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In the late 1960s, African American protests and Black Power
demonstrations in California's Santa Clara County--including what's
now called Silicon Valley--took many observers by surprise. After
all, as far back as the 1890s, the California constitution had
legally abolished most forms of racial discrimination, and
subsequent legal reform had surely taken care of the rest. White
Americans might even have wondered where the black activists in the
late sixties were coming from--because, beginning with the writings
of Fredrick Jackson Turner, the most influential histories of the
American West simply left out African Americans or, later,
portrayed them as a passive and insignificant presence.
"Uninvited Neighbors" puts black people back into the picture and
dispels cherished myths about California's racial history. Reaching
from the Spanish era to the valley's emergence as a center of the
high-tech industry, this is the first comprehensive history of the
African American experience in the Santa Clara Valley.
Author Herbert G. Ruffin II's study presents the black experience
in a new way, with a focus on how, despite their smaller numbers
and obscure presence, African Americans in the South Bay forged
communities that had a regional and national impact
disproportionate to their population. As the region industrialized
and spawned suburbs during and after World War II, its black
citizens built institutions such as churches, social clubs, and
civil rights organizations and challenged socioeconomic
restrictions. Ruffin explores the quest of the area's black people
for the postwar American Dream. The book also addresses the
scattering of the black community during the region's late yet
rapid urban growth after 1950, which led to the creation of several
distinct black suburban communities clustered in metropolitan San
Jose.
Ruffin treats people of color as agents of their own development
and survival in a region that was always multiracial and where
slavery and Jim Crow did not predominate, but where the white
embrace of racial justice and equality was often insincere. The
result offers a new view of the intersection of African American
history and the history of the American West.
Blackdom, New Mexico, was a township that lasted about thirty
years. In this book, Timothy E. Nelson situates the township’s
story where it belongs: along the continuum of settlement in
Mexico’s Northern Frontier. Dr. Nelson illuminates the set of
conscious efforts that helped Black pioneers develop Blackdom
Township into a frontier boomtown “Blackdom” started as an
inherited idea of a nineteenth-century Afrotopia. The idea of
creating a Blackdom was refined within Black institutions as part
of the perpetual movement of Black Colonization. In 1903, thirteen
Black men, encouraged by the 1896 Plessy decision, formed the
Blackdom Townsite Company and set out to make Blackdom a real place
in New Mexico, where they were outside the reach of Jim Crow laws
Many believed that Blackdom was simply abandoned. However, new
evidence shows that the scheme to build generational wealth
continued to exist throughout the twentieth century in other forms.
During Blackdom’s boomtimes, in December 1919, Blackdom Oil
Company shifted town business from a regenerative agricultural
community to a more extractive model. Nelson has uncovered new
primary source materials that suggest for Blackdom a newly
discovered third decade. This story has never been fully told or
contextualized until now. Reoriented to Mexico’s “northern
frontier,” one observes Black ministers, Black military
personnel, and Black freemasons who colonized as part of the
transmogrification of Indigenous spaces into the American West.
Nelson’s concept of the Afro-Frontier evokes a “Turnerian
West,” but it is also fruitfully understood as a Weberian
“Borderland.” Its history highlights a brief period and space
that nurtured Black cowboy culture. While Blackdom’s civic
presence was not lengthy, its significance—and that of the
Afro-Frontier—is an important window in the history of
Afrotopias, Black Consciousness, and the notion of an American
West.
Between 1940 and 2010, the black population of the American West
grew from 710,400 to 7 million. With that explosive growth has come
a burgeoning interest in the history of the African American West -
an interest reflected in the remarkable range and depth of the
works collected in Freedom's Racial Frontier. Editors Herbert G.
