This article was originally printed in "Montana: The Magazine of Western History" Winter 1996, Vol. 46. No. 4. pp. 18-21.

Photo Credit: Buffalo Soldiers
Jefferson National Expansion Memorial

Considering the widely held assumption that the African American presence in the West was not significant until World War II, the historical literature on blacks in the region is surprisingly rich and diverse. Unfortunately broad regional syntheses are absent. W. Sherman Savage's Blacks in the West (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1976) remains the only region-wide study although it ends, in classic Turnerian fashion, in 1890. Kenneth W. Porter's The Negro on the American Frontier (New York: Arno Press, 1971), often cited as a work of synthesis, is in fact a compilation of the author's numerous articles on the advancing North American frontier. Only a few of his articles actually address African American history in the West. William Loren Katz's The Black West (Seattle: Open Hand Publishing Inc., 1987), a pictorial survey of the region, remains a highly popular account directed primarily toward a non-academic audience but, like Savage's work, it fails to discuss 20th Century developments.

Some state studies exist although they vary enormously in quality. See for example Alwyn Barr, Black Texans: A History of Negroes in Texas, 1528-1971 (Austin: Jenkins Publishing Company, 1973); Elmer Rusco, "Good Time Coming?" Black Nevadans in the Nineteenth Century (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1975); Barbara J. Richardson, Black Pioneers of New Mexico: A Documentary and Pictorial History (Rio Rancho, New Mexico: Panorama Press, 1976); Elizabeth McLagan, A Peculiar Paradise: A History of Blacks in Oregon, 1788-1940 (Portland: The Georgian Press, 1980); Richard E. Harris, The First 100 Years: A History of Arizona Blacks (Apache Junction, Arizona: Relmo Publishers, 1983); Everett Louis Overstreet, Black on a Background of White: A Chronicle of Afro-Americans' Involvement in America's Last Frontier, Alaska (Fairbanks: Alaska Black Caucus, 1988); Mamie O. Oliver, Idaho Ebony: The Afro-American Presence in Idaho State History (Boise: Idaho State Historical Society, 1990); and B. Gordon Wheeler, Black California: The History of African-Americans in the Golden State (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1993). Important unpublished sources include Robert Kim Nimmons, "Arizona's Forgotten Past: The Negro in Arizona, 1539-1965," (MA Thesis, Northern Arizona University, 1971); James Adolphus Fisher, "A History of the Political and Social Development of the Black Community in California, 1850-1950," (PhD. dissertation, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1972); and Ronald G. Coleman, "A History of Blacks in Utah, 1825-1910," (PhD. Dissertation, University of Utah, 1980. For a four state survey of African American communities see Quintard Taylor, "A History of Blacks in the Pacific Northwest, 1788-1970," (PhD. Dissertation, University of Minnesota, 1977). Lawrence B. De Graaf's, "Recognition, Racism, and Reflections on the Writing of Western Black History," Pacific Historical Review 44:1(February 1975):22-51, remains one of the best surveys of the challenges of writing western black history while Richard White's, "Race Relations in the American West," American Quarterly 38 (1986): 394-416, is an attempt to place the discussion of race relations in the center of the "new western" history.

The literature on blacks in New Spain begins with the first African in the region, Estevan. On Estavan see A.D.F. Bandelier, ed., The Journey of Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca (New York: A.S. Barnes and Company, 1905), and Cleve Hallenbeck, ed., The Journal of Fray Marcos de Niza (Dallas: University Press, 1949). Isabel de Olvera is described in George P. Hammond, and Agapito Rey, eds., Don Juan de Onate: Colonizer of New Mexico, 1595-1628 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1953), pp. 560-562. On blacks in colonial Mexico see Gonzalo Aguirre Beltran, "The Integration of the Negro into the National Society of Mexico," in Magnus Morner, ed., Race and Class in Latin America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), pp. 11-27; and Colin Palmer, Slaves of the White God: Blacks in Mexico, 1570-1650 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976). The founders of Los Angeles are profiled in Lonnie Bunch, III, Black Angelenos: The Afro-American in Los Angeles, 1850-1950 (Los Angeles: California Afro-American Museum, 1988), pp. 10-12. See also Jack D. Forbes, "Black Pioneers: The Spanish-Speaking Afroamericans of the Southwest," Phylon 27:3 (Fall 1966):233-246. David J. Weber's, The Mexican Frontier, 1821-1846: The American Southwest Under Mexico (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982), is an example of a successful integration of African American western history into a larger narrative.

