Among the Creeks, they were known as Estelvste—black people—and they had lived among them since the days of the first Spanish entradas. They spoke the same language as the Creeks, ate the same foods,
In 1981, decades before mainstream America elected Barack Obama, James Chase became the first African American mayor of Spokane, Washington, with the overwhelming support of a majority-white electorat
As historian D. Michael Bottoms shows in An Aristocracy of Color, many white Californians saw Reconstruction legislation a threat to the fragile racial hierarchy they had imposed on the state’s legal
