Black Montana

"Black Montana is a history that fits well within the new subgenre of sophisticated frontier histories written about the rural Black West and African American–Native American relations as explored by scholars such as Kendra T. Field, Khalil Anthony Johnson, Tiya Miles, Timothy E. Nelson, and Bernadette Pruitt. The book is a must read for audiences interested in the most recent and comprehensive history of African American migration, community formation, and multiracial relations in Montana and the Rocky Mountain West and the Pacific Northwest prior to the Great Depression and the erosion of the racial frontier."—Herbert G. Ruffin II, Journal of African American History

“[Black Montana] rests on a firm scholarly foundation and should be the standard bearer for this far-too-neglected topic for some time.”—Keith Edgerton, Journal of American History

"This is a compelling book worthy of attention not only by scholars of Western and Black histories but by any reader looking for thorough, honest analysis of the contradictions of race and nation building in U.S. history."—Tobin Miller Shearer, Montana: The Magazine of Western History

“Through meticulous research, Anthony Wood has crafted a fascinating and nuanced account of the rise and fall of Montana’s Black communities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. . . . The book reveals how crucial notions of whiteness and white supremacy are to the region and nation.”—Laurie Mercier, coauthor of Speaking History: Oral Histories of the American Past, 1865–Present

“In addition to excavating an often erased social history of Black Montanans . . . Anthony Wood’s sophisticated use of settler-colonial theories provides a powerful analysis of racial formation, exclusion, and elimination. A work of cutting-edge scholarship, Black Montana is essential reading for those seeking a deeper understanding of the structures of race in the American West.”—Jeffrey Ostler, author of Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas

“The history of African Americans in the Rocky Mountains is still underdeveloped. Black Montana is important both for its work on bringing attention to the experience of Black Montanans and as a case study in the epistemology of settler colonialism.”—Jason E. Pierce, author of Making the White Man’s West