This program is funded in part by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, The Greater Montana Foundation, Humanities Montana and the Montana Cultural Trust.

[reflective piano music plays] ♪ - Montana was not the south and the South was a place of very painful memories and histories for African Americans.

- At the end of the Civil War, for many of the 4 million Freedpeople living in the South, the Montana Territory seemed beyond their reach.

Thousands of miles of rivers, mountains and plains were between the northern Rockies and what was then the United States.

Montana offered opportunities for Black men and women who were willing to make the journey.

- He had the weight of the world on his shoulders as a soldier, the balance of freedom and liberty on his shoulders, the wrongs of slavery on his shoulders, managed to survive the Civil War, the Indian Wars.

He had to be tough.

What Black people needed in the 1860s and then in the 1870s was a fresh start.

They needed a start in a place that didn't hold those same memories and hold those same histories of degradation, subjugation and violation and Montana was a place like that.

- Though generations of Black families lived in the West, many of their stories have been lost over the decades.

Historians and descendants now work to reveal the hidden stories, characters, places, and events of Montana's black past.

A past that has often been nearly invisible and misunderstood.

- And I was the only Black child.

And of course, they had to come out with the n-word, get it out of their system, and so I really kind of resented going to school at the first week.

Everybody had to get it out of their system.

Okay, here she is, and you're going to have to accept her as she is.

But I've always been kind of outgoing and outspoken.

And I survived.

- Like they looked at us like, well, you are a credit to your race.

And I always hated that, but they always kind of made you feel like that.

We we love our Janet.

You know, on the other hand, I always felt that people never really understood.

You know, they never really understood.

Montana is Black at the roots, and it's been Black across space and time in critical ways and the definitive stories of Montana are black history.

- It's easy to guess that York was the first African American to step foot in what would become Montana.

He arrived in 1805 as a member of the Corps of Discovery, and as an enslaved person to William Clark.

Through the first half of the 19th century, there were very few Black Americans living in the Montana area.

Mountain men like Edward Rose and James Beckwourth worked as trappers and scouts during the height of the fur trade in the northern Rocky Mountains, but it wasn't until the discovery of gold in the 1850s that many more people arrived.

Over the next decade, an invasion of miners seeking their personal fortunes took hold of the Montana Territory.

An early history account recalls that a Black man was one of four men who discovered gold deposits near Helena in 1864.

While the Civil War continued in the east, the Gold Rush pitted settlers against Native American nations over the land they lived on for generations.

War raged on both fronts.

The Civil War erupted in 1861, and in 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation allowed for free Black men to enroll in the Union Army for the first time.

Serving in the military created an opportunity to gain skills, resources, and pride.

However, the Army treated Black soldiers poorly compared to their White counterparts.

They received lower wages, harsher punishments, and relatively poor medical treatment.

They could not rise highly in the ranks and often were assigned menial tasks such as digging trenches and burying bodies.

Nonetheless, nearly 200,000 Black soldiers fought for the Union during the Civil War.

- The majority of African Americans were enslaved prior to the Civil War, which meant that Black people lived in a state of forced and legalized subjugation.

In this state, Black men were not afforded the opportunity to understand themselves, to be citizens in the way that White men did and could.

And because of this, Black men experienced a deep sense of pain in their own families.

They felt pain around their inability to care for and to protect their wives, their children, and they felt pain around their inability to economically support their families.

Being able to serve in the U.S. military was the opposite of all of that.

For Black men, it meant that they could have gainful employment, that they could wear a uniform and be respected for someone in that uniform.

- As the Civil War reached an end in the mid 1860s, millions of formerly enslaved people found themselves in a strange new conflict.

They were free, but had very few resources.

In the spring of 1865, an 11 year old enslaved child named Clarissa Powell boarded a steamboat heading west.

She began the journey to Montana Territory as human property, but the end of the war meant that when she arrived near Fort Benton in May 1865, she was free.

Clarissa found herself in an unfamiliar place and in a new era of freedom.

As the U.S. entered the post-war era the nation remained divided about the newly freed Black population's future in the country.

