In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528-1990 [Hardcover]

Quintard Taylor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1998

The American West is mistakenly known as a region with few African Americans and virtually no black history. This book challenges that view in a complex chronicle that begins in 1528 with the Spanish-speaking blacks. In 1848 the first English speaking blacks arrived - as slaves - creating a nucleus of post-American Civil War communities. Thousands of African-Americans thereafter migrated to the high plains while others drove cattle up the Chisholm trail or served on remote army outposts. The book moves on to examine the first black church in 1872, the West's black civil rights movement which began during the Civil War and 20th-century changes such as migration after World War II, the civil rights movement during the 1960s and the interest in multiculturalism.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Conventional wisdom has it that there were no blacks in the Wild West, but In Search of the Racial Frontier powerfully demonstrates otherwise. Beginning with Esteban, a black slave who accompanied a party of Spanish explorers in Texas and the Southwest in the 1500s, historian Quintard Taylor traces the history of blacks in the West. He documents the experiences of black explorers, black mountain men, black cowboys, buffalo soldiers, and black women who joined clubs and "progressive associations" and helped found all-black towns. Wide-ranging in scope and thoroughly researched, In Search of the Racial Frontier is an invaluable addition to any American history bookshelf.

From Publishers Weekly

In an absorbing chronicle more remarkable for its wealth of interesting facts and figures than for any overarching historical thesis, Taylor, a University of Oregon history professor, ably documents the history of African Americans in the American West. Taylor begins in the early 16th century, when the first Spanish-speaking black slaves of the conquistadors arrived in Texas and New Mexico, and carries his study through the civil rights era to the present. Dispelling the lingering stereotype of rugged, solitary black cowboys, Taylor shows that black Westerners were predominantly urban workers?waiters cooks, doctors, lawyers, restaurant and barbershop owners, schoolteachers, newspaper editors?who built community institutions (fraternal organizations, women's clubs) while striving to integrate themselves into the larger society. Among the many facts that will surprise readers is this: of the original 46 settlers who founded Los Angeles in 1781, 26 were black or biracial. Marshaling a wealth of primary source material, Taylor documents black Westerners' participation in all aspects of life in the American West and, in the process, reclaims an important dimension of African American history. Photos, maps.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 415 pages
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc; 1 edition (February 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393041050
• ISBN-13: 978-0393041057
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #523,019 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant Work, October 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the West, 1528-1990 (Paperback)

Taylor's book represents a monumental achievement. This is a tremendous book that covers the history of Blacks in the West more completely and with greater detail than any previous work. It easily supplants William Katz's "The Black West" and W. Sherman Savage's "Blacks in the West" as the definitive work in the field. This book should be required reading for every student in American history.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A major contribution. . ., October 17, 2005

By 

Susan Snider (Nevada City, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the West, 1528-1990 (Paperback)

What is initially strking about this masterful endeavor is its scope--from its chronological detail to its rich geographic attention to the broader West. An engaging scholarly work that certainly qualifies within the the realm of required reading for any curriculum in U.S. History or African American studies. It is refreshing to find a more recently compiled history of the black experience, one that focuses on the broad range of African American social evolution throughout the American West. I was particularly interested in his narrative on the cultural assimilation of blacks into Native American society. Highly impressive in its bibliographic scope, this work rates as a definitive contribution to more current historiographic material.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Count on yourselves..., August 3, 2008

By 

John Gueriguian "Philalethes" (Rockville, MD United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the West, 1528-1990 (Paperback)

... to tell your truth.

This epochal work illustrates the gap between reality and the historical cliches acccepted by most people in these United States, as enshrined for example in San Antonio's Alamo. It de-demonizes the Mexicans (whose laws banned slavery) and their President Santa-Anna (who had every right to try to get rid of "illegal immigrants"--isn't that an irony now that the shoe is on the other foot!) while shedding a corrective light on the Anglo-Texans' goals (exercize their "freedom" to occupy a foreign territory to then illegally introduce therein an otherwise banned "peculiar" practice).

More importantly, Professor Taylor documents in this book, in exemplary and objective fashion, the complex fate of an American minority and its long-standing efforts to regain, at long last, its constitutionally recognized unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.