WOMEN AND MINORITIES ON THE PLAINS
As stated previously, most settlers came to the plains as families (there were a tiny number of women who filed for land claims on their own). Diaries of many women who lived on the plains spoke of the loneliness of their existence, especially in the non-harvest periods when many men left for other work and women were left on the farms. Perhaps the greatest novel describing prairie life is O Pioneers! (1913) by Willa Gather. This book describes both the tremendous challenges and the incredible rewards found in life on the prairie. An equally compelling vision of prairie life is Giants of the Earth (1927) by O. E. Rolvaag. In this novel the harshness of prairie life drives the wife of an immigrant settler to madness and to eventual death.
It was in the Western states where the first American women received the vote. In 1887 two towns in Kansas gave women the vote (with one of them electing a woman mayor to a single term in office). The state constitution of Wyoming was the first to give women the vote on a statewide basis.
Thousands of blacks moved west after the Civil War to escape the uncertainty of life in the Reconstruction South. Many who ended in the plains and elsewhere lacked the finances and farming abilities to be successful, and faced many of the same racial difficulties they had faced in the American South. However, some black farmers did emerge successfully as plains farmers. The most prominent group of Southern blacks who went west was a 1879 group who called themselves the Exodusters (modeling their journey after the journey of the Israelites fleeing Egypt to the Promised Land). Less than 20 percent of this group became successful farmers in the plains region.
As stated previously, most settlers came to the plains as families (there were a tiny number of women who filed for land claims on their own). Diaries of many women who lived on the plains spoke of the loneliness of their existence, especially in the non-harvest periods when many men left for other work and women were left on the farms. Perhaps the greatest novel describing prairie life is O Pioneers! (1913) by Willa Gather. This book describes both the tremendous challenges and the incredible rewards found in life on the prairie. An equally compelling vision of prairie life is Giants of the Earth (1927) by O. E. Rolvaag. In this novel the harshness of prairie life drives the wife of an immigrant settler to madness and to eventual death.
It was in the Western states where the first American women received the vote. In 1887 two towns in Kansas gave women the vote (with one of them electing a woman mayor to a single term in office). The state constitution of Wyoming was the first to give women the vote on a statewide basis.
Thousands of blacks moved west after the Civil War to escape the uncertainty of life in the Reconstruction South. Many who ended in the plains and elsewhere lacked the finances and farming abilities to be successful, and faced many of the same racial difficulties they had faced in the American South. However, some black farmers did emerge successfully as plains farmers. The most prominent group of Southern blacks who went west was a 1879 group who called themselves the Exodusters (modeling their journey after the journey of the Israelites fleeing Egypt to the Promised Land). Less than 20 percent of this group became successful farmers in the plains region.
