Long before the Civil War, thousands of African Americans owned property and worked the land as homestead farmers in the Northwest Territory, or the present-day states of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin. On today’s episode, guest host Richelle Wilson and news director Molly Stentz uncover the forgotten history of Black pioneers on the first American frontier with historian Anna-Lisa Cox, author of The Bone and Sinew of the Land.
Anna-Lisa Cox is a historian who specializes in the history of racism and race relations in nineteenth-century America. She is a non-resident Fellow at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. She was recently a Research Associate at the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, where her original research provided the foundation for two historical exhibits.
Anna-Lisa Cox is the author of A Stronger Kinship: One Town’s Extraordinary Story of Hope and Faith (Bison Books, 2007) and The Bone and Sinew of the Land: America’s Forgotten Black Pioneers and the Struggle for Equality (PublicAffairs, 2018).