Border State Terror and The Genesis of the African-American Community in Deer Lodge and Choteau Counties, Montana, 1870-1890

Abstract

So long as de shadder oh gret house falls acrost you, you aint't gwine ter feel lake no free man, an' you ain't gwine ter feel lak no free 'oman. You mu's all move - you mus move clar away from de ole places what you knows, ter de new places what you don't know, whey you kin raise up yore head douten no fear o' Marse dis ur Marse Tudder(1) Despite the wide diversity of studies on the twelve-year period of Reconstruction following the Civil War, the connection between Reconstruction and westward movement remains relatively unexplored.(2) Reconstruction was a particularly violent period for African Americans in the South, and we may look to the attempts of freedpeople to escape this violence as a crucial link between Reconstruction and westward migration. The particularly hostile and stifling environment for blacks in the border states of Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri may well have been what motivated many to go west during this period.(3) I think that it is safe to hypothesize that blacks' realization that emancipation from slavery would not protect them from the economically, psychologically and physically violent environment in which this institution flourished is likely to have caused many to seek a more liberatory freedom in the seemingly untarnished frontier West.(4) The environment of Reconstruction-era Kentucky epitomizes the lack of actual freedom felt by blacks after emancipation, as this was an area in which most blacks continued to be denied protection from physical violence as well as opportunities for economic or social advancement. That there was a bold effort made to escape these conditions is indicated by the 1870s settlement of a small but significant population of Kentucky blacks in Deer Lodge and Choteau counties, Montana. Although the history of black westward movement has been largely ignored and generally excused by the assumption that the relatively small number of blacks who migrated west does not warrant scholarly attention, Kenneth Wiggins Porter points out that some of the few Negroes who reached the region [Montana and Idaho] during the period of early settlement played a positive role - probably more important in proportion to their numbers than on any other comparable frontier.(5) The American frontier, being a supposed hotbed of economic opportunity, may have been especially attractive to blacks of the poverty-stricken South, where there seemed to be little chance of economic advancement for anyone.(6) In examining the probable link between Reconstruction-era violence and African-American westward migration, it is useful, I think, to also consider black westward movement in a more traditional context. That is, while asking whether black migration was motivated by wholly different reasons than white migration, we may also look at the possibility that blacks sought the very same kind of democracy as did white migrators, a democracy described by Frederick Jackson Turner as based on the family.(7) Recent historians such as Ira Berlin, Leon F. Litwack, Eric Foner, Catherine Clinton and others emphasize the importance of reforming kinship ties and strengthening familial relationships among freedpeople during Reconstruction. Foner contends, Emancipation allowed blacks to reaffirm and solidify their family connections, and most freedmen seized the opportunity with alacrity. . . . Black men and women shared a compassionate commitment to the stability of family life as a badge of freedom and the solid foundation upon which a new black community could flourish.(8) Might westward-moving blacks have imagined that along with the freedom from violence would come a freedom to create families and communities in which they could thrive? In turn, did the development or strengthening of black frontier families contribute to a truer form of democracy than that of the Reconstruction-era South? By examining blacks' settlement in the Montana territory as both an escape from the violence of Kentucky as well as an effort to build a democratic community in which not only their survival was guaranteed, but in which they could flourish, I hope to develop a greater connection between African-American and frontier history. …