Black Wests: Reshaping Race and Place in Popular Culture

The story of settlers in the American West, with its tales of cowboys, prospectors, and frontiersmen, is often overwhelmingly white. Black Wests brings to light the pivotal and largely overlooked contributions of Black Americans to the western narrative. Tracing Black Western storytelling through a range of media across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Sara Gallagher offers a unique perspective on the Black Western-its history, its critical texts and moments in print and cinema, and the singular experiences of Black creators in the American West.

Significantly, different media presented particular opportunities, and particular limitations, for Black creators. Gallagher explores how visual mediums, especially film, played a vital role in countering negative portrayals of Black characters in popular Western cinema. In this light, she examines the likes of Oscar Micheaux, a homesteader-turned visionary film director, and Herb Jeffries, the famed singer whose role as the Black “singing cowboy” earned him stardom in Hollywood. Her reading encompasses the well-known-like Nat Love, legendary cowboy whose life has become an enduring symbol of the Black American West; Pauline Hopkins, a journalist and novelist whose works introduced Black America to the dime Western; and the lesser known, such as Jennie Carter, a frontierswoman who wrote about her experience in California. Concluding with a nod to modern artists like Beyoncé and Lil Nas X, Black Wests illustrates how this imaginative form continues to flourish.

An enlightening and entertaining journey through the history of the Black Western, Gallagher’s work restores Black storytelling to its critical place in the making of the American West in popular culture.