Current Projects & Past Work
Forty Years within the Veil:
The New Black Towns of the Rocky Mountain West from Greater Reconstruction to the Great Migration
My dissertation is a dive into the world of emergent Rocky Mountain and Front Range towns that boomed between 1877 and 1917. Several of these cities were also home to some of the largest Black communities west of the Mississippi. Why did early Black westerners imagine that towns such as Pueblo, CO, Cheyenne, WY, or Pocatello ID could become homes for themselves and future generations? And what became of those imagined futures?
“Fugitives from Slavery in Jamaica, 1718-1795”
Co-authored with historian Billy G. Smith, this article introduces an innovative way to use and interpret sources that offer a glimpse into the lives of enslaved people in 18th century Jamaica. It is now available to read from The Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation.
Black Montana
Black Montana is out July 1st and available from University of Nebraska Press and book retailers everywhere!
Montana: The Magazine of Western History
My first article, “After the West Was Won,” appeared in MMWH in 2016. It focused on the role of Black veterans of the military regiments commonly called the Buffalo Soldiers in the community of Helena in the early twentieth century. This essay was republished in 2020 for a special issue of the magazine on Black history in Montana.
Settler Colonial Studies
My article in Settler Colonial Studies, “Colonial Erosion: Unearthing African American History in the Settler Colonial West,” was my first long-form meditation on what would become the methodology for my MA thesis and first book. It is available online at Taylor and Francis(https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rset20/9/3).
Public History
I have continued to work with the Montana Historical Society and the Montana State Historic Preservation Office on the “African American Heritage Resources Project” since late 2014. Countless people have made this award-winning public history project the single best resource for learning about Black History in Montana. Visit the website and experience this history today!