Western Studies: Black History Month
The McCracken Research Library at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West suggests the following bibliography for titles relating to Black History Month, in recognition of the contributions of the many peoples who contributed to the making of the modern American West.
Books held in the McCracken Research Library, Buffalo Bill Center of the West:
Bird, Sarah, and Demetrius W. Pearson. Juneteenth Rodeo: Photos and Essay. First edition. University of Texas Press, 2024.
Burton, Arthur T. Black Gun, Silver Star: The Life and Legend of Frontier Marshal Bass Reeves. New edition. University of Nebraska Press, 2022.
Chandler, Robert J. San Francisco Lithographer: African American Artist Grafton Tyler Brown. University of Oklahoma Press, 2014.
Cooks, Bridget R. Exhibiting Blackness: African Americans and the American Art Museum. University of Massachusetts Press, 2011.
Effinger-Crichlow, Marta. Staging Migrations Toward an American West: From Ida B. Wells to Rhodessa Jones. University Press of Colorado, 2014.
Field, Kendra Taira. Growing Up with the Country: Family, Race, and Nation after the Civil War. Yale University Press, 2018.
Gondola, Ch. Didier. Tropical Cowboys: Westerns, Violence, and Masculinity in Kinshasa. Indiana University Press, 2016.
Langellier, John P. Fighting for Uncle Sam: Buffalo Soldiers in the Frontier Army. Schiffer Publishing Ltd., 2016.
_____. Scouting With the Buffalo Soldiers: Lieutenant Powhatan Clarke, Frederic Remington, and the Tenth U.S. Cavalry in the Southwest. University of North Texas Press, 2020.
Leckie, William H., and Shirley A. Leckie. The Buffalo Soldiers: A Narrative of the Black Cavalry in the West. Revised edition. University of Oklahoma Press, 2003.
Marcoux, Jon Bernard, and Corey A. H. Sattes. Materializing Colonial Identities in Clay: Colonoware in the African and Indigenous Diasporas of the Southeast. The University of Alabama Press, 2024.
Mask, Mia. Black Rodeo: A History of the African American Western. University of Illinois Press, 2023.
Pearson, Demetrius W. Black Rodeo in the Texas Gulf Coast Region: Charcoal in the Ashes. Lexington Books, 2021.
Schubert, Frank N. Voices of the Buffalo Soldier: Records, Reports, and Recollections of Military Life and Service in the West. First edition. University of New Mexico Press, 2003.
Sluyter, Andrew. Black Ranching Frontiers: African Cattle Herders of the Atlantic World, 1500-1900. Yale University Press, 2012.
Tayac, Gabrielle. IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas. First edition. Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, 2009.
Williams, Nancy. Black Cowboys and Early Cattle Drives: On the Trails from Texas to Montana. The History Press, 2023.
Wood, Anthony W. Black Montana: Settler Colonialism and the Erosion of the Racial Frontier, 1877-1930. University of Nebraska Press, 2023.
Young Adult Titles:
Bolden, Tonya. Pathfinders: The Journeys of 16 Extraordinary Black Souls. Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2017.
Lowe, Mifflin, and Wiliam Luong. The True West: Real Stories About Black Cowboys, Women Sharpshooters, Native American Rodeo Stars, Pioneering Vaqueros, and the Unsung Explorers, Builders, and Heroes Who Shaped the American West. First edition. Bushel & Peck Books, 2020.
February 2025/Nathan E. Bender, McCracken Research Library
