Imagining the African American West

Kansas, like Texas, had a troublesome history. Although the Exodusters would later envision Kansas as the biblical promised land, the territory in the 185os was hostile to racial minorities. Many white residents opposed the introduction of slavery because they wanted to prevent African Americans from coming to Kansas, not because they favored racial equality. At one constitutional gathering, legislators and delegates ʻsimultaneously demanded the prohibition of slaveryʻ and ʻthe exclusion of free Negroes.ʻ? At the turn of the century, when Hopkins was writing Winona, the state still had a poor record on equal rights. One year before the novel appeared in the Colored American Magazine, where it was serialized in igo2, the magazine published an article on Kansas documenting its treatment of criminals. Unlike whites, who were sentenced to prison for crimes they committed, African Americans were sometimes lynched or burned at the stake.9 1

We Charge Genocide made it clear that the lynchings and other murders were nation wide. But this is valuable because it describes the hopes that Afro-Americans had of seeking freedom in the West, and not finding it. In fact, Kansas residents seemed to prefer bypassing the industrial profits of slavery altogether to keep Afro-Americans out altogether.

1 Blake Allmendinger, Imagining the African American West (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2005) 36, Questia, Web, 4 Apr. 2011.