Some of the earliest articles on African Americans in the West describe slavery in the region. They include Lester G. Bugbee, "Slavery in Early Texas," Political Science Quarterly 13:3 (September 1898):389-412; Clyde Duniway, "Slavery in California After 1848," American Historical Association Annual Reports 1 (1905):243-248; and T. W. Davenport, "Slavery Question in Oregon," Oregon Historical Quarterly 9:3 (September 1908):189-253. Eugene Berwanger's The Frontier Against Slavery: Western Anti-Negro Prejudice and the Slavery Extension Controversy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1967) remains the starting point for any discussion of the race-slavery-politics nexus in the region. See also Robert W. Johannsen Frontier Politics on the Eve of the Civil War (Seattle: University of Washington, 1955) and James A. Rawley, Race and Politics: "Bleeding Kansas" And the Coming of the Civil War (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1969) for localized studies. The best state study of slavery is Randolph Campbell, An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar Institution in Texas, 1821-1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989). See also Paul D. Lack, "Slavery and the Texas Revolution," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 89:2 (October 1985):181-202. On black slavery among Native Americans see R. Halliburton, Jr., Red Over Black: Black Slavery Among the Cherokee Indians (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977), Daniel F. Littlefield, Jr., Africans and Seminoles: From Removal to Emancipation (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977), and Theda Perdue, Slavery and the Evolution of Cherokee Society, 1540-1866 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1979).

To get a sense of the extent of slavery in nominally free states and territories see Delialah L. Beasley, "Slavery in California, Journal of Negro History 3:1 (January 1918):33-54; Alvin R. Sunseri, Seeds of Discord: New Mexico in the Aftermath of the American Conquest, 1846-1861 (Chicago: Nelson Hall, 1979), pp. 115-124; Quintard Taylor, "Slaves and Free Men: Blacks in the Oregon Country, 1840-1860," Oregon Historical Quarterly, 83:2 (Summer 1982):153-170; and Albert S. Broussard, "Slavery in California Revisited: The Fate of A Kentucky Slave in Gold Rush California," The Pacific Historian 29:1 (Spring 1985):17-21. For a survey of the status of free blacks in antebellum California see Malcolm Edwards, "The War of Complexional Distinction: Blacks in Gold Rush California and British Columbia," California Historical Quarterly 66:1(Spring 1977):34-45; Robert J. Chandler, "Friends in Time of Need: Republicans and Black Civil Rights in California During the Civil War Era," Arizona and the West 24:4 (Winter 1982):319-340; and Rudolph Lapp, Blacks in Gold Rush California (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977). The complex relationship of western African Americans to the Church of Latter-Day Saints is discussed in Newell Bringhurst, Saints, Slaves and Blacks: The Changing Place of Black People Within Mormonism (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1981).

Slavery and freedom on the Kansas-Missouri border are explored in Richard B. Sheridan, "From Slavery in Missouri to Freedom in Kansas: The Influx of Black Fugitives and Contrabands Into Kansas, 1854-1864," Kansas History 12:1 (Spring 1989):28-47, and Gunja SenGupta, "Servants for Freedom: Christian Abolitionists in Territorial Kansas, 1854-1858," Kansas History 16:3 (Autumn 1993):200-213. Contemporary abolitionist perspectives can be found in Richard Cordley, A History of Lawrence, Kansas From the First Settlement to the Close of the Rebellion (Lawrence: E.F. Caldwell, 1895), and Pioneer Days in Kansas, (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1903), as well as H.D. Fisher, The Gun and the Gospel: Early Kansas and Chaplain Fisher (Chicago: Kenwood Press, 1896). See also Wendell Holmes Stephenson, The Political Career of General James H. Lane (Topeka: Kansas State Historical Society, 1930), Chapter 12. Henry Clay Bruce's ex-slave narrative, The New Man: Twenty-Nine Years a Slave, Twenty-Nine Years a Free Man (New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969), is a useful account of the Kansas-Missouri border during the Civil War.

