African-American in Montana Timeline

York, member of the Corps of Discovery & Clark’s slave servant, is most likely the first person of African descent to enter what will later become Montana Territory

Americans establish the first fur trading
post in MT

Mountain man Edward Rose spends the winter trading with the Crow at the behest of Manuel Lisa who later builds Montana's first fur fort on the Yellowstone River

First fur trade rendezvous

Free trapper James P. Beckwourth arrives in Montana as part of William Ashley's fur trading expedition

Smallpox epidemic kills many MT Indians

Father DeSmet builds St. Mary's Mission near present-day Stevensville

American Fur Co. builds Ft. Benton on the Upper Missouri River deep in Blackfeet country

"Written from his own dictation to T.D. Bonner", The Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth: Mountaineer, Scout, Pioneer and Chief of the Crow Nation of Indians is published in New York

First steamboat arrives in Ft. Benton

American Fur Co.'s post at Ft. Benton employs at least four Black men; other Blacks arrive as steamboat crew & passengers

* Congress passes the Homestead Act

* Montana gold rush begins

Emancipation Proclamation frees forever "...all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States…"

* Civil War ends

* 13th Amendment abolishing slavery is passed

* Haitian-born barber Samuel Lewis settles in Bozeman where he erects several business buildings & his own home, now on the National Register of Historic Places

* Sammy Hays is murdered by "an Irish Democrat named Lynch" in a fractious post-election riot in Helena

15th Amendment granting Black men the right to vote in U.S. elections

183 Blacks living in Montana Territory (20,595 total population); 43% reside in Helena with 10.4% & 8.9% residing in Virginia City & Ft. Benton, respectively

Montana Territorial Legislature passes a law reading: "The education of children of African descent shall be provided for in separate schools…"; it is rescinded in 1895

Panic of 1873 brings nation's economy to a near standstill

Deer Lodge resident America Turner receives notice from Granville Stuart & fellow school district directors that her son "is not entitled to a place in the public school….he will not be admitted…"

Isaiah Dorman, a U.S. Army interpreter, is killed at the Battle of the Little Big Horn

Charles "Smoky" Wilson is hired as a Crow language field interpreter at Ft. Custer & later serves in various federal government capacities at Crow Agency for the remainder of his life

Mattie Bost marries white freighter John Castner in Helena; they reportedly build the first cabin in Belt which evolves into a hotel, restaurant & stage station; she later operates a cattle ranch

First train enters Montana Territory

346 Blacks living in Montana Territory (39,159 total population)

William Woodcock, the U.S. Marshal's servant, sues a Butte restaurant under the 1875 Civil Rights Act after he believes its proprietor asks him to leave; he wins the suit in 1883 & is awarded $500, the minimum settlement

Ft. Benton's Grand Union hotel opens with an 11-person staff, nine of whom are Black & work as the barkeeper, cooks, waiters & chambermaid

* Northern Pacific completes its transcontinental route through Montana Territory

* Many members of northern Montana tribes die during Starvation Winter

* Copper boom begins in Butte

Internationally-acclaimed Jubilee Singers, students from Nashville's black Fisk University, perform their classical arrangements of "plantation melodies" in the White Sulphur Springs skating rink.

Helena's African-American community celebrates the anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the West Indies (1834) & the United States, white stockman Dan Floweree donates $50 to the celebration, the city's mayor & other white citizens also attend the day-long festivities (August 2)

Abolitionist/daguerreotypist/entrepreneur from Cincinnati & Minneapolis, J.P. Ball, Sr. opens a photography studio in Helena, serves on the Lewis & Clark County Republican Party central committee, president of the state's Afro-American Club, & is a co-founder of St. James' African Methodist-Episcopal Church

St. James' African Methodist-Episcopal (AME) church organizes in Helena & becomes the nucleus of Black Helenans' social & cultural life

White Sulphur Springs' "colored" brass marching band debuted "on Main street and plays several tunes after which they visited the houses of the colored people of town." (September)

* 1,490 Blacks living in Montana (142,924 total population)

* Great Falls residents organize Union Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, its original church building was constructed the next year & replaced in 1917; the present building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003

Missoulian William Waller, divorced in 1888 from his white wife, Nellie, applies to District Court for custody of their two young daughters alleging their mother "is not a proper person to care for the children", the outcome of the case is not known

Panic of 1893 devastates the state's silver-mining industry, nearly one-third of Montanans lose their jobs as banks fail & mines close