- Republicans were in support of black advancement, Democrats were not at that time.

And there was quite a lot of tension and conflict at the federal level around what the course of the future would be.

But the Republicans had the majority, and they were able during the period of reconstruction to get a hold of some of the levers of power in the South to open opportunity for Black people.

And in this period, right after the Civil War there were a Black men who were elected to southern state legislatures, there were educational opportunities that opened up for Black people.

It seemed as if the South really could become a different kind of place.

But this was not the vision for all lawmakers at the federal level and certainly not at the state level.

[melancholy gospel music plays] - Despite the promises of Reconstruction, many Black Americans worked doing the same jobs, on the same land, with the same cruelties from white landowners.

The Ku Klux Klan rose in the South and deadly intimidation tactics made life unbearable for many formerly enslaved people.

- When they finally did have their freedom, they were a people without many resources, they didn't have educational resources, they didn't have economic resources.

And so, they were looking into the future with a sense of hope and a sense of gratitude that this was now going to be a new chapter in their collective lives, but also with worry, because they didn't have what they needed to actually build strong lives and to build bright futures.

- Montana Territory offered opportunities, but the northern Rocky Mountains were thousands of miles away.

Railroads did not yet reach the Northwest.

Steamboat travel up the Missouri River was expensive.

Wagon travel was dangerous.

The journey was long and hard.

Still, for a chance at a fresh start and more secure life, many Black Americans left the states and worked their way west as wagon masters, cowboys, nannies, servants, cooks, soldiers, and steamboat crewmen.

Black Civil War veterans John Anderson, John Dyser, and James Crump arrived together in the mining boom-town and territorial capital of Virginia City in 1865.

Fresh off their military service, each man was determined to make a new life in the West.

- James Crump ended up the youngest Civil War veteran in Montana.

He joined the Union Army, and was 14 years old and they discovered his age and he talked them into letting him serve a term.

He was a drummer.

He came to Montana very early with the gold rush.

Did well for himself, he did some mining.

He did a lot of different things.

- African Americans who traveled westward in the mid to late 1800s did find new economic opportunities, they found various sectors open to them.

They found that they could start their own businesses and become entrepreneurs.

They found that they could acquire land and build homes, and they found that they could to a great extent protect the safety of their families.

But, the west was not a wholly positive place for African Americans who lived there.

There was still racial discrimination.

- While undercurrents of racism existed, progress was made politically to advance the rights of Black men as the nation encouraged westward expansion.

The U.S. Congress passed the Territorial Suffrage Act, which granted the vote to Black men in the west.

And this was incredibly significant, because it meant that Black men in the west, formally, were able to vote before Black men in other parts of the country.

The 15th Amendment had not been ratified yet.

This meant that Black men in the west had an advanced political standing, which affected not only them, but also their families and their sense of access and their sense of belonging and pride in their communities.

Black men in Montana took advantage of this new legal right.

And they rushed to make their voices heard by voting in Helena in the 1867 territorial elections.

This was an incredible moment, but it wasn't a moment free of tension or racial conflict.

- Intimidation turned deadly as an angry mob murdered Black Helena resident Samuel Hayes during a post-election riot.

When Samuel Hayes went to cast his vote, he was met with a white mob largely of Irish democratic men who sought to kind of bar him from entrance and in the fray, he was killed.

It's also significant to note that the sheriff then arrested the man that killed Samuel Hayes, but had, according to local newspaper reports, a very difficult time actually bringing him in through the mob.

There was significant pushback and resisting the Sheriff's official actions in arresting Samuel Hayes' killer.

- Despite the terror, Black Montanans and communities continued to grow and pursue personal sovereignty and stability.

While working as a freighter, James Crump met teenaged Clarissa Powell in 1869.

She had traveled from the banks of the Missouri to Sheridan, just outside Virginia City.

The two grew close, and in 1869, the 23 year-old James and the 16 year-old Clarissa married.

For many like the Crumps, Montana offered a chance at a new life, and in 1870, Clarissa and James welcomed their first daughter, Emma.

She was one of the first second generation Black Montanans.

James had a handful of mining claims in central Montana, but the young family settled in the boom-town of Helena.