The impact of western reconstruction on the black population of the region is addressed in Eugene Berwanger, The West and Reconstruction (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981). See also his "William J. Hardin: Colorado Spokesman for Racial Justice, 1863-1873," Colorado Magazine 52:1 (Winter 1975): 52-65, and "Hardin and Langston: Western Black Spokesmen of the Reconstruction Era," Journal of Negro History 64:2 (Spring 1979):101-114. On Texas reconstruction see James Smallwood, Time of Hope, Time of Despair: Black Texans During Reconstruction (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1981) and Merline Pitre, Through Many Dangers, Toils and Snares: The Black Leadership of Texas, 1868-1900 (Austin, Eakin Press, 1985). Post-reconstruction black Texas is described in Lawrence D. Rice, The Negro in Texas, 1874-1900 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971). Two books by Daniel Littlefield, The Cherokee Freedmen: From Emancipation to American Citizenship (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978), and The Chickasaw Freedmen: A People Without a Country (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980), describe reconstruction among the five major Indian Territory nations. The complexity of the post-Civil War western racial hierarchy is examined in Randall B. Woods, "Integration, Exclusion, or Segregation? The 'Color Line' in Kansas, 1878-1900," Western Historical Quarterly 14:2 (April 1983):181-198 while his A Black Odyssey: John Lewis Waller and the Promise of American Life, 1878-1900 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1981), is a biography of a post-Reconstruction Kansas politician.

The literature on African American settlement on the high plains includes Nell Painter's, Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas After Reconstruction (New York: W.W. Norton, 1976); and Robert Athearn's In Search of Canaan: Black Migration to Kansas, 1879-1880 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1978; Glen Schwendemann, "Nicodemus: Negro Haven on the Solomon," Kansas Historical Quarterly 34:1 (Spring 1968):1--31; Daniel F. Littlefield and Lonnie E. Underhill, "Black Dreams and 'Free' Homes: The Oklahoma Territory, 1891-1894," Phylon 34:4 (December 1973):342-357, and James D. Bish, "The Black Experience in Selected Nebraska Counties, 1854-1920," (M.A. Thesis, University of Nebraska at Omaha, 1989). Two memoirs and two autobiographical novels provide accounts of life on the high plains. Robert Anderson's From Slavery to Affluence: Memoirs of Robert Anderson, Ex-Slave (Hemingford, Neb.: The Hemingford Ledger, 1927) recalls his life as a successful black Nebraska homesteader-rancher. For one woman's recollections of her childhood on the High Plains in the first two decades of the 20th Century see Ava Speese Day, "The Ava Speese Day Story," in Frances Jacobs Alberts, ed., Sod House Memories, Vols. I-III (Hastings, Nebraska, 1972), pp. 261-275. Oscar Micheaux's novels, The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer (Lincoln: Woodruff Press, 1913), and The Homesteader (Sioux City, Iowa: Western Book Supply, 1917), afford a glimpse into the life of a homesteader who eventually becomes one of the most successful pre-World War II era black filmmakers.

Although much of the contemporary interest in the African American west can be traced to the 1960s "discovery" of black cowboys, the subsequent literature has been disappointing. Philip Durham and Everett Jones, The Negro Cowboy (New York: Dodd and Mead, 1965), was far more successful in inspiring popular rather than scholarly accounts. The one exception was Kenneth W. Porter's "Negro Labor in the Western Cattle Industry, 1866-1900, Labor History 10:3 (Summer 1969):346-374. One must look to general accounts such as Jack Watson's The Real American Cowboy (New York: New Amsterdam Press, 1988) to find much about black cowboys. One brief but useful primary source is D.W. Wallace's personal memoir which appears in R.R. Crane, "D.W. Wallace ('80 John'): A Negro Cattleman on the Texas Frontier," West Texas Historical Association Yearbook 28 (1952):113-118.