* On their wedding night in Glendive, Emma Wall & her white groom, John Orr, are forcibly "alabastined" & ebonized, respectively, by a mob of 200 men & given 24 hour notice "to pack up & leave town"

* Montana & Illinois Gold Mining Co., probably the first company incorporated by African-Americans in Montana, is founded by the grandiose Charles Porter Grove

* US District Judge Hiram Knowles, a white, appoints Libby resident & Montana's first black attorney, John D. Posten as US Commissioner to the District Court, making him the first Black to hold such a position in the region

* Montana's first newspaper for Blacks, The Colored Citizen, is published in Helena for 2 1/2 months chiefly to advance the city as the location of the state capital among Black male voters

* Former slave Annie Morgan settles on an abandoned fox farm near Philipsburg; in 1913 she files a Homestead Entry for the property she shared with her white common-law husband, Joseph "Fisher Jack" Case, in 2005, the Morgan-Case Homestead was listed on the National Register of Historic Places

* Following Mary Fields' eviction by Catholic Bishop Brondel from St. Peter's Mission where she'd lived for 11 years, "Stagecoach Mary" begins driving a U.S. Mail stagecoach between the mission & Cascade

* Afro-American Club of Butte City incorporates "to conduct & manage & carry on the business of a social club & club house…to engage in musical, literary & scientific pursuits…"

* Soldiers of the 25th Infantry Regiment stationed at Ft. Missoula bicycle to St. Louis, a distance of approximately 1900 miles in 40 days

* Former slave, minstrel company member & Kentucky native Robert Canada Logan, a Butte resident, wins second place in the Welsh International Eisteddfod vocal contest, singing before 30,000 people in Denver

* William Biggerstaff is hanged in Helena for the murder of pugilist Dick Johnson, a Unionville native; J.P. Ball, Sr. takes numerous photographs of Biggerstaff before, during & following the hanging

White Sulphur Springs blacksmith Irvin Smith's 65th birthday is lauded in the Rocky Mountain Husbandman: "…though well advanced in years his strong & sinewy arms still ply with wonderful force…"

* 1,523 Blacks living in Montana (243,329 total population)

* AME congregation organizes in Billings at 302 North 24th St.

* Upon the death of her white husband, Sally Gammon (Brown) Bickford assumes ownership of the Virginia City Water Co. & operates it for 31 years

* Cornerstone is laid for Shaffer's Chapel (AME) on southeast corner of Idaho & Platinum Streets, Butte (9 June)

* Bethel Baptist Church organizes in Butte & later moves into 217 West Mercury, site of the original AME church

* Afro-American Women's Club founded in Butte, disbands soon afterwards; re-emerges in 1918 as the Pearl Club to support U.S. efforts in World War I

* Vaudeville team Williams & Walker, often credited for developing post-minstrelsy humor, play a 3-night stand at Butte's Sutton New Grand theatre, for "the elite of colored society" & white audiences

* American-African Church Building League in Anaconda turns over two years' fund-raising proceeds to AME congregation for its first church, a building donated by ACM to be moved to southwest corner of West Commercial & Locust

* President Theodore Roosevelt visits Butte where prospector/orator Charles J. Fiske representing the city's Afro-American residents presents him with a trowel to "continue to spread the cement of human kindness…"

Forest Homestead Act passed by Congress

Helena resident J.B. Bass publishes first issues of Montana Plaindealer covering local, state & national "race news", the weekly "unhesitatingly subscribe[s] to the principles of Republicanism" & runs for 5 years

* St. Stephen's AME congregation in Havre remodels a building at 539 Third St. as a church

* A newspaper publisher, printer, private club president & two tailors form the Helena chapter of the National Negro Business League

* Afro-American Building Association incorporated "to purchase real estate & erect a building thereon in the city of Helena…"

* Kentucky native, wife & mother Alice Palmer of Helena is reputedly the first African-American woman in Montana to file for a homestead 5 miles west of Lincoln

* AME ministers Cate & Abbot visit Lewistown, Livingston & Miles City to start churches

* St. James AME Church in Helena is the setting for "Honor Lincoln Day" on the centennial of his birth

* Montana legislature passes law making "Marriage between a white person & negro [sic] utterly null & void"; the law was repealed in 1953

* 1,834 Blacks living in Montana (376,053 total population); 23% reside in Helena with 13.9% & 8.1% residing in Butte & Billings, respectively

* circa; Missoula's St. Paul's AME Church is located at 1411 (later 1427) Phillips

