Americans from the Tabor Opera House. That of African American homesteaders in Nebraska, Kan- pattern of service and protest carried forward into the sas, and Oklahoma also show a balanced ratio as black twentieth century and was embodied in the activities women came both as single of individuals such as Los Angeles newspaper editor homesteaders and in fami- e Blep11 Charlotta Bass, who in 1952 became the first African lies. Unfortunately we American woman to be nominated on a presiden- know far more about tial party ticket (the Progressive Party), or Clara the numbers of N Luper who in 1958 organized one of the first women on the sit-in protests of the modern civil rights move- plains than a- ment, when she led black students into Katz bout their expe- Drug Store in Oklahoma City, and in myriad riences.26

Among the black women who played important roles in the West was Bridget "Biddy" Mason (above), who founded the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles in 1872 and supported it singlehandedly in its early years.

At right, the Montana Federation of Negro Women's Clubs meets in 1933 at St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church in Helena, Montana.

This content downloaded from 161.7.59.20 on Wed, 07 Dec 2016 16:26:50 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms The contrasting images of black cowboys, like these men branding a calf in Wyoming in the late nineteenth century, with black homesteaders, urban workers, and families at western military posts, serve as reminders that "multiple" Wests existed side by side.

organizations such as the hundreds of black women's organizations established the fabric of community life. clubs stretching from Montana to Arizona.27 Some black urban populations such as those in Hel- Today the vast majority of African American women ena and Yankton did not survive into the twentieth cen- and men reside in the region's cities. The origins of tury. Others, such as those in Houston, Dallas, these contemporary black western urban communities Oakland, Denver, and Los Angeles, became the final can be found in the rise of the nineteenth-century Afri- destinations for tens of thousands of migrants inspired can American urban population. In 1885, when black by the belief that their piece of the urban West would cowboys were trailing cattle from Texas to Dodge City, provide the political and social freedom that had evaded Kansas, when black homesteaders were trying to grow them in their former homes.28 wheat from stubborn west Kansas soil, or when buf- The late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century falo soldiers were patrolling the Southwest desert, far black urban West population was small. The combined more women and men entered Denver, San Francisco, African American population of the five largest west- Seattle, and Los Angeles, anxious to assume the vari- ern cities in 191o-San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, ous jobs they believed the urban economy made avail- Denver, and Portland-totaled just 18,008 people, only able. The contrasting images of black cowboys, slightly more than one-fifth the black population of homesteaders, buffalo soldiers, and urban workers re- Washington, D.C., the nation's largest black commu- minds us that "multiple" Wests often existed side by nity. Such small numbers, however, did not keep west- side. ern urban blacks from organizing a rich social and The nineteenth-century black urban community ex- cultural life or prevent them from continuing the battle panded in the larger cities-San Francisco (which had for racialjustice. Despite the different local economies, the only significant antebellum black urban population), blacks in western cities performed surprisingly similar Los Angeles, Denver, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Omaha, work. Men and women were personal servants for Portland, Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, and San An- wealthy households, and black men worked as hotel tonio. But black communities also evolved in smaller waiters, railroad porters, messengers, cooks, and jani- towns and cities such as Topeka, Kansas, Virginia City, tors. The seaports had some sailors and dock workers. Nevada, Helena, Montana, Yankton, South Dakota, and A small number of blacks were independent entrepre- Pocatello, Idaho. It was here that churches, fraternal neurs operating barbershops, restaurants, and board- organizations, social clubs, even fledgling civil rights inghouses. By the 1890s most western cities had handfuls of black doctors, lawyers, and newspaper

27. See Dolores Hayden, "Biddy Mason's Los Angeles, 1856- 1891" California History, 68 (Fall 1989), 97-98. See Lynn M.women's organizations see Marilyn Dell Brady, "Kansas Federation Hudson, "A New Look, or 'I'm Not Mammy to Everybody in Califor- of Colored Women's Clubs, 1900-1930," Kansas History, 9 (Spring nia': Mary Ellen Pleasant, a Black Entrepreneur," Journal of the 1986), 19-30; and Lynda Fae Dickson, "The Early Club Movement West, 32 (July 1993), 37. Lytle is described in Thomas C. Cox, Blacks among Black Women in Denver, 1890-1925" (doctoral diss., Uni- in Topeka, Kansas, 1865-1915: A Social History (Baton Rouge, versityLa., of Colorado, 1982). Charlotta Bass is described in Gerald R. 1982), 94-95, 129. See also Sheridan, "Slavery in Missouri to Free- Gill, "'Win or Lose-We Win,' The 1952 Vice-Presidential Cam- dom in Kansas," 40. On the Colored Ladies Legal Rights Associa- paign of Charlotta A. Bass," in The Afro-American Woman: Struggles tion see Brian R. Werner, "Colorado's Pioneer Blacks: Migration, and Images, ed. Sharon Harley and Rosalyn Terborg-Penn (Port Occupations, and Race Relations in the Centennial State" (master's Washington, N.Y., 1978), 109-18. Luper is profiled in Franklin, thesis, University of Northern Colorado, 1979), 13, 25. On other Journey Toward Hope, 187-89.