In contrast, the literature on the buffalo soldiers, the other black westerners who captured the public's attention in the 1960s, is rich, detailed and increasingly sophisticated. See for example William L. Leckie, Buffalo Soldiers: A Narrative of the Negro Cavalry in the West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967); Arlen Fowler, The Black Infantry in the West, 1869-1891 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing Company, 1971). Monroe Billington, New Mexico's Buffalo Soldiers, 1866-1900 (Niwot: University of Colorado Press, 1991); Frank N. Schubert, Buffalo Soldiers, Braves and the Brass (Shippensburg, Pa.: White Mane Publishing Company, 1993); Garna L. Christian, Black Soldiers in Jim Crow Texas, 1899-1917 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1995; and Frank N. Schubert, ed., On the Trail of the Buffalo Soldier: Biographies of African Americans in the U.S. Army, 1866-1917 (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1995), all examine discrete aspects of black life in the post-Civil War Army in the West. For two accounts of the history of individual soldiers see Schubert, "The Violent World of Emanuel Stance, Fort Robinson, 1887," Nebraska History 55:2 (Summer 1974):203-219 and Thomas R. Buecker, "One Soldier's Service: Caleb Benson in the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry, 1875-1908," Nebraska History 74:2 (Summer 1993):54-62.

Black urban communities in the 19th and early 20th Centuries are described in Douglas Henry Daniels, Pioneer Urbanites: A Social and Cultural History of Black San Francisco (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 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 Illinois Press, 1991); Howard Beeth and Cary D. Wintz, eds., Black Dixie: Afro-Texas History and Culture in Houston (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 Profile of Mexican American, Chinese American, and African American Communities, 1860-1992 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1994); and Quintard Taylor, The Forging of a Black Community: Seattle's Central District from 1870 Through the Civil Rights Era (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994). On small cities see William Lang's "The Nearly Forgotten Blacks on Last Chance Gulch, 1900-1912," Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 70:2 (April 1979):50-51, which remains one of the best articles on small African American communities in the West. For other examples see C. Robert Haywood, "No Less a Man: Blacks in Cow Town Dodge City, 1876-1886," Western Historical Quarterly 19:2 (May 1988):161-182; and Quintard Taylor, "The Emergence of Afro-American Communities in the Pacific Northwest, 1865-1910," Journal of Negro History 64:4 (Fall 1979):342-351. The single book-length discussion of the Garvey Movement in the West remains Emory J. Tolbert, The UNIA and Black Los Angeles (University of California Press, 1980).

Literature on the interaction of black westerners with other people of color is slowly evolving. Beginning in the 1930s Kenneth W. Porter wrote a series of articles on the subject of black-Indian contact although not all of his studies were set in the western United States. See especially "Relations Between Indians and Negroes within the Present Limits of the United States," Journal of Negro History 17:3 (July 1932):287-367 and "Negroes and Indians on the Texas Frontier, 1831-1876," Journal of Negro History 41:3 (July 1956):185-214, and 41:4 (October 1956):285-310. For later efforts see Daniel F. Littlefield and Lonnie E. Underhill, "The Crazy Snake Uprising of 1909: A Red, Black or White Affair?" Arizona and the West 20:4 (Winter 1978): 307-324; Donald A. Grinde, Jr., and Quintard Taylor, "Red vs. Black: Conflict and Accommodation in the Post Civil War Indian Territory, 1865-1907," American Indian Quarterly 8:3 (Summer 1984):211-229; and Kevin Mulroy, Freedom on the Border: The Seminole Maroons in Florida, the Indian Territory, Coahuila and Texas (Lubbock: Texas Tech University, 1993).

