What is it about?

This article explores how African Americans in nineteenth-century Iowa defined their state and regional Midwestern identity through civil rights victories and as a rhetorical device in daily interactions, community institutions, law, and politics. Black Iowans saw themselves as part of a broader Midwestern and national black world, and they saw Iowa as less oppressive than the South but also lacking some of the opportunities found in the South and in Midwestern cities with larger black populations. The author explores these factors through lawsuits, newspaper articles, petitions, and other sources.

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Why is it important?

This paper adds to the growing scholarship on black Midwestern history before the Great Migration, especially in Iowa, which has largely been overlooked by historians due to its public image as an overwhelmingly white state. Using a variety of legal, political, and journalistic sources, it also offers a complicated view of what it meant to be black in the Midwest, where greater legal rights and safety from racial violence contrasted with the challenges of being demographically outnumbered.

Perspectives

I hope this article helps challenge the misconception that Iowa has little or no black history. Readers may be surprised to learn that the Hawkeye State had a vigorous antislavery movement, organized a black Civil War regiment, became one of the first states to recognize black male suffrage and to ban racial segregation in public schools and transportation, and supported a successful black newspaper. All of this may help readers think more about what it means to be Midwestern and about the challenges of being black in predominantly white areas.

David Brodnax
Trinity Christian College

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This page is a summary of: "The Brightest Star under the Blue Dome of Heaven": Civil Rights and Midwestern Black Identity in Iowa, 1839–1900, Middle West Review, January 2020, Project Muse,
DOI: 10.1353/mwr.2020.0005.
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