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This content downloaded from 161.7.59.20 on Wed, 07 Dec 2016 16:26:50 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms WINTER 1996 < QUINTARD TAYLOR editors who, along with ministers and private school- Negro Improvement Association chapters by 1926 in teachers, comprised the "elite." This elite often urged Denver, Dallas, Kansas City, Tulsa, San Francisco, San separation from impoverished blacks. Some of them Diego, Phoenix, Oakland, and smaller towns such as anticipated following the advice of one Kansas news- Prescott, Colorado Springs, Fresno, Muskogee, Ogden, paper editor who exhorted middle-class black and Waco, served as vital reminders that however iso- westerners to "make a line, and keep within it ... to lated they might be in individual cities or towns, Afri- ostracize them from our society."29 can Americans were part of a much larger black Most pre-World War II western urban populations community that stretched across the region, the nation, proved too small, however, to successfully segregate and the world.30 themselves into distinct social classes, as had been done Whether the activity involved building a church, in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, New York, and other mounting a political campaign, organizing a women's eastern cities. Despite their small numbers, black ur- club, or protesting a lynching, black urban westerners ban westerners usually established churches, fraternal generated a sense of cooperation and shared destiny organizations, social clubs, newspapers, and literary so- that was impossible to establish among the region's cieties. These fledgling nineteenth-century institutions African American cowboys, soldiers, miners, or farm- and organizations immediately addressed the spiritual, ers. Thus, the urbanites were the first black westerners educational, social, and cultural needs of the local in- who could be accurately depicted as constituting a habitants. But such "race" organizations also provided "community." Their activities and aspirations would African Americans with respite from a hostile world, a shape the black West for generations. There were con- retreat where blacks could lose their anonymity and sequences, of course. One was that urbanization made gain some control over their lives. While these desires black westerners a less distinct group as they melded were hardly unique to black westerners, the small size into an emerging national African American culture. of the region's population, the vast distances between black communities in the West, and from the South, increased the importance of these organizations. As early as 1862, the San Francisco Pacific Appeal T WAS IN THE WESTERN CITIES called on its readers to create political, religious, and that these intrepid newcomers fought for the moral organizations "wherever there are half a dozen full democratization of American society. Indeed Colored people." This network of organizations did California's "Rosa Parks" emerged when the rest of the not end at the city's boundaries. Indeed, its most im- nation was still in the throes of the Civil War. On April portant function was to link small, isolated black west- 17, 1863, Charlotte Brown was ejected from a San Fran- ern populations with the larger African American world. cisco streetcar because of her race. In her subsequent Such linkages were far more crucial for western com- suit against the Omnibus Company for $200 in dam- munities separated by huge distances and by their even ages, the jury awarded her just five cents-the cost of greater remoteness from the large African American the fare. Three days after the trial she was again ejected populations of the South and eastern cities. Thus, the from an Omnibus streetcar and brought a second suit creation of the Puget Sound African Methodist Epis- for $3,000 in damages. The case ended onJanuary 17, copal conference, which embraced black churches in 1865, with a jury awarding her $500. Brown's victory Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Idaho, and British Co- did not permanently abolish streetcar exclusion. In 1868 lumbia in 1900, or the founding of National Associa- the California Supreme Court reversed on appeal lower tion for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) court judgments against Mary E. Pleasant and EmmaJ. chapters in places as diverse as Houston, Portland, Turner, who had brought similar suits against the North Albuquerque, Omaha, El Paso, Oklahoma City, Tuc- Beach and Mission Railroad, another San Francisco street- son, San Antonio, Salt Lake City, and Boise, all by 1919, car company.1 or the establishing of Marcus Garvey-inspired Universal

30. The quote is from a Pacific Appeal editorial, June 7, 1862, 28. See William Lang, "The Nearly Forgotten Blacks on Last p. 2. On regional church networks see Taylor, Forging, 37-38. For Chance Gulch, 1900-1912," Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 70 (April representative examples of western NAACP chapter activities see Barr, 1979), 50-51; C. Robert Haywood, "No Less a Man: Blacks in Cow Black Texans, 144; Elizabeth McLagan, A Peculiar Paradise: A His- Town Dodge City, 1876-1886," Western Historical Quarterly, 19 tory ofBlacks in Oregon, 1788-1940 (Portland, 1980), 123; Franklin, (May 1988), 161-82; and Quintard Taylor, "The Emergence of Afro- Journey toward Hope, 52; and Ronald Coleman, "Blacks in Utah American Communities in the Pacific Northwest, 1865-1910," Jour- History: An Unknown Legacy," in The Peoples of Utah, ed. Helen Z. nal of Negro History, 64 (Fall 1979), 342-51. Papanikolas (Salt Lake City, 1976), 139. For a listing of UNIA 29. Quoted in the Fort Scott Colored Citizen, June 14, 1878. On branches in the West see Tony Martin, Race First: The Ideological the elites in western cities see Willard Gatewood, Aristocrats of Color: and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and the Universal The Black Elite, 1880-1920 (Bloomington, Ind., 1990), 138. Negro Improvement Association (Westport, Conn., 1976), 361-368.

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This content downloaded from 161.7.59.20 on Wed, 07 Dec 2016 16:26:50 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Even as black urban Texans commenced their campaign to restore voting rights in 1921, blacks in Tulsa, Oklahoma, were victimized by a race riot that left scores dead and hundreds of black homes and businesses burned.

The right to vote epitomized complete African great deluge of blood, and I greatly fear, unless the American political emancipation in the urban West as american [sic] people learn from the past to do justice well as the rural South. In 1865 black women and men now & in the future, that their cruel prejudices will go in Virginia City, Nevada, initiated a series of meetings down in the same crimson blood." Senator Sumner read that led to the formation of the Nevada Executive Com- Hardin's telegram to the United States Senate in a mittee, which in turn petitioned the next legislature for speech opposing Colorado statehood. The ensuing voting rights. The following year a convention of black debate over black suffrage restrictions in Colorado men meeting in Lawrence, Kansas, challenged the prompted Congress to pass the Territorial Suffrage Act widely held idea that black voting was a privilege that in January 1867, which gave black male residents the the white male electorate could embrace or reject at its right to vote. Consequently black male Coloradans and pleasure. The convention then issued this warning to those in other western territories gained suffrage months the Euramerican majority in the state: before similar rights were extended to African Ameri- can males in the southern states and three years before Since we are going to remain among you, we be- ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment insured those lieve it unwise to . . . take from us as a class, our natural rights. Shall our presence conduce to the rights for black men in northern and western states.33 welfare, peace, and prosperity of the state, or ... be a cause ofdissention, discord, and irritation. We must be a constant trouble in the state until it ex- tends to us equal and exact justice.32 THOUGH THEY HAD to wait The victory black westerners gained in their cam- much longer, other black westerners were paign for suffrage in Colorado Territory had national equally determined to win voting rights. In implications. Between 1864 and 1867 Denver's 150 Af- 1921 black urban Texans began their campaign for the rican Americans, including Lewis Douglass, son of the restoration of the voting rights they had gradually lost national civil rights leader Frederick Douglass, waged after Reconstruction. Charles Norvell Love, editor of a relentless campaign to press Congress to delay state- the Texas Freedman, filed suit against the Harris County hood for the territory until their suffrage rights were Democratic Party for its prohibition of African Ameri- guaranteed. Denver barber William Jefferson Hardin, cans from voting in primary elections. The Love law- who had arrived from Kentucky in 1863, quickly as- suit sparked a war of litigation between black urban sumed leadership of the effort, contacting Massachu- political activists in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and setts senator Charles Sumner by letter and telegram in El Paso, and the state Democratic Party. The legal con- 1866 to outline the grievances of the territory's Afri- flict that ensued produced four United States Supreme can Americans. Hardin issued an ominous warning in Court rulings between 1927 and 1944, culminating in his letter to Senator Sumner: "Slavery went down in a Smith v. Allwright, the decision that outlawed the

33. See Eugene Berwanger, The West and Reconstruction (Urbana., 31. See RobertJ. Chandler, "Friends in Time of Need: Republi- Ill., 1981), 145-55; and Eugene Berwanger, "William J. Hardin: cans and Black Civil Rights in California during the Civil War Era," Colorado Spokesman for RacialJustice, 1863-1873," Colorado Maga- Arizona and the West, 24 (Winter 1982), 333-34. zine, 52 (Winter 1975), 55-56. 32. Quoted in the Kansas Tribune, October 28, 1866. See also 34. See Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Elmer Rusco, "Good Time Coming?" Black Nevadans in the Nine- Board of Education and Black America's Strugglefor Equality (New teenth Century (Westport, Conn., 1975), 73-75. York, 1975), 234-37.

