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The Bone and Sinew of the Land: America’s Forgotten Black Pioneers & the Struggle for Equality by Anna-Lisa Cox A fundamental story of United States history is the country expanding from the original 13 colonies to span the continent. It began after the Revolutionary War, when the federal government opened the Northwest Territory to settlement. This territory covered what became the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and part of Minnesota. It was governed by the 1787 Northwest Ordinance, a document that declared slavery and involuntary servitude illegal in these lands, encouraged public education for all, secured religious liberty and did not restrict voting based on skin color. With the promise of good farmland, economic advancement and freedom, it should hardly be surprising that migrating to the Northwest Territory was equally as attractive to free Blacks as it was to others.
settlers were not small in numbers, nor unsuccessful in building homesteads. This map is not even representative of all the African Americans who lived in the Northwest Territory, as it only maps Black property owners in rural areas, not African Americans who migrated to larger cities. The book’s title is taken from a letter written by Black settlers from Carthagena in Mercer County, Ohio, to African American residents of Cleveland that encouraged leaving the city to “…go into the country and become part of the bone and sinew of the land.”
In The Bone and Sinew of the Land: America’s Forgotten Black Pioneers & the Struggle for Equality, author Anna-Lisa Cox eloquently describes familiar aspects of the pioneer experience—the challenging-yetsatisfying work of clearing land, the nearby wolves howling at night. However, she also shows that the pioneer story has largely overlooked the numbers of Black pioneers, with the prejudice they endured and their success in the face of difficulties forgotten or obscured.
Among Northern whites, there were those who sought to keep African Americans in servitude through loopholes in the slavery ban, such as indenture bonds that lasted for 99 years. Violence and intimidation, such as race wars in cities, burned African Methodist Episcopal churches and trumped-up criminal charges were among the methods these prejudiced whites used to terrorize African Americans. News of injustices spread in abolitionist and African American newspapers.
To correct that oversight, Cox contributes a well-researched and emotionally gripping book, increasing our knowledge and understanding of the story and telling an inclusive and more accurate story about who settled the Northwest Territory. As Black history is United States history, the history of Black pioneers is pioneer history.
The Ohio River Valley was a major route for those escaping bondage, and was haunted by slave catchers. Cox is explicit in describing the brutal punishment that freedom seekers and the Underground Railroad conductors assisting them faced if caught, especially African Americans who served as conductors.
The book begins with a powerful illustration, a map showing all the settlements in the Northwest Territory with at least one African American-owned farm. It is clear from this singular image that Black
She also explains that the danger did not pass once someone crossed the Ohio River or purchased their freedom. Some free African Americans in the Northwest were kidnapped and sold into bondage.
50 Echoes | JANUARY & FEBRUARY 2021
Despite the promises to African Americans in the Northwest Ordinance, Cox found that whether Black settlers dwelled in urban or rural areas, their rights were eroded when new states wrote and rewrote their constitutions and enacted Black Codes or Black Laws that made it difficult or illegal for African Americans to vote, run for office, travel, educate their children, found churches and conduct business.
As their participation in the Underground Railroad demonstrates, African American settlers did not accept blatant discrimination. Cox shares many examples of their organizing and fighting back. While telling this broad story of regional race relations, the author ably provides insight into individual experiences. The anxiety of minister and militia leader James Wilkerson, his friends and neighbors as they hid during the hot summer night on rooftops and in alleyways to defend their families and property in the 1841 Cincinnati race war is palpable to readers. It’s evident that the violent threats to prosperous African American farm families operating a school in Portage County, Ohio, and to the white abolitionist teacher they hired and boarded in their homes were not at all idle. This insight into individual experiences was possible due to Cox's exhaustive research. Readers must review the author’s notes to appreciate the depth and breadth of the sources she consulted. She refers to the growing body of published scholarship on this topic and there are records, like the federal census, online. There were also primary sources that took time, travel and conversation with staff in rural county offices and historical societies to track down, such as a Black register that was found in a closet. Gems of information found only in the notes include a table identifying leaders of the Colored People’s Conventions held in Ohio and other states in the mid-1800s. Many books inspire readers to learn more about their topic. Author AnnaLisa Cox achieves this, but in The Bone and Sinew of the Land she also forces readers to seriously question why the story of Black pioneers is not better known. She proves it is not due to lack of written and physical evidence. —Lisa Wood, Ohio History Connection
