The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 107, July 2003 - April, 2004 Page: 629

                                
Book Reviews

only Confederate state where the majority was secession-minded, a view that
harkens back to a slave power conspiracy. Yet the author explains that support
among blacks for secession was minimal and that each state had numerous white
Unionists; it makes a difference if black Southerners are indeed counted as such.
Kolchin also enters the Confederate flag controversy and rightly reminds his
readers that the controversy is a new one, spawned circa 1948 to the 1960s by
racial bigots who were fighting tooth-and-nail against school integration and
generally against any civil rights for African Americans. For example, the Con-
federate flag did not find its way to the top of the South Carolina Capitol until
1962. Apparently, until the modern era, Dixie's whites did not need such flags
to uphold their "heritage" and "tradition" (p. 71). Further, what most people be-
lieve is the Confederate flag was only one of many Confederate flags. It was only
after the war that the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia became the
Confederate flag.
About tradition and heritage, Kolchin also wonders why many white South-
erners do not appreciate the gains of Reconstruction and the gains of the mod-
ern civil rights movement. He wonders why most Mississippians do not celebrate
that their state produced the nation's first black senator, Hiram Revels, or why
Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox is not celebrated as the "liberation"
(p. 71) of the South.
Specifically, Kolchin addresses the Lone Star State, most especially as to
whether Texas is still a Southern state, holding that since about 1930 Texas
evolved away from the South, a highly questionable view. In reality, the Lone
Star State is somewhat like Oklahoma, a transitional land. With Interstate 35 as a
rough marker, everything east is South; everything west is Southwest.
Kolchin has produced a valuable set of essays with this effort. Further, he
demonstrates masterful command of the historiography of his subject, which
makes the book even more valuable. Historians of Texas and the wider South
will want to consider this volume.
Oklahoma State University                           James M. Smallwood
African-Amencan Women Confront the West, z6oo-2ooo. Edited by Quintard Taylor
and Shirley Ann Wilson Moore. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
2003. Pp. x+390. Acknowledgments, photographs, notes, selected bibliogra-
phy, contributors, index. ISBN 0-8061-3524-7. $34.95, cloth.)
In 1944 sociologist Gunnar Myrdal proclaimed that African Americans played
no part in settling the West. Traditionally, images of white males have dominat-
ed the narratives on the development of the western United States; yet, in recent
years, scholars have accepted the importance of the role of women. Thus,
African-American Women Confront the West is a well-compiled collection of histori-
cal writings about pioneers who transformed the region. Despite the broad spec-
trum of both time and geography, the book's theme remains constant: in the
midst of the duality of racism and gender discrimination, African American
women played an important, if typically overlooked, role in the development of
society and culture in the American West.

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