On black interaction with Asians see Leigh Dana Johnsen, "Equal Rights and the 'Heathen Chinee': Black Activism in San Francisco, 1865-1875," Western Historical Quarterly 11:1 (January, 1980):57-68; Quintard Taylor, "Blacks and Asians in a White City: Japanese Americans and African Americans in Seattle, 1890-1940," Western Historical Quarterly 22:4 (November 1991):401-429; and Sumi K. Cho, "Korean Americans vs. African Americans: Conflict and Construction," in Robert Gooding-Williams, ed., Reading Rodney King\Reading Urban Uprising (New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 196-211. On 19th Century black-Tejano cooperation see James Smallwood, "Blacks in Antebellum Texas: A Reappraisal," Red River Valley Historical Review 2:4 (Winter 1975):459-460, but 20th Century rivalry is described in Arnold Shankman, "The Image of Mexico and the Mexican American in the Black Press, 1890-1930," Journal of Ethnic Studies 3:2 (Summer 1975):43-56.

Black women in the west are profiled in Ruthe Winegarten, Black Texas Women: 150 Years of Trial and Triumph (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995) which is, to date, the only statewide historical survey on the subject. Essays by Lawrence B. DeGraaf and Glenda Riley remain valuable historiographical surveys of black women in the region. See De Graaf, "Race, Sex, and Region: Black Women in the American West, 1850-1920," Pacific Historical Review, 49:1 (February 1980):285-314; and Riley, "American Daughters: Black Women in the West," Montana: The Magazine of Western History 38:2 (Spring 1988):14-27. Two prominent black Californians are described in Dolores Hayden, "Biddy Mason's Los Angeles, 1856-1891" California History 68:3 (Fall 1989):86-99 and Lynn M. Hudson, "A New Look, or 'I'm Not Mammy to Everybody in California': Mary Ellen Pleasant, a Black Entrepreneur," Journal of the West 32:13 (July 1993):35-40. Anne Butler's "Still in Chains: Black Women in Western Prisons, 1865-1910," Western Historical Quarterly 20:1 (February 1989):19-36, reminds us that unequal justice shadowed western black women throughout the region. On western black women's organizations see Marilyn Dell Brady, "Kansas Federation of Colored Women's Clubs, 1900-1930," Kansas History 9:1 (Spring 1986):19-30; and Lynda Fae Dickson, "The Early Club Movement Among Black Women in Denver, 1890-1925," (PhD. dissertation, University of Colorado, 1982).

For discussions of African American women during and after World War II see Paul Spickard, "Work and Hope: African American Women in Southern California During World War II," Journal of the West 32:3 (July 1993):70-79; and Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo, Abiding Courage: African American Migrant Women and the East Bay Community (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996). 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: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1986). Newspaper editor and political activist Charlotta Bass's vice-presidential campaign is described in Gerald R. Gill, "'Win or Lose--We Win,' The 1952 Vice-Presidential Campaign of Charlotta A. Bass," in Sharon Harley and Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, eds., The Afro-American Woman: Struggles and Images (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1978):109-118.

The World War II literature is voluminous so only a few works will be listed here. See Marilynn S. Johnson, The Second Gold Rush: Oakland and the East Bay in World War II (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) on the growth of East Bay Area black communities. On San Francisco see Broussard, Black San Francisco, Chapters 7-13, and on Seattle see Taylor, Forging, Chapter 6. See also Lawrence B. DeGraaf, "Negro Migration to Los Angeles, 1930-1950," (PhD. Dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1962); Neil Gary Sapper, "A Survey of the History of the Black People of Texas, 1930-1954," (PhD. Dissertation, Texas Tech University, 1972); Shirley Ann Moore, "The Black Community in Richmond, California, 1910-1963," (PhD. Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1989); and Delores Nason McBroome, "Parallel Communities: African Americans in California's East Bay, 1850-1963," (PhD. Dissertation, University of Oregon, 1991). For a discussion of African American defense industry employment campaigns in Portland, Los Angeles, and Honolulu see Alonzo Smith and Quintard Taylor, "Racial Discrimination in the Workplace: A Study of Two West Coast Cities During the 1940s," Journal of Ethnic Studies 8:1 (Spring 1980):35-54; and Beth Bailey and David Farber, "The 'Double-V' Campaign in World War II Hawaii: African Americans, Racial Ideology, and Federal Power," Journal of Social History 26:4 (Summer 1993):831-835.

