Black Wests - (The Popular West) by Sara Gallagher (Hardcover)

About the Book

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.

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"Black Wests charts myriad processes by which Black identity was integrated into (or excluded from) notions of 'the West' and its attendant national myth-making functions. Gallagher's archival approach enriches the field considerably, examining in great detail how the genre's racial codings were inverted and negotiated in literature long before the cinematic Western had established its foothold in popular culture."--Austin Fisher, author of Blood in the Streets: Histories of Violence in Italian Crime Cinema


"A fascinating look at the often-hidden history of the ways African Americans shaped the West--both as it existed historically and was imagined by Black writers and filmmakers. Gallagher's study ranges across centuries and media, from a 19th century Black San Francisco-based newspaper, through 20th century African American filmmakers, to its delightful conclusion--Straight Outta Compton to 'Old Town Road.'"--Sara L. Spurgeon, Ph.D., author of Exploding the Western: Myths of Empire on the Postmodern Frontier

"In capable close readings of authors like Pauline Hopkins and Nat Love, Gallagher's Black Wests contributes to the burgeoning study of African American engagement with the American West by showing how Black culture workers who used the western genre as an expression of double consciousness were often as constrained by it as they were enabled."--Emily Lutenski, author of West of Harlem: African American Writers and the Borderlands