Race and Culture in the American West Series
About the Series
The series highlights the history of people of color in the region. Books in the series address the individual and shared histories of African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans with particular but not exclusive interest in the twentieth-century urban West. The series explores the construction of race in the region and the power of the multicultural past to influence contemporary public discussion about the significance of race and ethnicity regionally and nationally.
Quintard Taylor, Series Editor
Quintard Taylor is the Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Professor of American History at the University of Washington.
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Loren Miller
Civil Rights Attorney and Journalist
Loren Miller: Civil Rights Attorney and Journalist recovers this remarkable figure from the shadows of history and for the first time fully reveals his life for what it was: an extraordinary American story and a critical chapter in the annals of racial justice.
Race and the War on Poverty
From Watts to East L.A.
President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty did more than offer aid to needy Americans; in some cities, it also sparked both racial conflict and cooperation. Race and the War on Poverty examines the African American and Mexican American community organizations in Los Angeles that emerged to implement War on Poverty programs. It explores how organizers applied democratic vision and political savvy to community action, and how the ongoing African American, Chicano, and feminist movements in turn shaped the contours of the War on Poverty’s goals, programs, and cultural identity.
Nicodemus
Post-Reconstruction Politics and Racial Justice in Western Kansas
Nicodemus was a microcosm of all the issues facing black Americans in the late nineteenth century, and Hall, McCabe, and Niles are archetypes for powerful philosophies that have persisted into the twenty-first century. This study of their ideas and the ways they shaped Nicodemus offers a novel perspective on the most famous post–Civil War African American community in the West.
Sweet Freedom's Plains
African Americans on the Overland Trails, 1841–1869
Among the diverse peoples who converged on the western frontier were African American pioneers—men, women, and children. Whether enslaved or free, they too were involved in this transformative movement. Sweet Freedom’s Plains is a powerful retelling of the migration story from their perspective.
Black Spokane
The Civil Rights Struggle in the Inland Northwest
In 1981, decades before mainstream America elected Barack Obama, James Chase became the first African American mayor of Spokane, Washington, with the overwhelming support of a majority-white electorate. Chase’s win failed to capture the attention of historians—as had the century-long evolution of the black community in Spokane. In Black Spokane: The Civil Rights Struggle in the Inland Northwest, Dwayne A. Mack corrects this oversight—and recovers a crucial chapter in the history of race relations and civil rights in America.
Born to Serve
A History of Texas Southern University
Born to Serve is the first book to tell the full history of TSU, from its founding, through the many varied and defining challenges it faced, to its emergence as a first-rate university that counts Barbara Jordon, Mickey Leland, and Michael Strahan among its graduates.
African Creeks
Estelvste and the Creek Nation
In his compelling narrative, Zellar describes how African Creeks made a place for themselves in a tolerant Creek Nation in which they had access to land, resources, and political leverage—and how post–Civil War “reform” reduced them to the second-class citizenship of other African Americans.
Dreaming with the Ancestors
Black Seminole Women in Texas and Mexico
Indian freedmen and their descendants have garnered much public and scholarly attention, but women’s roles have largely been absent from that discussion. Now a scholar who gained an insider’s perspective into the Black Seminole community in Texas and Mexico offers a rare and vivid picture of these women and their contributions. In Dreaming with the Ancestors, Shirley Boteler Mock explores the role that Black Seminole women have played in shaping and perpetuating a culture born of African roots and shaped by southeastern Native American and Mexican influences.
Speaking American
Language Education and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles
Speaking American reveals how, for generations, language instruction offered a forum for Angelino educators to articulate their responses to policies that racialized access to citizenship—from the “national origins” immigration quotas of the Progressive Era through Congress’s removal of race from these quotas in 1965.
By All Accounts
General Stores and Community Life in Texas and Indian Territory
For this social and cultural history, Linda English combed store account ledgers from the 1870s and 1880s and found in them the experiences of thousands of people in Texas and Indian Territory. Particularly revealing are her insights into the everyday lives of women, immigrants, and ethnic and racial minorities, especially African Americans and American Indians.
Loren Miller
Civil Rights Attorney and Journalist
Race and the War on Poverty
From Watts to East L.A.
Nicodemus
Post-Reconstruction Politics and Racial Justice in Western Kansas
Sweet Freedom's Plains
African Americans on the Overland Trails, 1841–1869
Black Spokane
The Civil Rights Struggle in the Inland Northwest
Born to Serve
A History of Texas Southern University
African Creeks
Estelvste and the Creek Nation
Dreaming with the Ancestors
Black Seminole Women in Texas and Mexico
Speaking American
Language Education and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles
By All Accounts
General Stores and Community Life in Texas and Indian Territory
For this social and cultural history, Linda English combed store account ledgers from the 1870s and 1880s and found in them the experiences of thousands of people in Texas and Indian Territory. Particularly revealing are her insights into the everyday lives of women, immigrants, and ethnic and racial minorities, especially African Americans and American Indians.