* Second Baptist Church (Ebenezer Mission) in Helena receives blueprints for its $3,000 building erected at 1260 Harrison Avenue

Butte's Socialist mayor/Unitarian minister Lewis J. Duncan appoints Frank Cassels to the police force, patrolling Main Street from Park to Granite

Last Chance Club "is organized [in Helena] for the social improvement among its members, literary & dramatic entertainments & benevolent work among those in need of assistance…"

* Booker T. Washington, perhaps the most famous African-American of his time, lectures in Billings, Bozeman, Butte & Helena advocating for accommodation between the black & white races

* Railway bridge construction camp worker J.C. Collins is lynched in Mondak after killing the Sheridan County sheriff & his deputy who were trying to apprehend him for the alleged assault of a Black fellow worker's wife

* Five Great Falls residents incorporate the Afro-American Investment Co. to engage in real estate dealings

* Glendive Independent notes its "sundown town" status: "..for many years there has been a saying that 'the sun is never allowed to set on any n****** in Glendive…'"

* D.W. Griffith's epic silent film, "Birth of a Nation", adapted from The Clansman, An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, plays in Montana movie theatres & protests against its racism occur in Helena & Butte

* Arthur C. Ford, the son of U.S. Senator T.C. Power's coachman, graduates from Montana State College with a mechanical engineering degree, as the president of New York City's Department of Water Supply, Gas & Electricity, he was the first Black to be appointed commissioner of a city agency

Three Black railroad workers--Leslie Fahley (or Foley), Harrison Gibson & Henry Hall--are hanged in White Sulphur Springs for the murder of a white transient laborer, 4 others were sentenced from 10 years to life imprisonment

Fifty percent of MT farmers lose their land over the next 6 years

* 1,658 Blacks living in Montana (548,889 total population)

* First services held at newly-built Wayman Chapel (AME), 402 South 25th Street, Billings

Ku Klux Klan organizes in Montana, their venom is directed more towards the numerous Catholic & immigrant populations than the state's small Black population; "klans" operated in Butte, Livingston, Whitehall, Roundup & other Montana towns

* Montana Federation of Negro Women's Clubs is founded & comprised of clubs from Bozeman, Helena, Billings, Butte, Anaconda, & Kalispell

* Missouri native Henry J. Baker is appointed Postmaster at the State Capitol & is believed to be the first African-American state official

* Governor Joseph M. Dixon delivers welcome address to second annual convention of the Montana State Federation of Negro Women's Clubs in Helena

* Son of a 25th Infantry veteran, Missoulian James Dorsey is the first Black to graduate from the University of Montana, five years later he was the first Black to earn a degree from the U of M Law School; Dorsey practiced law in Milwaukee for nearly 40 years & received a Distinguished Service Award from his alma mater in 1963

Tenor Taylor Gordon, a White Sulphur Springs native, sings spirituals with baritone/pianist J. Rosamond Johnson at Carnegie Hall; he later writes a best-selling memoir, Born to Be, detailing his Montana boyhood, participation in the Harlem Renaissance & advancing critical appreciation of the spiritual as an art form

* 1,256 Blacks living in Montana (537,606 total population); 16.6% reside in Great Falls with 12.7% & 11.7% residing in Butte & Helena, respectively

* "Colored Walsh for Senator Club" holds rally in Helena for "members & sympathizers" advocating white U.S. Senator Thomas J. Walsh's re-election

* 23 year old Kentucky native Eva B. Sallee teaches in the public school in Wisdom

* New Deal begins

* Going-to-the-Sun Road opens in Glacier National Park

Nearly 1,000 young Black Civilian Conservation Corps enrollees from New York & New Jersey arrive in the Libby/Troy area to build the airport, lookout towers, & the first highways in north Lincoln County; in 1934, however, the CCC's national director orders "all Negroes in camps outside their home states" to be repatriated to their residencies

Havre resident Alice Pleasant dies; "Ma Plaz" was renowned for her chicken dinners, quick wit & generosity

Almost 25% of Montanans rely on government assistance

* One month after winning the Grizzly Cup as the University of Montana's outstanding overall student-athlete, Naseby Rhinehart accepts a position as athletic trainer at his alma mater & over the next 47 years develops a pioneering athletic trainer curriculum

* Giants of Butte baseball team wins championship of the first half of the Montana State Baseball League split season

A bill "relating to discrimination between citizens in regard to certain services & employment…" is proposed in the Montana House of Representatives but is killed in committee

* Nazi Germany invades Poland

* Daughters of the American Revolution prohibit contral to Marian Anderson from singing at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.

