Alaina E. Roberts

I've Been Here All the While by Alaina E Roberts looks at the little known history of First Nations Americans and enslaved Black people they owned during and after Reconstruction. Using secondary sources as well as stories from her own family, she shows the waves of movement westward and how it affected both those who headed west whether forced or voluntary and how it affected both them and those dispossessed from the land including the forced movement of slave-owning tribes and the dispossession of other tribes, the impact of Reconstruction on both and how it offered a chance for Black freedmen to gain land and escape Jim Crow until Oklahoma gained statehood.

This is fairly short but very well-documented and important book about a a part of American history that deserves to be better known. But despite its length, Roberts avoids easy judgments but shows the complexity of the issue and how it affected not only the people in the time period but their descendants.

Thanks to Netgalley and University of Pennsylvania Press for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review… (plus d'informations)