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This content downloaded from 161.7.59.20 on Wed, 07 Dec 2016 16:26:50 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms WINTER 1996 ~ QUINTARD TAYLOR all-white Democratic primary and guaranteed voting Black service personnel frequently ended their enlist- rights to the state's African Americans.34 ments in the West, sent for family members, and settled The unprecedented migration of African Americans permanently in the region. MarilynJohnson's conclu- to the West during World War II fused the campaigns sion that World War II-era migration made the East for civil rights and economic opportunity. Wartime Bay area population "younger, more southern, more migrants believed their access to jobs, to housing, and female, and noticeably more black" than ever before, to the voting booth were all components of racial and applies with equal force to other western communities individual advancement. The numbers suggest the scale from Omaha to San Diego.36 of change in the African American West. During the 1940s the region's African American population in- creased by 443,ooo persons or 33 percent. The three Pacific Coast states and Nevada led the region (and the T HE WORLD WAR II migration en- nation) in percentage growth with virtually all of the larged and intensified the campaign for civil newcomers concentrated in five major metropolitan rights. Determined to challenge local and na- regions: Seattle-Tacoma, Washington, and Portland, tional racial restrictions and obtain a double victory Oregon-Vancouver, Washington, in the Pacific North- over the Axis andJim Crow, black activists from Hous- west; the San Francisco Bay area, including San Fran- ton to Honolulu launched a full-scale assault on west- cisco, Oakland, and smaller cities such as Berkeley and ern citadels of racial discrimination, including some of Richmond; the Los Angeles-Long Beach area; and San the most powerful labor unions in the nation. In Se- Diego. These regions saw black population increases attle, for example, the enlarged black community, sup- ranging from 798 percent for San Francisco to 168 per- ported by white and Asian allies and ultimately the cent for Los Angeles. Las Vegas, although three hun- federal government, challenged the exclusionary prac- dred miles inland, also saw its population grow rapidly. tices of the International Association of Machinists Between 1940 and 1950 the African American popula- Local 751. Their efforts forced the local to admit people tion of Las Vegas exploded from 178 to 2,888, a 1,622 of color and white women on a nondiscriminatory ba- percent increase. Although their numbers were less sis at Boeing Aircraft and prompted the IAM itself to dramatic, Denver, Omaha, Phoenix, Wichita, Kansas remove its color bar at its national convention in 1946. City, Tucson, Houston, and Honolulu also saw surg- Similar campaigns by black shipyard workers against ing black populations. The migration signaled a sig- the International Boilermakers' Union in Portland, the nificant shift in the intraregional concentration of San Francisco Bay area, Los Angeles, and Honolulu African Americans. In 1940, Texas, Oklahoma, and led to the union's postwar admission of African Ameri- Kansas accounted for 86 percent of the region's blacks. can workers and put in place important legal prece- Ten years later their share dropped to 67 percent. dents that would be used in the 196os and 1970s to Conversely, the Pacific Coast states of California, Or- challenge workplace discrimination throughout the na- egon, and Washington, saw their regional share jump tion.37 from 1o percent to 28 percent.35 Black western urbanites continued their campaign Expanding populations were only the initial indi- for full political equality into the Cold War. In 1951, cators of change. After decades of labor in menial po- Oliver Brown filed suit in Topeka, Kansas, on behalf sitions on the periphery of the economy, black workers of his daughter, Linda, against her exclusion from a throughout the region finally gained access to the in- nearby racially segregated elementary school. The case dustrial workplace. By 1943 thousands of black women would reach the United States Supreme Court in 1954 and men, old residents and newcomers alike, worked as Brown v. Board of Education and would inspire a in aircraft factories, shipyards, munitions plants, and national effort toward racial equality whose repercus- related industries. Thousands more African American sions are felt to this day. Although Brown received in- military personnel were stationed at western military fa- ternational notoriety for the societal change it initiated, cilities that also hired numerous black civilian employees. few scholars have explored the seventy-year campaign

35. Overall the region's African American population increased 37. On Seattle see Taylor, Forging, 164-65, 170. On campaigns 33 percent from 1.3 million to 1.8 million between 1940 and 1950. in Portland, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Honolulu see Alonzo See Bureau of the Census, Sixteenth Census of the United States: 1940, Smith and Quintard Taylor, "Racial Discrimination in the Work- Population, vol. 2, Characteristics of the Population, pt. 1 (Washing- place: A Study of Two West Coast Cities during the 1940s," Journal ton, D.C., 1943), 52; and Bureau of the Census, Census of Popula- of Ethnic Studies, 8 (Spring 1980), 35-54; Albert Broussard, Black tion: 1950, vol. 2, Characteristics of the Population, pt. 1, (Washing- San Francisco, (Lawrence, Kan., 1993), 158-65; and Beth Bailey and ton, D.C., 1953), 1-106. David Farber, "The 'Double-V' Campaign in World War II Hawaii: 36. See Marilynn S.Johnson, The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and African Americans, Racial Ideology, and Federal Power," Journal of the East Bay in World War II (Berkeley, 1993), 58. Social History, 26 (Summer 1993), 831-35.