As elsewhere in the United States, Montana law prohibited its Black citizenry from participating equally in the judicial system.

Black Americans, including the Crumps, were not allowed to serve on juries, and could not testify against whites.

As time wore on, additional restrictions and indignities became law.

- During the reconstruction era, prior to 1871, there were no laws on the books in Montana that mandated the segregation of schools based on race.

However, that year the territorial legislature passed its kind of infamous Article 34 of the education statutes, which declared that if any school reaches the more than than ten children, as they said of African descent, that it was then mandated that they have a separate school provided for those students.

So, essentially was an attempt to mandate racial segregation in schools, in the cities.

Within this discriminatory atmosphere, the growing Helena community listed 71 Black Americans as residents in the 1870 census.

While this represented only two percent of Helena's overall population, the community was turning into a hub for Black Americans.

- Helena, at the time, has several thousand people.

It's a very busy place.

It becomes the territorial capital in 1875.

It's a place for a lot of people of great economic opportunity.

And it's a very busy, active mining camp.

- Other Black communities thrived in major towns of Montana, like Missoula, Anaconda, Butte, Great Falls, and Miles City.

Black Montanans united behind politicians and causes.

Though the Civil Rights Act of 1875 affirmed the equality of all men before the law and prohibited racial discrimination in public places, prejudice, racism, and bigotry still existed.

[somber gospel music plays] ♪ Just a decade after the end of the Civil War, Reconstruction collapsed in the south.

A new, deadly Jim Crow era of segregation and intimidation descended on the country.

- A lot of African American historians, consider sort of the nadir of African American history, the darkest time for Black people.

And in a lot of ways, what happens in Montana is similar.

It's a national phenomenon, this sort of regression in whatever progress we had made for rights and equality for the Black community.

As a White southern elite and former enslavers regained power in the South and were able to enforce Black subjugation and as organized violence against Black people grew in the South, African Americans were looking for any way they could find to get out.

♪ - This new era of violence made the distant Montana Territory even more attractive to Black Americans.

The remote environment arguably was better than elsewhere in the U.S., and glimpses of progress out West were unfolding.

In 1881, Army veteran William Woodcock successfully sued the proprietors of a restaurant in Butte, called the Chop House, for denying him service because of his color.

Woodcock won the court battle.

In some ways, Montana became a place of "new hope."

- By 1877, the financial cost of operating a separate school for a very small number of Black students was so high that the community voted to reject racial segregation.

By 1885, the legislature stopped requiring schools to report the race of children.

- While schools desegregated in Montana, segregation intensified in the South and more Black families moved away.

Some made their journey west through the military.

[drum cadence playing] - Black soldiers made up 20% of the army in the West and most of them were sent to the Southwest and to the West to serve there.

Away from urban centers, away from political scrutiny.

- And some of their major jobs were stagecoach protectors for males, for settlers that were coming through to the West.

They also were some of the first men to build the first railroads, the first telegraphs.

- And we're talking about the same people or one generation beyond the people who had been subject to the weapons of White enslavers.

Now they were being authorized to carry weapons by the U.S. government.

This was such an important transformation in the experience, the identity, the sense of self and the pride of Black men.

And it was a pride that entire Black families and communities also got to experience when they saw their men wearing those uniforms, carrying those arms, and marching down the streets.

It was the recognition that comes from a government saying, we put our trust and our faith in you.

Many of the African American men who first came to Montana did so as members of the U.S. military, they were soldiers, they're often referred to as Buffalo Soldiers.

- Beginning in the late 1880s, the 9th and 10th Cavalries in the 24th and 25th Infantries gradually redeployed north to the Dakotas and the Montana Territory.

Over the next decade Forts Shaw, Maginnis, Custer, Keogh, Assiniboine, Harrison and Missoula became temporary homes for the Buffalo Soldiers.

- African Americans today still feel tremendous pride about the history of the Buffalo Soldiers and what they did.

And yet, it is a complex history in which Black men were being assigned to do some of the work of the policing of Native American reservations, which the entire U.S. military was engaged in.

