Anna-Lisa Cox, “The Bone and Sinew of the Land: America’s Forgotten Black Pioneers and the Struggle for Equality” (PublicAffairs, 2018)

New Books in African American Studies · Jul 9, 2018 · 1h 10m

Most people’s image of the American frontier does not conjure anything relating to people of African descent. But, as Anna-Lisa Cox’s points out in her new book The Bone and Sinew of the Land: America’s Forgotten Black Pioneers and the Struggle for Equality (PublicAffairs, 2018), it should. Dr. Cox uncovers not only the presence of black life in the Northwest Territory states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin, but also the communities and institutions they built as they strived for equality in a constantly shifting governmental terrain. Their pursuit of freedom coincided…