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This content downloaded from 161.7.59.20 on Wed, 07 Dec 2016 16:26:50 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms MONTANA THE MAGAZINE OF WESTERN HISTORY

by Topeka activists that culminated in the decision. as an integral part of the national campaign that at- Nor do most scholars know of the decades-old effort tempted to eradicate racism, empower black commu- by blacks in Phoenix and Tucson that led to a 1953 nities, and achieve the full and final democratization Arizona State Supreme Court decision providing a cru- of the United States. The Seattle "Movement," for ex- cial legal precedent for Brown.38 ample, an entirely local effort mounted by blacks and A decade before Brown, other black and white sympathetic whites and Asians, employed sit-ins, eco- westerners were employing "direct action"-sit-ins and nomic boycotts, protest marches, and other forms of boycotts of public facilities that discriminated against nonviolent demonstration to confront the three major African Americans. The impetus for these efforts came community grievances-job discrimination, housing from the creation of the multiracial Con- bias, and defacto school segregation. When gress of Racial Equality (CORE). Reverend John H. Adams, a local activ- Formed in Chicago in 1942 by ..:{ ist, proudly proclaimed in 1963 that peace and civil rights advo- i "the Civil Rights Movement has fi- cates, it was initially active nally leaped the Cascade Moun- mainly on college campuses. tains," he was simply confirming CORE mounted brief cam- the rise of a nonviolent crusade paigns in the West, includ- that already had engaged the en- ing a sit-in against a ergies and aspirations of thou- downtown Denver movie sands of Seattleites. Although the theater in 1943 and in 1948 "direct action" efforts of western against a restaurant in Law- black civil rights activists and their rence, Kansas. By 1951, the allies did not eliminate all of their DePorres Club, a CORE affili- racial grievances, as became appar- ate based at Creighton Univer- ent in Los Angeles in 1992, the cam- sity in Omaha, launched paign nonetheless demolished successful direct action cam- decades-old barriers to opportunity The suit Oliver Brown (above) filed in 1951 paigns against employment and and equality, confirming what in an effort to have his daughter admitted to housing discrimination in the nineteenth-century black wester- a racially segregated Topeka, Kansas, city. Independent of the CORE ners had long known: that the elementary school led to the U. S. Supreme struggle for racial justice was not actions, University of New Court's famed Brown v. Board of Education Mexico students in 1947 initiated ruling of 1954, which heralded an end to the simply a southern campaign, it had successful boycotts against dis- separate-but-equal doctrine. to be waged everywhere in the na- crimination in Albuquerque- tion, including the American: West.40 area public accommodations. These efforts were a The 1992 Rodney King uprising in Los Angeles prelude to large-scale direct-action campaigns begin- should remind historians of the complex, uncertain, ning in 1958 with sit-ins in Wichita and Oklahoma City evolving relationships between peoples in the modern against public accommodations segregation. The sit- urban West. The 1992 conflagration was not simply a ins in the southern plains cities preceded by two years reprise of the 1965 Watts Riot, which pitted angry black the much heralded Greensboro protests credited with ghetto residents against a largely white police force and initiating the direct-action phase of the 196os civil rights National Guard. The 1992 confrontation revealed ten- movement.39 sions that divided Angelenos by class as much as by By the early 196os, the campaign that began on the race (impoverished blacks, Latinos, and whites engaged southern plains swept across the region. From San An- in looting and burning), as well as conflicts and rival- tonio to Seattle, African Americans took to the streets ries between people of color (black and Latino hostil- ity toward Korean American merchants). Yet the

38. On Brown v. Board see Kluger, Simple Justice, 367-424. On the Arizona case see Mary Melcher, "Blacks and Whites Together: Right to Be Served: Oklahoma City's Lunch Counter Sit-Ins, 1958- Interracial Leadership in the Phoenix Civil Rights Movement,"Jour- 1964," Chronicles of Oklahoma, 59 (Summer 1981), 152-66. nal of Arizona History, 32 (Summer 1991), 201. 40. The Adams quote appears in Taylor, Forging, 198. 39. On CORE demonstrations in Denver, Lawrence, and Omaha 41. The Bell quote appears in Leigh DanaJohnsen, "Equal Rights see August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, CORE: A Study in the Civil and the 'Heathen Chinee': Black Activism in San Francisco, 1865- Rights Movement, 1942-1968 (New York, 1973), 27, 56-57, 60. See1875," Western Historical Quarterly, 11 (January, 1980), 61. also George Long, "How Albuquerque Got Its Civil Rights Ordi- 42. See Richard White, "Race Relations in the American West," nance," Crisis, 60 (November 1953), 521-24; Ronald Walters, American Quarterly, 38 (Fall 1986), 396-97; and Patricia Nelson Lim- "Standing Up in America's Heartland: Sitting in before Greensboro," erick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American American Visions, 8 (February), 20-23; and Carl R. Graves, "The West (New York, 1987), 349.

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This content downloaded from 161.7.59.20 on Wed, 07 Dec 2016 16:26:50 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms WINTER 1996 Z- QUINTARD TAYLOR multiple sources of that relationship are rooted in In five an influential article published in 1986, Richard centuries of encounters between racially and culturally White argued that the peculiar pattern of race relations diverse peoples both as individuals and distinct in popu- the region provides much of the foundation for west- lations. A careful reading of African American ernhistory distinctiveness. Without it the West, White main- in the West reveals the numerous ways in which tained, Asian "might as well be New Jersey with mountains Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos have and been deserts." Indeed, from the sixteenth-century en- allies or competitors for land,jobs, and political counter power, of Esteban with native peoples to the Rodney and how each group has, in its own particular fashion,King uprising eight years before the beginning of the incorporated racist beliefs against other people twenty-firstof color century, "race" in the West has mattered, to further its own interests. This view was bluntly although ad- its specific impact and consequence has var- vanced by nineteenth-century San Francisco newspa-ied as much as the regional landscape. African Ameri- per editor Philip A. Bell, who attempted to distance can history in this region affords us an opportunity to the post-Civil War black suffrage campaign from view "hea- this contested racial terrain and to understand how then . . . idolatrous" Chinese. "We make no issue in the contest itself, as it unfolded through the centuries, the Chinese question," Bell proclaimed, "let them shaped the destiny of all westerners.42 c_ paddle their own canoe." The record also reveals how people of color have overcome what appeared to be insurmountable cultural chasms to forge bonds of friendship and fidelity as occurred in the 1850s when Tejanos (Texans of Mexican ancestry) aided black QUINTARD TAYLOR is professor of history, Univer- slaves via an underground railroad that ran south across sity of Oregon, Eugene, where he is a specialist on Af- the Rio Grande, or the 1930S when a remarkable coali- rican Americans in the American West. He is author tion of Asian Americans and African Americans fore- of more than twenty articles on blacks in the West and stalled enactment of anti-intermarriage laws in The Forging of a Black Community: A History of Seattle's Washington state. These examples, at the very least, Central District, 1870 through the Civil Rights Era confirm the obsolescence of the model of race relations (1994). This article is drawn from his current project, that centers on Euramerican interaction with each In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in group. Historians must now ask how the groups faced the American West, 1928-1990, forthcoming from each other in the West.41 W. W. Norton in 1997.

