Image: from How Mary Fields Became “Stagecoach Mary.”

This page is part of a resource collection on Black Freedom Struggle history.

Books

Anna-Lisa Cox: The Bone and Sinew of the Land: America’s Forgotten Black Pioneers and the Struggle for Equality.

Bruce A. Glasrud: Black Cowboys in the American West: On the Range, on the Stage, behind the Badge.

Douglas Flamming: African Americans in the West.

Quintard Taylor: In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West 1528-1990.

Tricia Wagner:

•  African American Women of the Old West.
• Black Cowboys of the Old West: True, Sensational, And Little-Known Stories From History.

Articles

Anna-Lisa Cox:

• The black pioneers who ended slavery.
• Mementos of a Forgotten Frontier: The black pioneers who tried to start over out west.
• When Anti-Immigration Meant Keeping Out Black Pioneers: In the 1850s, Midwestern states used harsh laws to deny free African-Americans wealth and property.
• ‘The Bone and Sinew of the Land’: An Interview with Historian Anna-Lisa Cox.

Ashawnta Jackson: How Mary Fields Became “Stagecoach Mary”: Born enslaved, she made her way to Montana and eventually became the first Black woman to deliver mail on a “star route.”

Jacob Jurss: Black Pioneers and the Struggle for Equality on the Frontier.