BLACK WESTERNERS
istorian Quintard Taylor noted in a 1996 “The ghost of Walter Prescott Webb’s 1955 comment that the West is defied by its scarcity of ‘water, timber, cities, industry, labor and Negroes’ continues to intrude on the region’s popular consciousness.” Thankfully, in the 25 years since Taylor’s observation, enough books and articles have been written about black men and women in the American West to lay to rest the ghost of Webb’s comment.