African Americans in the West employed increasingly direct, visible efforts to air grievances and achieve racial equality. Here, ten thousand people march in Seattle in April 1968 in a memorial for the slain Reverend Martin Luther King,Jr.

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BIBLIOGRAPHIC ESSAY ON THE AFRICAN AMERICAN WEST

by Quintard Taylor

CONSIDERING THE WIDELY HELD (doctoral diss., State University of New York at Stony assumption that the African American presence Brook, in1972); the and Ronald G. Coleman, "A History of West was not significant until World War BlacksII, the in Utah,his- 1825-1910o" (doctoral diss., University torical literature on blacks in the region is ofsurprisingly Utah, 1980). For a four-state survey of African Amer- rich and diverse. Unfortunately, broad regional ican synthe-communities see Quintard Taylor, "A History of ses are absent. W. Sherman Savage's Blacks Blacksin the in West the Pacific Northwest, 1788-1970" (doctoral (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1976) remainsdiss., University the of Minnesota, 1977). Lawrence B. only regionwide study, although it ends, De Graafs,in classic "Recognition, Racism, and Reflections on the Turnerian fashion, in 1890. Kenneth W. Porter'sWriting of TheWestern Black History," Pacific Historical Negro on the American Frontier (New York: Review,Arno Press, 44 (February 1975), 22-51, remains one of the 1971), often cited as a work of synthesis, is in best fact surveys a com- concerning the challenges of writing west- pilation of the author's numerous articles ern on black the history. ad- Richard White attempts to place the vancing North American frontier. Only a few discussion of Porter's of race relations at the center of the New articles actually address African American history Western in History the in "Race Relations in the American West. William Loren Katz's The Black West (Seattle: West," American Open Quarterly, 38 (Fall 1986), 394-416. Hand Publishing, 1987), a pictorial survey of the The region, literature on blacks in New Spain begins with remains a highly popular account intended primarily the first African for in the region, Esteban. On Esteban see a nonacademic audience. Like Savage's work, A. however, D. F. Bandelier, it ed., The Journey of Alvar Nunez fails to discuss twentieth-century developments. Cabeza de Vaca (New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, Some state studies exist, although they 1905);vary andenor- Cleve Hallenbeck, ed., The Journal of Fray mously in quality. See for example Alwyn MarcosBarr, deBlack Niza (Dallas: University Press, 1949). Isabel Texans: A History of Negroes in Texas, 1528-1971 de Olvera (Aus- is described in George P. Hammond and tin, Tex.: Jenkins Publishing Company, 1973);Agapito ElmerRey, eds., Don Juan de Onate: Colonizer of New Rusco, "Good Time Coming?" Black Nevadans Mexico, in 1595-1628 the (Albuquerque: University of New Nineteenth Century (Westport, Conn.: GreenwoodMexico Press, 1953), 560-62. On blacks in colonial Press, 1975); Barbara J. Richardson, Black Mexico Pioneers see Gonzalo of Aguirre Beltran, "The Integration New Mexico: A Documentary and Pictorial Historyof the Negro (Rio into the National Society of Mexico," Race Rancho, N. Mex., Panorama Press, 1976); and Elizabeth Class in Latin America, ed. Magnus Morner (New McLagan, A Peculiar Paradise: A History ofYork: Blacks Columbia in University Press, 1970), 11-27; and Oregon, 1788-1940 (Portland: Georgian Press, Colin Palmer, 1980); Slaves of the White God: Blacks in Mexico, Richard E. Harris, The First 100 Years: A 1570-1650 History (Cambridge: of Harvard University Press, Arizona Blacks (Apache Junction, Ariz., Relmo1976). The Pub- founders of Los Angeles are profiled in lishers, 1983); Everett Louis Overstreet, Lonnie Black Bunch on aIII, Black Angelenos: The Afro-American Background of White: A Chronicle of Afro-Americans' in Los Angeles, 1850-1950 (Los Angeles: California Afro- Involvement in America's Last Frontier, Alaska American Museum, 1988), 10-12. See also Jack D. (Fairbanks: Alaska Black Caucus, 1988); Mamie 0. Forbes, "Black Pioneers: The Spanish-Speaking Oliver, Idaho Ebony: The Afro-American Presence in Afroamericans of the Southwest," Phylon, 27 (Fall 1966), Idaho State History (Boise: Idaho State Historical So- 233-46. For a successful integration of African Ameri- ciety, 1990); and B. Gordon Wheeler, Black Califor- can western history into a larger narrative see David J. nia: The History of African Americans in the Golden Weber, The Mexican Frontier, 1821-1846: The Ameri- State (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1993). can Southwest under Mexico (Albuquerque: University Important unpublished sources for state histories in- of New Mexico Press, 1982). clude Robert Kim Nimmons, "Arizona's Forgotten Past: Some of the earliest articles on African Americans The Negro in Arizona, 1539-1965" (master's thesis, in the West describe slavery in the region. They in- Northern Arizona University, 1971); James Adolphus clude Lester G. Bugbee, "Slavery in Early Texas," Po- Fisher, "A History of the Political and Social Develop- litical Science Quarterly, 13 (September 1898), 389-412; ment of the Black Community in California, 1850-1950" Clyde Duniway, "Slavery in California after 1848,"