Over the next 3 years, the state's population drops 16%

1,120 Blacks living in Montana (559,456 total population)

* US declares war on Japan after it bombs Pearl Harbor; Montanan Jeanette Rankin is the only congressional representative to vote against the declaration

* Germany & Italy declare war on the US

Anaconda newspaper reporter Edward B. Reynolds contributes essays on smelter work to the unpublished WPA anthology Men at Work; his older brother Rox Reynolds, also a journalist, is a well-known humor essayist for Seattle & San Francisco newspapers

* Federal government establishes internment camps for US citizens of Japanese descent & Japanese residents

* Airfields constructed near Great Falls, Lewistown, Cut Bank & Glasgow

* Battalion of Southern Black miner-soldiers are furloughed to Butte to augment efforts "to produce to the full [the] quota of copper [necessary] for victory…"; 8,000 white Butte miners subsequently walk out citing safety issues even though the Black soldiers were experienced miners

* Great Falls' African-American population swells as Black airmen & their families are assigned to Malmstrom Air Force Base

Fort Harrison native & registered nurse Octavia Bridgwater enlists in the Army Nurse Corps & is one of only several hundred Black nurses permitted to serve in the segregated armed forces; she attains the rank of First Lieutenant

* Korean War begins

* Great Falls replaces Butte as Montana's largest city

1,232 Blacks living in Montana (591.024 total population)

* Cascade County Community Council appoints the "Inter-racial Committee..." to study the matter of racial discrimination…with particular concern for the colored airmen at the [Malmstrom A.F. ] Base & the question of their admittance to establishments in the city..."

* Executive Secretary of Portland's Urban League conducts a 3-week "intercultural relations" workshop in Billings with the support of the [Jewish] Anti-Defamation League

* Montana Federation of Colored Women's Clubs advocates passage of Montana House Bill 73 to "…guarantee the full & equal enjoyment of all places of public accommodation & amusement…"; critics claim such a law would increase the state's Black population, decrease property values or extend civil rights to Native Americans. The bill does not reach a Senate roll call & dies.

* Butte's Pearl Club for women hosts contralto Marian Anderson, over 2,000 attend her concert at the city's Civic Center

* After 60 years, Julian Anderson retires from his bartender post at the Montana Club, a private men's club in downtown Helena

US Supreme Court outlaws school segregation with Brown v. Topeka Board of Education decision

* 1,467 Blacks living in Montana (674,767 total population)

* Russ Williams, Helena High School Class of 1961, is elected to Boys State & believed to have been the first African-American to receive this honor; Senior Class president & a member of the National Honor Society & 3-7-77 honorary, he is killed in a tragic shotgun accident before graduation

Great Falls' long-lived Ozark Club, renowned for its integrated jazz bands & inter-racial clientele, burns to the ground

US Senate Majority Leader Montana's Mike Mansfield expedites consideration of a bill that would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964

After attacks on peaceful civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama, Black & white residents of Billings& Missoula hold street marches & ecumenical prayer services noting a "nationwide failure to love one another…"

Professor Ulysses Doss establishes the "Black Studies Program" at U of M, only the third such program in the U.S. & the first outside of California

Ophelia Fenter is the first Black to teach at Butte High School where she teaches home economics for the next 14 years

1,995 Blacks living in Montana (694,409 total population)

Lewistown native Alma Jacobs is appointed State Librarian; the previous year she co-founded the Montana Committee for the Humanities, in 1957 she was the first Black elected president of the Pacific Northwest Library Association

Geraldine W. Travis of Great Falls is elected to the Montana House of Representatives & becomes the state's first Black legislator

Atlantic Richfield Co. purchases the Anaconda Company, over the next 7 years, it closes smelters & refineries in Great Falls & Anaconda & ends large-scale mining in Butte

Billings replaces Great Falls as Montana's largest city

1,786 Blacks living in Montana (786,690 total population)

2,381 Blacks living in Montana (799.065 total population)

Montana becomes the 48th state to declare the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. a state holiday

Great Falls chapter of the NAACP hosts a rally on the Civic Center steps to protest the acquittal of Los Angeles police officers charged with beating motorist Rodney King

2,834 Blacks living in Montana (902,195 total population)

Miles City resident Johnnie Lockett Thomas receives a 2007 Montana Governor's Humanities Award for her research & presentations on the African-American experience in the West