I've Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land (America in the Nineteenth Century)

"Perhaps no other symbol has more resonance in African American history than that of "40 acres and a mule"--the lost promise of Black reparations for slavery after the Civil War. In I've Been Here All the While, we meet the Black people who actually received this mythic 40 acres, the American settlers who coveted this land, and the Native Americans whose holdings it originated from. In nineteenth-century Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma), a story unfolds that ties African American and Native American history tightly together, revealing a western theatre of Civil War and Reconstruction, in which Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole Indians, their Black slaves, and African Americans and whites from the eastern United States fought military and rhetorical battles to lay claim to land that had been taken from others. Through chapters that chart cycles of dispossession, land seizure, and settlement in Indian Territory, Alaina E. Roberts draws on archival research and family history to upend the traditional story of Reconstruction. She connects debates about Black freedom and Native American citizenship to westward expansion onto Native land. As Black, white, and Native people constructed ideas of race, belonging, and national identity, this part of the West became, for a short time, the last place where Black people could escape Jim Crow, finding land and exercising political rights, until Oklahoma statehood in 1907."-- Provided by publisher

Perhaps no other symbol has more resonance in African American history than that of "40 acres and a mule"—the lost promise of Black reparations for slavery after the Civil War. In I've Been Here All the While, we meet the Black people who actually received this mythic 40 acres, the American settlers who coveted this land, and the Native Americans whose holdings it originated from.

In nineteenth-century Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma), a story unfolds that ties African American and Native American history tightly together, revealing a western theatre of Civil War and Reconstruction, in which Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole Indians, their Black slaves, and African Americans and whites from the eastern United States fought military and rhetorical battles to lay claim to land that had been taken from others.

Through chapters that chart cycles of dispossession, land seizure, and settlement in Indian Territory, Alaina E. Roberts draws on archival research and family history to upend the traditional story of Reconstruction. She connects debates about Black freedom and Native American citizenship to westward expansion onto Native land. As Black, white, and Native people constructed ideas of race, belonging, and national identity, this part of the West became, for a short time, the last place where Black people could escape Jim Crow, finding land and exercising political rights, until Oklahoma statehood in 1907.

Perhaps no other symbol has more resonance in African Americanhistory than that of "40 acres and a mule"-the lost promise ofBlack reparations for slavery after the Civil War. In I've BeenHere All the While, we meet the Black people who actuallyreceived this mythic 40 acres, the American settlers who covetedthis land, and the Native Americans whose holdings it originatedfrom.

In nineteenth-century Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma), astory unfolds that ties African American and Native Americanhistory tightly together, revealing a western theatre of Civil Warand Reconstruction, in which Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek,and Seminole Indians, their Black slaves, and African Americans andwhites from the eastern United States fought military andrhetorical battles to lay claim to land that had been taken fromothers.

Through chapters that chart cycles of dispossession, landseizure, and settlement in Indian Territory, Alaina E. Robertsdraws on archival research and family history to upend thetraditional story of Reconstruction. She connects debates aboutBlack freedom and Native American citizenship to westward expansiononto Native land. As Black, white, and Native people constructedideas of race, belonging, and national identity, this part of theWest became, for a short time, the last place where Black peoplecould escape Jim Crow, finding land and exercising politicalrights, until Oklahoma statehood in 1907.

Perhaps no other symbol has more resonance in African American history than that of "40 acres and a mule"-the lost promise of Black reparations for slavery after the Civil War. In I've Been Here All the While, we meet the Black people who actually received this mythic 40 acres, the American settlers who coveted this land, and the Native Americans whose holdings it originated from.0In nineteenth-century Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma), a story unfolds that ties African American and Native American history tightly together, revealing a western theatre of Civil War and Reconstruction, in which Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole Indians, their Black slaves, and African Americans and whites from the eastern United States fought military and rhetorical battles to lay claim to land that had been taken from others.0Through chapters that chart cycles of dispossession, land seizure, and settlement in Indian Territory, Alaina E. Roberts draws on archival research and family history to upend the traditional story of Reconstruction. She connects debates about Black freedom and Native American citizenship to westward expansion onto Native land. As Black, white, and Native people constructed ideas of race, belonging, and national identity, this part of the West became, for a short time, the last place where Black people could escape Jim Crow, finding land and exercising political rights, until Oklahoma statehood in 1907 Perhaps no other symbol has more resonance in African American history than that of 40 acres and a mulethe lost promise of Black reparations for slavery after the Civil War. In Ive Been Here All the While , we meet the Black people who actually received this mythic 40 acres, the American settlers who coveted this land, and the Native Americans whose holdings it originated from. Through chapters that chart cycles of dispossession, land seizure, and settlement in Indian Territory, Alaina E. Roberts draws on archival research and family history to upend the traditional story of Reconstruction. She connects debates about Black freedom and Native American citizenship to westward expansion on to Native land. As Black, white, and Native people constructed ideas of race, belonging, and national identity, this part of the West became, for a short time, the last place where Black people could escape Jim Crow, finding land and exercising political rights, until the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921. This book is a volume in Native American history, in African American history, and in the long history of the settlement of the U.S. West. The Indian Removal brought eastern Indians to Indian Territory (now modern-day Oklahoma) ; the eastern Indians appropriated land from the Indians already living there, and they used the language of colonization to do it. In addition, they held slaves