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American Historical Association Annual Reports, British Columbia," 1 California Historical Quarterly, 66 (1905), 243-48; and T. W. Davenport, "Slavery (Spring Ques- 1977), 34-45; RobertJ. Chandler, "Friends in tion in Oregon," Oregon Historical Quarterly, Time 9 (Sep-of Need: Republicans and Black Civil Rights in tember 1908), 189-253. Eugene Berwanger's California The during the Civil War Era," Arizona and the Frontier against Slavery: Western Anti-Negro West,Prejudice 24 (Winter 1982), 319-40; and Rudolph Lapp, and the Slavery Extension Controversy (Urbana: Blacks Uni- in Gold Rush California (New Haven: Yale Uni- versity of Illinois Press, 1967) remains the starting versity point Press, 1977). The complex relationship of west- for any discussion of the race-slavery-politics ern nexus African in Americans to the Church ofJesus Christ of the region. For localized studies see Robert Latter-day W. Saints is discussed in Newell Bringhurst, Johannsen Frontier Politics on the Eve of the Saints,Civil WarSlaves and Blacks: The Changing Place of Black (Seattle: University of Washington, 1955); and PeopleJames within A. Mormonism (Westport, Conn.: Green- Rawley, Race and Politics: "Bleeding Kansas" wood and Press, the 1981). Coming of the Civil War (Philadelphia:J. B. Lippincott Slavery and freedom on the Kansas-Missouri bor- Company, 1969). The best state study of slavery is der are explored in Richard B. Sheridan, Randolph Campbell, An Empire for Slavery: The "From Slavery in Missouri to Freedom in Peculiar Institution in Kansas: The Influx of Black Fugitives and Texas, 1821-1865 (Ba- Contrabands into Kansas, 1854-1864," Kan- ton Rouge: Louisi- sas History, 12 (Spring 1989), 28-47; and ana State University Gunja SenGupta, "Servants for Freedom: Press, 1989). See Christian Abolitionists in Territorial Kan- also Paul D. Lack, sas, 1854-1858," Kansas History, "Slavery and the _16 (Autumn 1993), 200-13. Texas Revolution," ::J~.i.kf ~.& Contemporary abolitionist Southwestern His- l perspectives can be found torical Quarterly, 89 in Richard Cordley, (October 1985), 181-202. A History of Lawrence, On black slavery among Kansas from the First Native Americans see R. r v i Settlement to the Close Halliburton, Jr., Red over of the Rebellion (Law- Black: Black Slavery among rence, Kans.: E. F. the Cherokee Indians (West- ,/IBl Caldwell, 1895); Rich- port, Conn.: Greenwood .*-. ."l M~B ard Cordley, Pioneer Press, 1977); Daniel F. J Days in Kansas (New Littlefield, Jr., Afri-. York: Pilgrim Press, cans andSeminoles:From ^ . e ^- * - r : circa 1903); and H. D. Removal to Emancipa- . . -. tion (Westport, Conn.: -^ - -^,- % / w^ Fisher, the Gospel: Early Kan- The Gun and Greenwood ]ress, 1977); A andPull at the Canteen, by Frederic Remington sas and (1888), Chaplain 'heda Perdue, Slavery and drawing te from "A Scout with the Buffalo FisherSoldiers," (Chicago: Ken- Evoluion of Cherokee Society written and illustrated by Frederic Remington, wood Press, 1896). 1540-1866(Knoxville: Univer- Century Magazine, 37 (April 1889), p. See909 also Wendell sity ofTrennessee ]Press, :179). Holmes Stephenson, On the extent of slavery in nominally Thefree Political states and Career of General James H. Lane (To- territories see Delilah L. Beasley, "Slavery peka: inKansas Califor- State Historical Society, 1930), 123-33. On nia," Journal of Negro History, 3 (anuary the Kansas-Missouri 1918), 33- border during the Civil War see 54; Alvin R. Sunseri, Seeds of Discord: Henry New MexicoClay Bruce's in ex-slave narrative, The New Man: the Aftermath of theAmerican Conquest, Twenty-Nine 1846-1861 (Chi- Years a Slave, Twenty-Nine Years a Free cago: Nelson Hall, 1979), 115-24; Quintard Man (New Taylor, York: Negro Universities Press, 1969). "Slaves and Free Men: Blacks in the Oregon The impactCountry, of western Reconstruction on the black 1840-1860," Oregon Historical Quarterly, population 83 (Summer is addressed in Eugene Berwanger, The West 1982), 153-70; and Albert S. Broussard, and"Slavery Reconstruction in Cali- (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, fornia Revisited: The Fate of a Kentucky 1981). Slave See in also Gold Eugene Berwanger, "WilliamJ. Hardin: Rush California," Pacific Historian, 29 Colorado (Spring Spokesman 1985), for Racial Justice, 1863-1873," 17-21. On the status of free blacks in antebellumColorado Magazine, Cali- 52 (Winter 1975), 52-65; and fornia see Malcolm Edwards, "The War "Hardin of Complex- and Langston: Western Black Spokesmen of ional Distinction: Blacks in Gold Rush California and the Reconstruction Era," Journal of Negro History, 64

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(Spring 1979), 101-14. On Texas reconstruction Black see Migration to Kansas, 1879-1880 (Lawrence: Uni- James Smallwood, Time of Hope, Time of Despair: versityBlack of Kansas Press, 1978); Glen Schwendemann, Texans during Reconstruction (Port Washington, "Nicodemus:N.Y.: Negro Haven on the Solomon," Kansas Kennikat Press, 1981); and Merline Pitre, Through ManyHistorical Quarterly, 34 (Spring 1968), 1-31; Daniel F. Dangers, Toils and Snares: The Black Leadership Littlefield of and Lonnie E. Underhill, "Black Dreams and Texas, 1868-g9oo (Austin, Tex.: Eakin Press, 1985). 'Free' Homes: The Oklahoma Territory, 1891-1894," Post-Reconstruction black Texas is described in Phylon, 34 (December 1973), 342-57; andJames D. Bish, Lawrence D. Rice, The Negro in Texas, 1874-19oo "The (Ba- Black Experience in Selected Nebraska Counties, ton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971). 1854-1920" Two (master's thesis, University of Nebraska books by Daniel Littlefield, The Cherokee Freedmen: Omaha, 1989). Two memoirs and two autobiographi- From Emancipation to American Citizenship (Westport, cal novels provide accounts of life on the high plains. Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978), and The Chickasaw Robert Anderson's From Slavery to Affluence: Memoirs Freedmen: A People without a Country (Westport, of Robert Anderson, Ex-Slave (Hemingford, Neb.: Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980), describe Reconstruc- Hemingford Ledger, 1927) recalls his life as a success- tion among two of the five major Indian Territory ful black na- Nebraska homesteader-rancher. For one tions. On the post-Civil War western racial hierarchy woman's recollections of her childhood in the first de- see Randall B. Woods, "Integration, Exclusion, cades or Seg-of the twentieth century see Ava Speese Day, "The regation? The 'Color Line' in Kansas, 1878-1900," Ava Speese Day Story," in Sod House Memories, Vols. Western Historical Quarterly, 14 (April 1983), I-III, 181-98; ed. FrancesJacobs Alberts (Hastings, Neb.: Sod and Randall B. Woods, A Black Odyssey: John House Lewis Society, 1972), 261-75. Oscar Micheaux's nov- Waller and the Promise of American Life, 1878-1gooels, The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer (Lin- (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1981). coln: Woodruff Press, 1913), and The Homesteader African American settlement on the high plains(Sioux City, is Iowa: Western Book Supply, 1917), afford described in Nell Painter's, Exodusters: Black a glimpse Migra- into the life of a homesteader who eventually tion to Kansas after Reconstruction (New York: becomes W. W.one of the most successful black filmmakers Norton, 1976); Robert Athearn, In Search of in Canaan: the pre-World War II era. Although much of the con- temporary interest in the African American West can be traced to the "discovery" of black cowboys in the 196os, the subsequent litera- ture has been disappointing. Philip Durham and Everett Jones, The Negro Cowboy (New York: Dodd and Mead, 1965), was far more suc- cessful in inspiring popular rather than scholarly accounts. The one exception was Kenneth W. Porter's "Negro Labor in the Western Cattle Industry, 1866-19oo, Labor History, o1 (Summer 1969), 346- 74. One must look to general ac- counts such as Jack Watson's The I~

