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Sweet Freedom's Plains - African Americans on the Overland Trails, 1841-1869 (Paperback)
Loot Price: R743
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Sweet Freedom's Plains - African Americans on the Overland Trails, 1841-1869 (Paperback)
Series: Race and Culture in the American West Series
Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days
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The westward migration of nearly half a million Americans in the
mid-nineteenth century looms large in U.S. history. Classic images
of rugged Euro-Americans traversing the plains in their prairie
schooners still stir the popular imagination. But this traditional
narrative, no matter how alluring, falls short of the actual-and
far more complex-reality of the overland trails. 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. Tracing the journeys of black overlanders who traveled
the Mormon, California, Oregon, and other trails, Shirley Ann
Wilson Moore describes in vivid detail what they left behind, what
they encountered along the way, and what they expected to find in
their new, western homes. She argues that African Americans
understood advancement and prosperity in ways unique to their
situation as an enslaved and racially persecuted people, even as
they shared many of the same hopes and dreams held by their white
contemporaries. For African Americans, the journey westward marked
the beginning of liberation and transformation. At the same time,
black emigrants' aspirations often came into sharp conflict with
real-world conditions in the West. Although many scholars have
focused on African Americans who settled in the urban West, their
early trailblazing voyages into the Oregon Country, Utah Territory,
New Mexico Territory, and California deserve greater attention.
Having combed censuses, maps, government documents, and white
overlanders' diaries, along with the few accounts written by black
overlanders or passed down orally to their living descendants,
Moore gives voice to the countless, mostly anonymous black men and
women who trekked the plains and mountains. Sweet Freedom's Plains
places African American overlanders where they belong-at the center
of the western migration narrative. Their experiences and
perspectives enhance our understanding of this formative period in
American history.
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