And so, there was a trade off of sorts, Black men did gain salary, they did gain respect, they gained a sense of citizenship from their role in the US military, but they also became a part of a federal colonizing force, which took away these things from Native Americans.

- The late 1800's proved a tumultuous time for the Montana territory as new entrepreneurs, ranchers, and miners moved in to settle the wild country.

The Sioux defeated Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn and Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce won a battle in the Big Hole Basin.

But, the United States military went on to extinguish nearly all native defenses as mining operations and settlement of the West decimated native homelands and cultural ties.

In the 1880's, railroads crossed Montana and connected the coasts, making travel and trade more convenient.

The territory became an official state in 1889.

And the discovery of silver and copper turned Butte into the second largest city west of Chicago.

In some ways, Montana was a center of wealth and growth in the U.S.

Opportunities abounded for those who wanted out of the Jim Crow South and other discrimination-laden places in the East.

While more Black Americans moved to the Northern Rockies, Montana's overall population - and families like the Crumps - grew as well.

- And so they settled there by 1879, and they have a house somewhere in town.

He starts working as a janitor for the First National Bank of Helena, and then in 1888, they have accumulated enough money to buy property there.

And they buy lots on the corner of Ninth and North Idaho, and there they build their home.

This becomes the family base for over 100 years, and it becomes a center for the Black community.

And they remain there for the rest of their lives.

And so they really attained one of the most crucial things that the Black community was looking for, at this time, stability and a place to keep your family together.

- Nationally, the 1896 Plessy versus Ferguson decision established the "separate but equal" doctrine, confirming the legality of segregation in the U.S.

Despite the discriminatory laws, Black communities grew in Montana because often, it was still better than living elsewhere in the nation.

Butte, Anaconda, and Great Falls served as industrial centers.

As mining, smelting, and timber industries grew more corporate in nature, Discriminatory hiring practices blocked non-white workers from jobs that paid the "family wage."

The pressures of unfair hiring practices took their toll.

Black Montanans like James and Clarissa Crump of Helena sought to create opportunities for mutual support within their communities.

James became a founding member of the Manhattan Club, the Afro-American Pioneer Society, and a member in the Grand Army of the Republic, the Civil War Veterans organization.

He was widely considered by White and Black citizens as an elder statesman of the community.

Meanwhile, Clarissa and Black women across the state nurtured social and cultural life and offered support through women's literary clubs and church groups.

By the turn of the 20th century, Black communities in Montana's larger cities had populations large enough to support Black churches, Baptist and African Methodist Episcopal churches in particular.

The Crumps were founding members of the St. James AME Church not far from their home.

- Also in terms of institutions or organizations, the church is really the foundational organization, both for James and Clarissa in their lives, but also for the Black community as a whole.

It becomes a space that nurtures pretty much every other Black organization and is a space where they can find the support, the respect, and the community, really, that they need.

- African American women through their women's church groups and clubs, are the backbone of the community.

There were Black churches in every major city in Montana and every one of those black churches had an African American women's church group that was doing this community service.

- When I walk in there today, you know, I walk in there and maybe it's an empty church and I look around and I hear the voice of these of these people, and I smile and remember all these times and it's just like, I always go, boy if that church could talk, you know, and the history that's there, the lives that the people that have come to God through there.

And it's a beautiful thing, and everybody should have a church like that, a community like that.

- Seven communities in Montana boasted AME Churches, Helena, Great Falls, Butte, Missoula, Billings, Anaconda, and Havre.

Half of these supported communities where a nearby military installation had housed all Black regiments.

Meanwhile, problems halfway around the world had a lasting impact on the state through the military service of its soldiers.

During these years, all four Black army regiments deployed to the harsh conditions of Cuba and then the Philippines as the U.S. exerted its imperial influence into the South Pacific.

Both the unimaginable conditions of fighting and the blatantly imperial nature of the conflict would prove to shape the history of Montana in noticeable ways.

For Black soldiers generally, Even those who steadfastly maintained their pride in their military career, many returned home from the first campaign, wary of a war and often questioning a country that required of them such great sacrifices without fully making a commitment to their own civil liberties.

