Race and the Wild West with Laura Arata

The Extreme History Project: The Dirt on the Past

Join us as we talk with Dr. Laura Arata about her book, Race and the Wild West: Sarah Bickford, The Montana Vigilantes, and the Tourism of Decline, 1870-1930. We discuss the life of Sarah Bickford, a black woman who grew up enslaved in Tennessee and then traveled to Montana Territory after she was emancipated. Sarah settled in the gold rush town of Virginia City where she lived out the rest of her life. She married twice, both times to white men. When her second husband died, she inherited his shares of the Virginia City Water Company and eventually acquired sole ownership, which she ran until her death in 1931. In addition to Sarah, we discuss Mattie Castner and Mary Fields, two black women who grew up enslaved but moved to Montana in the late 19th century and made lives for themselves in Montana.