Sweet Freedom’s Plains: African Americans on the Overland Trails 1841–1869, by Shirley Ann Wilson Moore

Although many scholars have focused on African Americans who settled in the urban West, their early trailblazing voyages into the Oregon Country, Utah Territory, New Mexico Territory, and California deserve greater attention. Having combed censuses, maps, government documents, and white overlanders’ diaries, along with the few accounts written by black overlanders or passed down orally to their living descendants. Moore gives voice to the countless, mostly anonymous black men and women who trekked the plains and mountains.