Is Anything Black About the American West?

The black American experience is more than just Harlem and Mississippi, North and South, ghettoes and Jim Crow. There was a Western front, and it wasn’t all that quiet.

By: Kenneth J. Cooper

Reading obituaries about John Hope Franklin reminded me about a long-standing beef I have with a certain limited way of thinking about who African Americans are. For me, though, the telling biographical fact was where he was born—Oklahoma.

In its obituary, the Raleigh News & Observer said the eminent historian “gave definition to the African-American experience.” That’s quite a legacy. A black Okie did all of that?

You see, too many African Americans—you know who you are—believe real black folks are from the South or the urban North. They’re not from the West, not Oklahoma, not Colorado—where I was born—and certainly not Hawaii, though there are exceptions made for California and L.A. I’ve been hearing it for the 30 years or so I’ve lived on the East Coast.

This narrow-mindedness results in part, I think, from our creative imaginations of the black experience, in fiction and film, almost exclusively in the South or North. Historically, African Americans have been concentrated in the South, but major migrations have taken us not just to the North but to the West. By taking a geocentric view of blackness, we cut ourselves off from parts of our history—and even some of our heroes. With a black Hawaiian in the White House, it’s time to embrace an expansive view of the black experience in its full diversity.

Is Anything Black About the American West?....