Visions Of Freedom On The Great Plains

"Wishart and the staff of the Center for Great Plains Studies have compiled a wide-ranging (pun intended) encyclopedia of this important region. Their objective was to 'give definition to a region that has traditionally been poorly defined,' and they have

"The Homesteading Project, University of Nebraska."--Title page.

Until recently, histories of the American West gave little evidence of the presence?let alone importance?of African Americans in the unfolding of the western frontier. There might have been a mention of Estevan, slavery, or the Dred Scott decision, but the rich and varied experience of African Americans on the Great Plains went largely unnoted. This book, the first of its kind, supplies that critical missing chapter in American history. ø Originally published over the span of twenty-five years in Great Plains Quarterly, the essays collected here describe the part African Americans played in the frontier army and as homesteaders, community builders, and activists. The authors address race relations, discrimination, and violence. They tell of the struggle for civil rights and against Jim Crow, and they examine African American cultural growth and contributions as well as economic and political aspects of black life on the Great Plains. From individuals such as ?Pap? Singleton, Era Bell Thompson, Aaron Douglas, and Alphonso Trent; to incidents at Fort Hays, Brownsville, and Topeka; to defining moments in government, education, and the arts?this collection offers the first comprehensive overview of the black experience on the Plains.

Designed with both the novice and the professional researcher in mind, this text provides reference resources and introduces a methodology specific to investigating African-American genealogy. In the second edition, information has been reorganized by state. Within each state are listings for resources such as state archives, census records, military records, newspapers, and manuscript collections.

In centuries long past, a vast swath of grassland swept down the center of North America, from Canada’s Prairie Provinces to central Texas. This once-plentiful prairie has now all but disappeared. Humans have grazed, mowed, and plowed the plains, dammed the rivers, and imposed their will on the land and its creatures. Fortunately, some remnants have survived, including the Joseph H. Williams Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in northeastern Oklahoma. In this visually stunning volume, wildlife photographer Harvey Payne and historian James P. Ronda offer an intimate look at and into one of America’s Last Great Places. Spanning nearly 40,000 acres in Oklahoma’s Osage County, the Preserve is a living witness to a world that once existed. But the Osage prairie is not a museum or theme park—and it is not frozen in time. Under the stewardship of The Nature Conservancy, which has overseen its restoration, the Preserve lives on as a fully functioning ecosystem. And for twenty-five years, Payne and Ronda have explored these lands, together and in solitude. Rendered here in brilliant color and paired with Ronda’s informative yet deeply personal commentary, Payne’s photographs open our eyes to the ever-changing world of the Tallgrass Preserve. In chapters focused on grass, sky, birds, bison, and fire, Ronda and Payne reveal that the “Big Empty” is, in fact, teeming with life. Through interwoven images and words, Visions of the Tallgrass shows that our nation’s grasslands are sacred ground, a priceless piece of our American past—and future.

The American West has taken on a rich and evocative array of regional identities since the late nineteenth century. Wilderness wonderland, Hispanic borderland, homesteader’s frontier, cattle kingdom, urban dynamo, Native American homeland. Hell of a Vision explores the evolution of these diverse identities during the twentieth century, revealing how Western regionalism has been defined by generations of people seeking to understand the West’s vast landscapes and varied cultures. Focusing on the American West from the 1890s up to the present, Dorman provides us with a wide-ranging view of the impact of regionalist ideas in pop culture and diverse fields such as geography, land-use planning, anthropology, journalism, and environmental policy-making. Going well beyond the realm of literature, Dorman broadens the discussion by examining a unique mix of texts. He looks at major novelists such as Cather, Steinbeck, and Stegner, as well as leading Native American writers. But he also analyzes a variety of nonliterary sources in his book, such as government reports, planning documents, and environmental impact studies. Hell of a Vision is a compelling journey through the modern history of the American West—a key region in the nation of regions known as the United States.

Between 1940 and 2010, the black population of the American West grew from 710,400 to 7 million. With that explosive growth has come a burgeoning interest in the history of the African American West—an interest reflected in the remarkable range and depth of the works collected in Freedom’s Racial Frontier. Editors Herbert G. Ruffin II and Dwayne A. Mack have gathered established and emerging scholars in the field to create an anthology that links past, current, and future generations of African American West scholarship. The volume’s sixteen chapters address the African American experience within the framework of the West as a multicultural frontier. The result is a fresh perspective on western-U.S. history, centered on the significance of African American life, culture, and social justice in almost every trans-Mississippi state. Examining and interpreting the twentieth century while mindful of events and developments since 2000, the contributors focus on community formation, cultural diversity, civil rights and black empowerment, and artistic creativity and identity. Reflecting the dynamic evolution of new approaches and new sites of knowledge in the field of western history, the authors consider its interconnections with fields such as cultural studies, literature, and sociology. Some essays deal with familiar places, while others look at understudied sites such as Albuquerque, Oahu, and Las Vegas, Nevada. By examining black suburbanization, the Information Age, and gentrification in the urban West, several authors conceive of a Third Great Migration of African Americans to and within the West. The West revealed in Freedom’s Racial Frontier is a place where black Americans have fought—and continue to fight—to make their idea of freedom live up to their expectations of equality; a place where freedom is still a frontier for most persons of African heritage.