Title: In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528-1990
Author: Quintard Taylor
Year of Publication: 1998
Thesis:
Quintard Taylor argues for the centrality of Black people and their complex roles as they migrated west, breaking with the notion that African Americans were a historical footnote it the history of the West. He asks the question whether the West was "a racial frontier beyond which lay the potential for an egalitarian society." (312-313). Leaving the book with the question open, he does demonstrate that ideologically, African Americans forged ahead in struggling to develop community and uphold their institutions as well as to connect to other African Americans on both rural and urban, local and national scales.
Time: 1528-1990
Geography: U.S. West
Organization:
Acknowledgments
Introduction
- Begins with opposing quotes, one in which Black people are welcomed to the West & the other in which they are not (17)
- Black people always struggle, regardless of geography, but how they struggle proves instructive, and it is important to make those geographic distinctions (18)
- Purpose:
- "to reconstruct the history of African American women and men in hte nineteen western states on and beyond hte ninety-eighth meridian--North Dakota to Texas westward to Alaska and Hawaii." (18)
- Goals:
- Make visible a the rich and diverse history of Black folk in the West
- Demonstrate the distinctiveness of Black history and its legacy in the West
- "establish conclusively the existence of multiple African American historical traditions." (19)
- Myth - Black people had no place in the West because they were neither conquerors nor conquered (19)
- Instead, seeks to demonstrate significance when thinking through the role of Black people (21)
- Works on urban history (21)
- African Americans not as solitary male figures, but heterogeneous to break this myth (22)
1. Spanish Origins, 1528-1848
2. Slavery in the Antebellum West, 1835-1865
3. Freedom in the Antebellum West, 1835-1865
- Migration thought to offer a new chance (80)
- "By 1860 Texas had 355 free blacks and 182,000 slaves, clear proof that Anglo Texas liberty and black freedom had become incompatible." (80)
- If not slavery, then discrimination (82)
- Yet, they still came and protested, especially through political pressure developed in conventions, the church, and through legal means. Often this meant opposing laws against testimony.
- Where Black folk mined, it tended to be integrated, though these relationships were threatened as racial lines hardened. (85)
- Economic opportunity, personal and political autonomy proved central to African Americans' interest in migrating
- Describes cultural, not geographic boundaries for developing community (87)
- Telegraph Hill was a predominantly Black community (88)
- Many roles, but also tied in some ways to history of enslavement (97) - cooks, barbers, boarding houses (88)
- Cities: LA, Marysville, Grass Valley, Placerville, Stockton
- Conventions (see, pp.92-93)
- Despite the fact there were a number of individual suites, they had no overall effect on policy changes on transportation (interestingly, this is 30-ish years before Plessy (93)
- Black-owned newspapers (93)
4. Reconstruction in the West, 1865-1875
5. Migration and Settlement, 1875-1920
6. Buffalo Soldiers in the West, 1866-1917
7. The Black Urban West, 1870-1910
8. The Black Urban West, 1911-40
9. World War II and the Postwar Black West, 1941-50
10. The Civil Rights Movement in the West, 1950-1970
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Type:
Methods:
Chronological & overlapping with geography
Sources:
Historiography:
Blacks in the West (W. Sherman Savage, 1976) - along the lines of Frederick Jackson Turner (21)
Keywords:
Recognition school - the idea that pointing out African Americans existed is good enough (21)
Themes:
Critiques:
Questions:
Quotes:
"It also seeks to locate the black West in the larger model of a regional history that defines the West as a place rather than a process." (19)
Notes: