A landmark history of African-Americans in the West, In Search of the Racial Frontier rescues the collective American consciousness from thinking solely of European pioneers when considering the exploration, settling, and conquest of the territory west of the Mississippi. From its surprising discussions of groups of African-American wholly absorbed into Native American culture to illustrating how the largely forgotten role of blacks in the West helped contribute to everything from the Brown vs. Board of Education desegregation ruling to the rise of the Black Panther Party, historian Quintard Taylor fills a major void in American history and reminds us that the African-American experience is unlimited by region or social status.

About the Author

Quintard Taylor is the Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Emeritus Professor of American History at the University of Washington and founder of BlackPast.org. Among his many publications, he is the author of In Search of The Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528-1990 (Norton, 1999) and The Forging of A Black Community: Seattle's Central District from 1870 through the Civil Rights Era (UWP, 1994) and co-editor of Seeking El Dorado: African Americans in California (UWP, 2001) and African American Women Confront the West, 1600-2000 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2003). He is the series editor for the University of Oklahoma Press's series Race and Culture in the American West.