African Americans on the Western Frontier
Billington, M. L.
During the last half of the nineteenth century, several thousand African Americans moved to the American western frontier. Before the Civil War, some went west to California as slaves of gold miners and to Utah as slaves of Mormons. Later, free black men joined the U.S. Army and served in frontier outposts, while others were hired on as cowboys on western ranches and cattle trails. Once Reconstruction ended in the South, discrimination and seg...