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A Narrative of the Negro Cavalry in the see West William (Norman: Lang, "The Nearly Forgotten Blacks on University of Oklahoma Press, 1967); and Last Arlen Chance Fowler, Gulch, 1900oo-1912," Pacific Northwest The Black Infantry in the West, 1869-1891 Quarterly, (Westport, 70 (April 1979), 50-51; C. Robert Conn.: Greenwood Publishing Company, Haywood, 1971). "No All Less of a Man: Blacks in Cow Town the following authors examine discrete Dodge aspects City, of 1876-1886," black Western Historical Quar- life in the post-Civil War army in the terly, West: 19 (May Monroe 1988), 161-82; and Quintard Taylor, Billington, New Mexico's Buffalo Soldiers, "The Emergence 1866-1900 of Afro-American Communities in (Niwot: University of Colorado Press, the 1991); Pacific Frank Northwest, N. 1865-1910o," Journal of Negro Schubert, Buffalo Soldiers, Braves and the Brass History, 64 (Fall 1979), 342-51. The single book- (Shippensburg, Pa.: White Mane Publishing Company, length discussion of the Garvey movement in the 1993); Garna L. Christian, Black Soldiers in Jim Crow West remains EmoryJ. Tolbert, The UNIA and Black Texas, 1899-1917 (College Station: Texas A&M Uni- Los Angeles (Los Angeles: University of California versity Press, 1995); and Frank N. Schubert, ed., On Press, 1980). the Trail of the Buffalo Soldier: Biographies of African Literature on the interaction of black westerners with Americans in the U.S. Army, 1866-1917 (Wilmington, other people of color is slowly evolving. Beginning in Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1995). For two accounts of the 1930os Kenneth W. Porter wrote a series of articles the history of individual soldiers see Frank N. Schubert, on black-Indian contact, although not all of his studies "The Violent World of Emanuel Stance, Fort Robinson, were set in the western United States. See especially 1887," Nebraska History, 55 (Summer 1974), 203-19; "Relations between Indians and Negroes within the and Thomas R. Buecker, "One Soldier's Service: Caleb Present Limits of the United States," J7ournal of Negro Benson in the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry, 1875-1908," History, 17 (July 1932), 287-367; and "Negroes and In- Nebraska History, 74 (Summer 1993), 54-62. dians on the Texas Frontier, 1831-1876," Journal of On black urban communities in the nineteenth and Negro History, 41 (July 1956), 185-214, and ibid., 41 twentieth centuries see Douglas Henry Daniels, Pioneer (October 1956), 285-310. For later efforts see Daniel F. Urbanites: A Social and Cultural History of Black San Littlefield and Lonnie E. Underhill, "The Crazy Snake Francisco (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, Uprising of 19o09: A Red, Black or White Affair?" 1980); Thomas C. Cox, Blacks in Topeka, Kansas, 1865-1915: A Social History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982); Kenneth M. Hamilton, Black Towns and Profit: Promotion and Development in the Trans-Appalachian West (Urbana: University of Illi- nois Press, 1991); Howard Beeth and Cary D. Wintz, eds., Black Dixie: Afro- Texas History and Culture in Hous- ton (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1992); Albert Broussard, Black San Francisco: The Struggle for Racial Equality in the West, 1900-1954 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993); Bradford Luckingham, Minorities in Phoenix: A AProfile Profile of Mexi' of Mexi-Gilcrease ' .Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma can American, Chinese American, and African Ameri- The Stampede (in which a black cowboy tries can Communities, 1860-1992 (Tucson: University of to turn the herd), by Frederic Remington Arizona Press, 1994); and Quintard Taylor, The Forg- (1908, oil on canvas, 27" x 40") ing of a Black Community: Seattle's Central District from 1870 through the Civil Rights Era (Seattle: Uni- versity of Washington Press, 1994). On small cities