Ruffin II and Dwayne A. Mack have gathered established and emerging
scholars in the field to create an anthology that links past,
current, and future generations of African American West
scholarship. The volume's sixteen chapters address the African
American experience within the framework of the West as a
multicultural frontier. The result is a fresh perspective on
western-U.S. history, centered on the significance of African
American life, culture, and social justice in almost every
trans-Mississippi state. Examining and interpreting the twentieth
century while mindful of events and developments since 2000, the
contributors focus on community formation, cultural diversity,
civil rights and black empowerment, and artistic creativity and
identity. Reflecting the dynamic evolution of new approaches and
new sites of knowledge in the field of western history, the authors
consider its interconnections with fields such as cultural studies,
literature, and sociology. Some essays deal with familiar places,
while others look at understudied sites such as Albuquerque, Oahu,
and Las Vegas, Nevada. By examining black suburbanization, the
Information Age, and gentrification in the urban West, several
authors conceive of a Third Great Migration of African Americans to
and within the West. The West revealed in Freedom's Racial Frontier
is a place where black Americans have fought - and continue to
fight - to make their idea of freedom live up to their expectations
of equality; a place where freedom is still a frontier for most
persons of African heritage.
In the late 1960s, African American protests and Black Power
demonstrations in California's Santa Clara County - including
what's now called Silicon Valley - took many observers by surprise.
After all, as far back as the 1890s, the California constitution
had legally abolished most forms of racial discrimination, and
subsequent legal reform had surely taken care of the rest. White
Americans might even have wondered where the black activists in the
late sixties were coming from - because, beginning with the
writings of Fredrick Jackson Turner, the most influential histories
of the American West simply left out African Americans or, later,
portrayed them as a passive and insignificant presence. Uninvited
Neighbors puts black people back into the picture and dispels
cherished myths about California's racial history. Reaching from
the Spanish era to the valley's emergence as a center of the
high-tech industry, this is the first comprehensive history of the
African American experience in the Santa Clara Valley. Author
Herbert G. Ruffin II's study presents the black experience in a new
way, with a focus on how, despite their smaller numbers and obscure
presence, African Americans in the South Bay forged communities
that had a regional and national impact disproportionate to their
population. As the region industrialized and spawned suburbs during
and after World War II, its black citizens built institutions such
as churches, social clubs, and civil rights organizations and
challenged socioeconomic restrictions. Ruffin explores the quest of
the area's black people for the postwar American Dream. The book
also addresses the scattering of the black community during the
region's late yet rapid urban growth after 1950, which led to the
creation of several distinct black suburban communities clustered
in metropolitan San Jose. Ruffin treats people of color as agents
of their own development and survival in a region that was always
multiracial and where slavery and Jim Crow did not predominate, but
where the white embrace of racial justice and equality was often
insincere. The result offers a new view of the intersection of
African American history and the history of the American West.
Between 1940 and 2010, the black population of the American West
grew from 710,400 to 7 million. With that explosive growth has come
a burgeoning interest in the history of the African American West -
an interest reflected in the remarkable range and depth of the
works collected in Freedom's Racial Frontier. Editors Herbert G.
Ruffin II and Dwayne A. Mack have gathered established and emerging
scholars in the field to create an anthology that links past,
current, and future generations of African American West
scholarship. The volume's sixteen chapters address the African
American experience within the framework of the West as a
multicultural frontier. The result is a fresh perspective on
western-U.S. history, centered on the significance of African
American life, culture, and social justice in almost every
trans-Mississippi state. Examining and interpreting the twentieth
century while mindful of events and developments since 2000, the
contributors focus on community formation, cultural diversity,
civil rights and black empowerment, and artistic creativity and
identity. Reflecting the dynamic evolution of new approaches and
new sites of knowledge in the field of western history, the authors
consider its interconnections with fields such as cultural studies,
literature, and sociology. Some essays deal with familiar places,
while others look at understudied sites such as Albuquerque, Oahu,
and Las Vegas, Nevada. By examining black suburbanization, the
Information Age, and gentrification in the urban West, several
authors conceive of a Third Great Migration of African Americans to
and within the West. The West revealed in Freedom's Racial Frontier
is a place where black Americans have fought - and continue to
fight - to make their idea of freedom live up to their expectations
of equality; a place where freedom is still a frontier for most
persons of African heritage.
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