Bozeman Magazine

During the decades that followed Reconstruction, westward moving African Americans laid the foundations of what scholars would later call the Black West. This was a way of seeing the region that prioritized Black communities and aspirations in both rural and urban spaces. The Black West encompassed everything from the era of Overland Trails, to gold rushes, railroads, homesteading, mining and industrial growth, and city-building. But how comprehensive is our understanding of the Black West? In this talk, historian Anthony Wood addresses some of the major ways that Black historical narratives are lost to both public and academic "memory" alike. The narratives that can be recovered, far from being niche or obscure, are among the most central stories of Black western communities taking shape prior to the Great Migration of the mid-Twentieth Century and reveal the role that race often played in the formation of local cultures in the Rockies. Anthony is the author of Black Montana: Settler Colonialism and the Erosion of the Racial Frontier, which came out in 2021. He has worked with the Montana Historical Society on its multiple award winning Black history projects, including its new feature documentary "Hidden Stories: Montana's Black Past." He is also the author or co-author of numerous articles on topics of Black history across the West and his writings have appeared in Montana: The Magazine of Western History, The Annals of Wyoming, The Journal of Settler Colonial Studies, The Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation, and the Washington Post. His current project and the subject of today's talk is Race and Memory in the New Black Towns of the Rocky Mountain West.