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Arizona and the West, 20 (Winter 1978), 307-24; Donald On African American women during and after World A. Grinde,Jr., and Quintard Taylor, "Red vs. Black: WarCon- II see Paul Spickard, "Work and Hope: African flict and Accommodation in the Post-Civil War Indian American Women in Southern California during World Territory, 1865-1907," American Indian Quarterly, War 8 II," Journal of the West, 32 (July 1993), 70-79; and (Summer 1984), 211-29; and Kevin Mulroy, Freedom Gretchen on Lemke-Santangelo, Abiding Courage: African the Border: The Seminole Maroons in Florida, the Indian American Migrant Women and the East Bay Community Territory, Coahuila and Texas (Lubbock: Texas Tech (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996). University, 1993). There are still far too few biographies of western black women. For one account of a black North Dakotan see Era Bell Thompson, American Daughter (St. Paul: Min- nesota Historical Society Press, 1986). Newspaper editor ON BLACK INTERACTION WITH ASIANS and political activist Charlotta Bass's vice-presidential see Leigh DanaJohnsen, "Equal Rights and campaign the 'Heathen is described in Gerald R. Gill, "'Win or Lose- Chinee': Black Activism in San Francisco, We 1865-1875," Win': The 1952 Vice-Presidential Campaign of Western Historical Quarterly, 11 (January Charlotta 1980), 57-68;A. Bass," in Sharon Harley and Rosalyn Terborg- Quintard Taylor, "Blacks and Asians in Penn,a White eds., TheCity: Afro-American Woman: Struggles and Im- Japanese Americans and African Americans ages (Portin Seattle, Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1978), 109-18. 1890-1940," Western Historical Quarterly, The22 (Novem-World War II literature is voluminous so only a ber 1991), 401-29; and Sumi K. Cho, "Korean few worksAmericans will be listed here. On the growth of East Bay vs. African Americans: Conflict and Construction," area black communities in see Marilynn S. Johnson, The Robert Gooding Williams, ed., Reading Second Rodney Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay in World King/Reading Urban Uprising (New York: War Routledge, II (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 1993), 196-211. On ninteenth-century black- On Tejano San Francisco coop- see Broussard, Black San Francisco, eration see James Smallwood, "Blacks in 133-204; Antebellum and on Seattle see Taylor, Forging, 159-89. See Texas: A Reappraisal," Red River Valley Historicalalso Lawrence Re- B. De Graaf, "Negro Migration to Los An- view, 2 (Winter 1975), 459-60; and on twentieth-century geles, 1930-1950" (doctoral diss., University of Califor- rivalry see Arnold Shankman, "The Image nia,of MexicoLos Angeles, and 1962); Neil Gary Sapper, "A Survey of the Mexican American in the Black Press, the 1890-1930," History of the Black People of Texas, 1930-1954" (doc- Journal of Ethnic Studies, 3 (Summer 1975), toral 43-56. diss., Texas Tech University, 1972); Shirley Ann Black women in the West are profiled Moore, in "TheRuthe Black Community in Richmond, Califor- Winegarten, Black Texas Women: 150 Years nia, of 1910-1963" Trial and (doctoral diss., University of California, Triumph (Austin: University of Texas Press, Berkeley,1995), to 1989); date and Delores Nason McBroome, "Paral- the only statewide historical survey on the lel Communities:subject. Es- African Americans in California's East says by Lawrence B. De Graaf and Glenda Bay, Riley 1850-1963" remain (doctoral diss., University of Oregon, valuable historiographical surveys of black 1991).women For ina discussion the of African American defense in- region. See De Graaf, "Race, Sex, and Region:dustry employment Black campaigns in Portland, Los Angeles, Women in the American West, 1850-1920," and Pacific Honolulu His- see Alonzo Smith and Quintard Taylor, torical Review, 49 (February 1980), 285-314; "Racial and Discrimination Riley, in the Workplace: A Study of Two "American Daughters: Black Women in the West West," Coast Mon- Cities during the 1940s," Journal of Ethnic tana The Magazine of Western History, 38 Studies,(Spring 8 (Spring1988), 1980), 35-54; and Beth Bailey and David 14-27. Two prominent black Californians Farber,are described "The 'Double-V' Campaign in World War II Ha- in Dolores Hayden, "Biddy Mason's Los Angeles, waii: African 1856- Americans, Racial Ideology, and Federal 1891," California History, 68 (Fall 1989), 86-99; Power," and Journal Lynn of Social History, 26 (Summer 1993), M. Hudson, "A New Look, or 'I'm Not Mammy 831-35. to Ev- erybody in California': Mary Ellen Pleasant, The a singleBlack largest En- early twentieth-century western civil trepreneur," Journal of the West, 32 (July rights 1993), campaign, 35-40. the challenge of the all-white Texas Anne Butler's "Still in Chains: Black Women Democratic in Western primary, ended in a World War II-era vic- Prisons, 1865-1910," Western Historical Quarterly,tory in 1944. That campaign20 is described inJ. Alton Atkins, (February 1989), 19-36, reminds us that unequalThe Texas Negro justice and His Political Rights: A History of shadowed western black women throughout the Fight the of region. the Negro to Enter the Democratic Primaries On western black women's organizations see of TexasMarilyn (Houston: Dell Webster Publishing Company, 1932); Brady, "Kansas Federation of Colored Women's Conrey Bryson, Clubs, Dr. Lawrence A. Nixon and the White 1900-1930," Kansas History, 9 (Spring 1986), Primary 19-30; (El Paso: and Texas Western Press, 1974); and Lynda Fae Dickson, "The Early Club Movement Darlene Clark among Hine, Black Victory: The Rise and Fall of Black Women in Denver, 1890-1925" (doctoral the White diss., Primary Uni- in Texas (Millwood, N.Y.: KTO Press, versity of Colorado, 1982). 1979).

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Western direct-action civil rights activity few firsthand also be- accounts is Lubertha Johnson and Jamie gan in the World War II-era when activists Coughtry, in Denver, Lubertha Johnson: Civil Rights Efforts in Las Lawrence, and Omaha initiated sit-ins andVegas: boycotts 1940s-196os: to An Oral History Interview (Reno: challenge theater, housing, and employment University discrimi- of Nevada Oral History Program, 1988). See nation. For brief discussions of those also campaigns Elmer R. see Rusco, "The Civil Rights Movement in August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, CORE: Nevada," A Study Nevada in Public Affairs Review: Ethnicity the Civil Rights Movement, 1942-1968 and(New Race York: in Ox-Nevada, 2 (1987), 75-81; Mary Melcher, ford University Press, 1973), 27, 56-57, 6o."Blacks The remark- and Whites Together: Interracial Leadership able 1947 University of New Mexico student-initiatedin the Phoenix Civil Rights Movement," Journal of boycotts of discriminatory restaurants andArizona stores History, in Al- 32 (Summer 1991), 195-216; Robert buquerque are described in George Long, A. Goldberg, "How Al- "Racial Change on the Southern Pe- buquerque Got Its Civil Rights Ordinance," riphery: Crisis, The 6o Case of San Antonio, Texas, 1960- (November 1953), 521-24. On the 1958 sit-ins 1965," in Journal Wichita of Southern History, 49 (August and Oklahoma City see Ronald Walters, 1983),349-74; "Standing Up W. Edwin Derrick and J. Herschel in America's Heartland: Sitting in before Barnhill, Greensboro," "With 'All' Deliberate Speed: Desegrega- American Visions, 8 (February), 20-23; tion and of Carlthe R.Public Schools in Oklahoma City and Graves, "The Right to Be Served: Oklahoma Tulsa, 1954 City's to 1972," Red River Valley Historical Lunch Counter Sit-Ins, 1958-1964," Chronicles Review, of 6 Okla-(Spring 1981), 78-90; Doris Pieroth, "With homa, 59 (Summer 1981), 152-66. On AllBrown Deliberate v. Board Caution: School Integration in Seattle, of Education, which originated in Topeka, 1954-1968," see Richard Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 73 (April Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of 1982),Brown 50-61; v. Board andJoseph N. Crowley, "Race and Resi- of Education and Black America's Strugglefor dence: TheEquality Politics of Open Housing in Nevada," (New York: Vintage Books, 1975), 367-424. in Eleanore Bushnell, Sagebrush and Neon: Studies There is a growing body of literature in onNevada the 196os Politics (Reno: University of Nevada Press, black civil rights movement in the West. 1973), One 55-73. of the

Numerous African Americans worked in service capacities in the nineteenth-century West, as did these waiters from Canyon Hotel in Yellowstone National Park, pictured in 1896 enjoying a day's respite on the Yellowstone River.

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