A Second Look: The Bone and Sinew of the Land: America’s Forgotten Black Pioneers and the Struggle for Equality

The Bone and Sinew of the Land depicts the Northwest Territory as a place where African Americans “integrat[ed] America’s first free frontier.” Historian Anna-Lisa Cox asserts that what she calls the Great West—Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin—has a hidden, albeit brief, history as a site of equality and freedom for Black pioneers (xvii). This engaging book provides a brief introduction and an innovative approach to studying antebellum African Americans, their lives, and their activism in these increasingly hostile states. Cox is a non-resident Fellow at Harvard University\u27s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, and the author of A Stronger Kinship: One Town\u27s Extraordinary Story of Hope and Faith (Lincoln: Bison Books, 2007), a history of the interracial community of Covert, Michigan. The Bone and Sinew of the Land both grows out of Cox’s earlier work and contributes to the expanding field of studies of northern Black activism