This entirely new edition of a famous classic has glorious new
photographs--many never before seen--as well as revised and expanded
text that deepens our understanding of the vital role played by African
American men and women on America's early frontiers. This revised volume
includes an exciting new chapter on the Civil War and the experiences of
African Americans on the western frontier. Among its fascinating
accounts are those explaining how thousands of enslaved people in
Arkansas, Missouri and Texas successfully escaped into the neighboring
Indian Territory in Oklahoma. These runaways inspired the idea
eventually adopted as the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves
within the states that were in rebellion. Inspired by a conversation
that William Loren Katz had with Langston Hughes, The Black West
presents long-neglected stories of daring pioneers like Nat Love, a.k.a.
Deadwood Dick; Mary Fields, a.k.a. Stagecoach Mary; Cranford Goldsby,
a.k.a. Cherokee Bill--and a host of other intrepid men and women who
marched into the wilderness alongside Chief Osceola, Billy the Kid, and
Geronimo.