Deliverance Mary Fields, First African American Woman Star Route Mail Carrier in the United States


Book Description

1885-1914. Mary Fields, a fifty-three-year old second-generation slave, emancipated and residing in Toledo, receives news of her friend's impending death. Remedies packed in her satchel, Mary rushes to board the Northern Pacific. She arrives in the Montana wilderness to find Mother Mary Amadeus lying on frozen earth in a broken-down cabin. Certain that the cloister of frostbit Ursuline nuns and their students, Indian girls rescued from nearby reservations, will not survive without assistance, Mary decides to stay.She builds a hennery, makes repairs to living quarters, cares for stock, and treks into the mountains to provide food. Brushes with death do not deter her. Mary drives a horse and wagon through perilous terrain and blizzards to improve the lives of missionaries, homesteaders and Indians and, in the process, her own.After weathering wolf attacks, wagon crashes and treacherous conspiracies by scoundrels, local politicians and the state's first Catholic bishop, Mary Fields creates another daring plan. An avid patriot, she is determined to register for the vote. The price is high. Will she manifest her personal vision of independence?MCCONNELL'S RESEARCH enabled USPS to verify Mary Fields as the first African American woman star route mail carrier in the U.S. A chronicle of Fields' life in Montana from 1885 until her death in 1914, the narrative examines women rights, bootleg politics, Montana's turn-of-the-century transition from territory to state and its scandalous 1914 woman suffrage election.SHORT-LISTED 2015 LARAMIE AWARDMcConnell fashioned a historical narrative marrying prose and poetry, fact with creative writing. With the discerning eye of a photographer, the deft hand of a historian, and the literary heart of a poet, the life of Mary Fields, legendary black woman of Montana, rises off the page into living history. If the reader has any interest in Mary Fields, aka Stagecoach Mary, Deliverance is the one book you must read.--Cowboy Mike Searles, Author, Professor of History, Augusta University, GA.A great story and history of Mary Fields, an important back westerner. A must read for youths and adults. --Bruce A. Glasrud, Author, Professor, California State University.




Mary Fields (Black Mary)


Book Description




The Story of Stagecoach Mary Fields


Book Description

Recounts the life of the first African American woman to carry the United States mail




Mary Fields Aka Stagecoach Mary


Book Description

This is the story of Mary Fields, 'Stagecoach Mary', who got her nickname at the turn of the 20th Century. She earned this nickname by working for the United States Postal System delivering the United States Mail through adverse conditions that would have discouraged the most hardened frontiersmen of that period. All by herself, she never missed a day for 8 years, carrying the U. S. Mail and other important documents that helped settle the wild open territory of central west Montana. Mary had no fear of man, nor beast, and this sometimes got her into trouble. She delivered the mail regardless of the heat of the day, cold of night, wind, rain, sleet, snow, blizzards, Indians and Outlaws. Mary was 6 feet tall, and weighed over 200 pounds, and even with 'those' extraordinary extremes, there were two more facts that made 'her' history. Mary was the second woman in 'history' to carry the U. S. Mail, however, even that was a matter of simplicity, for a fact, she was a Negro Woman, and the only 'Negro', for hundreds and hundreds of miles when she first arrived in Montana. This feature story covers Mary's colorful life, from the plantation where she was born a slave in 1832, to the famous Steamboat race between the "Robert E. Lee" and the "Natchez" on the Mississippi River, to her death in Cascade, Montana, 1914. Erich Hicks, founder of Alpha Wolf Productions Inc., is an acclaimed Special Effects Coordinator, Producer and Writer, with over 20 years of experience in the entertainment industry. The company is an independent production outlet that develops, writes, and produces feature film and television content. Historically, Erich is the first African-American/Black to receive a Special Effects Pyrotechnic Operator's 1st class Master's License in the Motion Picture Industry. Thus, he is expertly qualified to produce and direct action sequences, stunts and explosions to achieve a realistic scene. As a writer, Erich's first novel, Rescue at Pine Ridge, released in December 2008. The novel is a historical narrative, depicting the all-Black 9th Calvary. Known as the US military's famed 'Buffalo Soldiers', which helped settle the American West in the late 1800's. Erich has completed an accompanying screenplay for a TV mini-series, Trilogy, and Epic Feature, and has garnered support from some of HOLLYWOOD'S acclaimed Industry Producers/Directors/and Actors. Dedicated to exploring the history of African-Americans/Blacks and shattering stereotypes, his Alpha Wolf Productions, Inc. has also developed a feature film documentary, Soul on a Wave which exposes the life and times of surfers of color. Please visit the webpage for more information at: alphawolfprods.com and for a comprehensive resume at imdb.com/name/nm0902436 keywords: Mary Fields, Mail, African American, Black History, Montana, Stagecoach, Outlaws, Cowboys, Postal System, Historical, 1914, 1832"




African American Women of the Old West


Book Description

The brave pioneers who made a life on the frontier were not only male—and they were not only white. The story of African-American women in the Old West is one that has largely gone untold--until now. The story of ten African-American women is reconstructed from historic documents found in century-old archives. The ten remarkable women in African American Women of the Old West were all born before 1900, some were slaves, some were free, and some lived both ways during their lifetime. Among them were laundresses, freedom advocates, journalists, educators, midwives, business proprietors, religious converts, philanthropists, mail and freight haulers, and civil and social activists.




Mary Wells


Book Description

Although Mary Wells stands on its own, its precursor, James Wells of Montana, sets the stage for Mary's story. Mary's story takes place from 1878 to 1937 starting on the plains of the Montana territory to the Pacific coast of California and brings alive the history of that dynamic time.




Black Picket Fences


Book Description

First published in 1999, Mary Pattillo’s Black Picket Fences explores an American demographic group too often ignored by both scholars and the media: the black middle class. Nearly fifteen years later, this book remains a groundbreaking study of a group still underrepresented in the academic and public spheres. The result of living for three years in “Groveland,” a black middle-class neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, Black Picket Fences explored both the advantages the black middle class has and the boundaries they still face. Despite arguments that race no longer matters, Pattillo showed a different reality, one where black and white middle classes remain separate and unequal. Stark, moving, and still timely, the book is updated for this edition with a new epilogue by the author that details how the neighborhood and its residents fared in the recession of 2008, as well as new interviews with many of the same neighborhood residents featured in the original. Also included is a new foreword by acclaimed University of Pennsylvania sociologist Annette Lareau.




Raising Freedom's Child


Book Description

This work examines slave emancipation and opposition to it as a far-reaching, national event with profound social, political, and cultural consequences. The author analyzes multiple views of the African American child to demonstrate how Americans contested and defended slavery and its abolition.




The History of Mary Prince


Book Description

Prince — a slave in the British colonies — vividly recalls her life in the West Indies, her rebellion against physical and psychological degradation, and her eventual escape in 1828 in England.




Portraits of Women in the American West


Book Description

Men are usually the heroes of Western stories, but women also played a crucial role in developing the American frontier, and their stories have rarely been told. This anthology of biographical essays on women promises new insight into gender in the 19C American West. The women featured include Asian Americans, African-Americans and Native American women, as well as their white counterparts. The original essays offer observations about gender and sexual violence, the subordinate status of women of color, their perseverance and influence in changing that status, a look at the gendered religious legacy that shaped Western Catholicism, and women in the urban and rural, industrial and agricultural West.