The Color of the Land: Race, Nation, and the Politics of Landownership in Oklahoma, 1832-1929

by David A. Chang

"The Color of the Land" brings the histories of Creek Indians, African Americans, and whites in Oklahoma together into one story that explores the way races and nations were made and remade in conflicts over who would own land, who would farm it, and who would rule it. This story disrupts expected narratives of the American past, revealing how identities--race, nation, and class--took new forms in struggles over the creation of different systems of property.
Conflicts were unleashed by a series of sweeping changes: the forced "removal" of the Creeks from their homeland to Oklahoma in the 1830s, the transformation of the Creeks' enslaved black population into landed black Creek citizens after the Civil War, the imposition of statehood and private landownership at the turn of the twentieth century, and the entrenchment of a sharecropping economy and white supremacy in the following decades. In struggles over land, wealth, and power, Oklahomans actively defined and redefined what it meant to be Native American, African American, or white. By telling this story, David Chang contributes to the history of racial construction and nationalism as well as to southern, western, and Native American history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Indigenous, Native Americans, Native American

307 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2010

Reviews

[Hollis]

This is one of the better academic histories I've read. The chapter-to-chapter narrative is pretty engrossing and the clear writing helps to make the vast amount of information much easier to comprehend and follow. I love the scope of Chang's archive, quoting from periods journals both large and small as well as individuals both widely heard at the time and 'normal' individuals both of the period and related to subjects described within. The book acts both as a history of Creek Removal to Indian Territory as well as the early statehood of Oklahoma. It follows both the federal law changes of the United States as well as the remaking of Creek governance. It deftly handles the shifting concepts of race and ethnicity as the terms relate to Native Americans, African Americans, and White Americans. I feel as if each chapter represented a brief book's worth of information, citations, and topics delved into. It's an incredibly dense, yet remarkably easy to read text. My only complaint, if there would be one, is that the final three chapters, which purport to separately handle the impacts of statehood on Natives, Blacks, and whites, are actually all invested in the three groups all the way through. Some might call this a misalignment of information-by-chapter, but, to me, it speaks to how difficult it is to do strong research without discussing issues that seem to escape the various scopes of your project. Chang's book reads as a challenge to anybody who seeks to do justice to their research, because this is how it's done.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

What distinguishes David Chang's work on this subject from some others is his willingness to look at the changing relationship between Black and other Creek Indians over the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Without that dynamic chronological approach it is too easy to see the divisions of race in Indian Territory in a one-sided way. He reveals all kinds of complexities.

[Coyote Longfall · Rating 5 out of 5]

This work is essential to understanding the complex race relations of this transformative period in Oklahoma history. I found it a key resource for primary sources, and Chang's analysis opened up new insights on race and property in the Southwest in my own research for my undergraduate thesis. THANK YOU.

[J.K. Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very informative if your into this thing!