Black Montana

2022 Stubbendieck Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize Finalist Toward the end of the nineteenth century, many African Americans moved westward as Greater Reconstruction came to a close. Though, along with Euro-Americans, Black settlers appropriated the land of Native Americans, sometimes even contributing to ongoing violence against Indigenous people, this migration often defied the goals of settler states in the American West. In Black Montana Anthony W. Wood explores the entanglements of race, settler colonialism, and the emergence of state and regional identity in the American West during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By producing conditions of social, cultural, and economic precarity that undermined Black Montanans' networks of kinship, community, and financial security, the state of Montana, in its capacity as a settler colony, worked to exclude the Black community that began to form inside its borders after Reconstruction. Black Montana depicts the history of Montana's Black community from 1877 until the 1930s, a period in western American history that represents a significant moment and unique geography in the life of the U.S. settler-colonial project.

Black Montana argues that the state of Montana, in its capacity as a settler colony, worked to exclude the Black community that began to form inside its borders after Reconstruction.

The whole is greater than the sum of the parts when Montana historian Robert Swartout gathers the fascinating stories of the state’s surprisingly diverse ethnic groups into this thought-provoking collection of essays. Fourteen chapters showcase an African American nightclub in Great Falls, a Japanese American war hero, the founding of a Metís community, Jewish merchants, and Dutch settlement in the Gallatin Valley, as well as stories of Irish, Scots, Chinese, Finns, Mexican Americans, European war brides, and more.

Veteran guidebook author Erik Molvar has revised and updated this comprehensive guide to the spectacular trails of the Bob Marshall, Great Bear, and Scapegoat Wilderness Areas in Montana's northern Rocky Mountains. More than 100 hikes are described -- including seventeen new additions! --each of which contain trail-head directions and up-to-date trail information, elevation graphs, accurate maps, and information on the wildlife and sites you'll find along the way. This guide also provides extremely valuable information on the history of the area, etiquette, trip planning, cautionary tips, fishing opportunities, and selecting and maintaining a safe campsite.