by Pam North

A great omission in most history accounts is the indelible mark made by black women on the American frontier.  The West offered them liberty and opportunity, and for these they were willing to brave the hardships and perils of an unknown wilderness.   Countless black women possessed the spirit, resiliency and pure grit  to challenge the traditional concepts of slavery and female subservience roles, and they drew on these strengths to make new lives for themselves.  Many had been subjected to abuse and degradation at the hands of white men, and they perceived the West as a place to escape from southern violence and oppression.  Some even made the formidable westward journey alone when their men refused to accompany them.  The women settled in frontier towns,  operating or working in hotels and boarding houses, restaurants, hairdressing parlors, schools and orphanages.  Mary Fields, a black woman in her seventies, drove a stagecoach and delivered mail in Cascade, Montana.  Central City' s Aunt Clara Brown sponsored black wagon trains to Colorado, and her successful laundry business enabled her to earn $10,000 and accumulate some real estate holdings as well.  She started a local church, and had a reputation for selflessly helping others.  These were just two of many notable black women who settled and prospered in the West.

Black pioneer women were more likely than their white counterparts to be active on a grass roots level.  They worked hard beside men, and promoted charities and societies for their own race and sex.  After the Civil War, they acquired their educations in coeducational institutions.

Black women preferred urban areas over rural areas for settlement, and thus they became a majority of the black population in cities such as Denver.  They tended to be in their twenties to forties, that age range being somewhat older than that of white frontier women.  Black women also were more likely to be married, to be better educated, and to have a lower rate of child-bearing than the white women.

Black men were in abundance in the West, and they vastly outnumbered the black women, so attempts were made to address the situation of supply and demand.  Married black women, aware that marriage and family life was a stabilizing influence in the community, worked through their churches to locate brides for men who were seeking partners.  A mail-order bride business began to flourish, encouraging single black women to head West to find love, marriage and security, and many matches were made.  The women came, accepting the responsibilities of hard work and even rearing children from men's past marriages.

Perhaps because they were less sheltered than white pioneer women, and more exposed to hard labor to survive, Western black women tended to be more independent.  They were five times more likely to be employed as white women, and twice as likely as Asian or Native American women.  Black women were also far less likely to become prostitutes; a high percentage of solo white women in the West engaged in this age-old profession.

Black women focused on education, and by the 1860s their literacy rate was 74%, exceeding that of blacks in all other areas of the country, and surpassing that of white frontier women.  Black female pupils also had better attendance rates in the 1890s at educational facilities.  When Colorado extended the right to vote to women, a larger percentage of black women than white women voted in Denver's 1906 city election.

Black women in the frontier faced less sexual discrimination and racial oppression than their southern sisters, were safer, and were closer to equal representation and rights.  Most were glad to have ventured westward, and most could be credited with contributing toward the emergence of the West as an important American region.
 

Reference:  The Black West, by William Loren Katz.
 
 
 

Photo of Aunt Clara Brown to accompany article at:
http://www.essierun.org/cb.htm
http://www.denvergov.org/AboutDenver/history_char_brown.asp
Same photo, but first reference has clearer, lighter picture than second reference.
Caption:  Aunt Clara Brown, an important black woman in Central City's history.