Senator Albert Bacon Fall, and his later recollections on race and politics in the 1930s.

Examines the life and career of the nineteenth-century hunter, trapper, and trader.

The story of Free Frank is not only a testament to human courage and resourcefulness but affords new insight into the American frontier. Born a slave in the South Carolina piedmont in 1777, Frank died a free man in 1854 in a town he had founded in western Illinois. His accomplishments, creditable for any frontiersman, were for a black man extraordinary. We first learn details of Frank's life when in 1795 his owner moved to Pulaski County, Kentucky. We know that he married Lucy, a slave on a neighboring farm, in 1799. Later he was allowed to hire out his time, and when his owner moved to Tennessee, Frank was left in charge of the Kentucky farm. During the War of 1812, he set up his own saltpeter works, an enterprise he maintained until he left Kentucky. In 1817 he purchased his wife's freedom for $800; two years later he bought his own liberty for the same price. Now free, he expanded his activities, purchasing land and dealing in livestock. With his wife and four of his children, Free Frank left Kentucky in 1830 to settle on a new frontier. In Pike County, Illinois, he purchased a farm and later, in 1836, platted and successfully promoted the town of New Philadelphia. The desire for freedom was an obvious spur to his commercial efforts. Through his lifetime of work he purchased the liberty of sixteen members of his family at a cost of nearly $14,000. Goods and services commanded a premium in the life of the frontier. Free Frank's career shows what an exceptional man, through working against great odds, could accomplish through industry, acumen, and aggressiveness. His story suggests a great deal about business activity and legal practices, as well as racial conditions, on the frontier. Juliet Walker has performed a task of historical detection in recreating the life of Free Frank from family traditions, limited personal papers, public documents, and secondary sources. In doing so, she has added a significant chapter to the history of African Americans.

A biographical history of influential African American pioneers and freedom fighters in the Midwest, including Sara Jane Woodson, Peter Clark, and Dred Scott.

'Framed by Appomattox in 1865 and the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, packed with individuals' stories, details of battles fought and descriptions of army life, Men of Color to Arms! examines black soldiers' contributions to America's post-Civil War expansion and consolidation and sheds light on the myriad obstacles the buffalo soldiers faced.' (Publisher)

Lieutenant Henry O. Flipper was a former slave who rose to become the first African American graduate of West Point. While serving as commissary officer at Fort Davis, Texas, in 1881, he was charged with embezzlement and conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. A court-martial board acquitted Flipper of the embezzlement charge but convicted him of conduct unbecoming. He was then dismissed from the service of the United States. The Flipper case became known as something of an American Dreyfus Affair, emblematic of racism in the frontier army. Because of Flipper’s efforts to clear his name, many assumed that he had been railroaded because he was black. In The Fall of a Black Army Officer, Charles M. Robinson III challenges that assumption. In this complete revision of his earlier work, The Court-Martial of Lieutenant Henry Flipper, Robinson finds that Flipper was the author of his own problems. The taint of racism on the Flipper affair became so widely accepted that in 1999 President Bill Clinton issued a posthumous pardon for Flipper. The Fall of a Black Army Officer boldly moves the arguments regarding racism--in both Lt. Flipper’s case and the frontier army in general--beyond political correctness. Solidly grounded in archival research, it is a thorough and provocative reassessment of the Flipper affair, at last revealing the truth.