The single largest early 20th Century western civil rights campaign, the challenge of the all-white Texas democratic primary, ended in a World War II-era victory in 1944. That campaign is described in J. Alton Atkins, The Texas Negro and His Political Rights: A History of the Fight of the Negro to Enter the Democratic Primaries of Texas (Houston: Webster Publishing Company, 1932); Conrey Bryson, Dr. Lawrence A. Nixon and the White Primary (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1974); and Darlene Clark Hine, Black Victory: The Rise and Fall of the White Primary in Texas (Millwood, N.Y.: KTO Press, 1979. Western direct action civil rights activity also begins in the World War II-era when activists in Denver, Lawrence, and Omaha initiate sit-ins and boycotts to challenge theater, housing and employment discrimination. For brief discussions of those campaigns see August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, CORE: A Study in the Civil Rights Movement, 1942-1968 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), pp. 27, 56-57, 60. The remarkable 1947 University of New Mexico student-initiated boycotts of discriminatory restaurants and stores in Albuquerque are described in George Long, "How Albuquerque Got Its Civil Rights Ordinance," Crisis 60:11 (November 1953):521-524, while the 1958 sit-ins in Wichita and Oklahoma City are discussed in Ronald Walters, "Standing Up in America's Heartland: Sitting in Before Greensboro," American Visions 8:1 (February) :20-23; and Carl R. Graves, "The Right to Be Served: Oklahoma City's Lunch Counter Sit-Ins, 1958-1964," Chronicles of Oklahoma 59:2 (Summer 1981): 152-166. On the Brown v. Board of Education case which originated in Topeka, see Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality (New York: Vintage Books, 1975) Chapters 16-17.

There is a growing body of literature on the 1960s black civil rights movement in the west. One of the few first hand accounts of the civil rights movement in the West is Lubertha Johnson and Jamie Coughtry, Lubertha Johnson: Civil Rights Efforts in Las Vegas: 1940s-1960s: An Oral History Interview (Reno: University of Nevada Oral History Program, 1988). See also Elmer R. Rusco, "The Civil Rights Movement in Nevada," in Elmer R. Rusco and Sue Fawn Chung, eds., Nevada Public Affairs Review: Ethnicity and Race in Nevada 1987, No. 2, pp. 75-81; Mary Melcher, "Blacks and Whites Together: Interracial Leadership in the Phoenix Civil Rights Movement," Journal of Arizona History 32:2 (Summer 1991):195-216; Robert A Goldberg, "Racial Change on the Southern Periphery: The Case of San Antonio, Texas, 1960-1965," Journal of Southern History 49:3(August 1983):349-374; W. Edwin Derrick and J. Herschel Barnhill, "With 'All' Deliberate Speed: Desegregation of the Public Schools in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, 1954 to 1972," Red River Valley Historical Review 6:2 (Spring 1981):78-90; Doris Pieroth, "With All Deliberate Caution: School Integration in Seattle, 1954-1968," Pacific Northwest Quarterly 73:2 (April 1982):50-61; and Joseph N. Crowley, "Race and Residence: The Politics of Open Housing in Nevada," in Eleanore Bushnell, Sagebrush and Neon: Studies in Nevada Politics (Reno: University of Nevada, 1973), pp. 55-73.

Credit

Quintard Taylor is professor of history, University of Oregon, Eugene, where he is a specialist on African Americans in the American West. He is the author of more than twenty articles on blacks in the west and THE FORGING OF A BLACK COMMUNITY: A HISTORY OF SEATTLE'S CENTRAL DISTRICT, 1870 THROUGH THE CIVIL RIGHTS ERA (1994).