- Samuel Bridgwater was born in Tennessee in 1861 so he was born before the Emancipation.

He was a career military man.

He joined the Buffalo Soldiers and served in Utah and Texas and Arizona.

Mamie, was born also in Tennessee.

We know that Mamie traveled to Arizona to Fort Huachuca to get married.

She must have traveled by herself, which was quite an adventure for a single woman a single Black woman.

- Private Bridgwater served at the famous Battle of San Juan Hill on the island of Cuba during the Spanish American War.

- And at the beginning of the battle, he was wounded in the chest.

And it must have been a pretty serious wound because he was sent back to the states to recover.

And then apparently came back to the the war and served in the Philippines.

While he was in the Philippines, we can find him in a military hospital for about four months...

Many of the men suffered terrible bouts of yellow fever and did for the rest of their lives.

And so after the war was over, his unit was sent to Fort Harrison and that's how he came to Montana.

- This beautifully written work that grandma Bridgwater leaves us about when the men come back from that war.

It's something to the effect of, it was the happiest, sad day she'd ever seen.

Because these men come back, but they come back broken.

A lot of them were badly wounded by this thing physically and of course war, what you get out of that psychologically.

[gentle piano music plays] - Many military families arrived in Montana with their husbands, sons, or fathers.

Mamie Bridgwater followed her husband with two children in tow, and moved to Fort Harrison near Helena.

They had more children, including daughter Octavia in 1905.

Her youth in Helena came at an exciting time for Black Montanans around the state and in the capital city especially.

The number of Black residents in Helena was at its highest number ever, 425.

Near the Crump home on 9th Avenue, Dorsey's Grocery opened its doors in 1904, one of the most successful Black family-owned business in the city.

Mamie Bridgwater and Clarissa Crump formed a fast friendship and ushered in a new era of Black Montana.

- I think she and Mamie were of the same ilk, really.

The two of them were founders of the Pleasant Hour Club.

I know that Clarissa was always very active in that club.

She she hosted meetings in her yard, and really she opened her home to all manner of extended family, and was a very, very nurturing, wonderful person.

- By 1910, efforts to foster a welcoming and rewarding social life for Black women helped strengthen Black communities across the state.

And Montana's African American population hit its peak.

In communities like Missoula, Great Falls, Havre, and in Helena's newer west side developments, quite a few retiring soldiers and their families built, bought, or rented modest homes.

For a short time, Black newspapers provided information at the national and local level; the Colored Citizen, The New Age, and the Plaindealer, all reported on the events and issues of the day.

Those events and issues often dealt with the discrimination, violence, and unfair laws present nationally and Montana succumbed to Jim Crow philosophies.

New restrictions on civil liberties took hold.

Some, like a ban on Black fraternal members from displaying their insignia in public, were humiliating.

Others, like a new law that banned interracial marriage, struck at the very foundations of many Black communities in the region.

- There was an incident reported in the early 1900s in a newspaper, where a White man had married a Black woman and a mob came to their home, captured them, put them in a wagon, painted him with black tar and painted her with white paint, and then threatened them that if they didn't leave town within 24 hours, their lives would be in danger.

Here's this terrifying incident, which I would call domestic terrorism, racist terrorism, and that's happening here in Montana.

Sorry, folks.

We weren't, you know, the open hearted West where everybody was equal.

I wish it were so, it wasn't.

- We know that there were opportunities denied, just based upon color.

We know that people were treated differently, just based upon color.

And looking back at the courage they must have had just to live their daily life, it's incredible to think that they worked so hard.

- Montana, cannot escape national trends that are underway.

In 1907, a Montana state senator by the name of Muffley introduces an anti-miscegenation law, that is a law that prohibits interracial marriages.

He doesn't succeed in 1907, but two years later in 1909 after considerable debate the law is passed.

It becomes part of Montana's legal system and then remains on the books until 1953.

Again, that's not unique to Montana.

I think it's an indication that Montana is caught up in many of the racial attitudes and many of the fears that arose in America in the early 20th century.

These fears about these new immigrants coming into the country who didn't fit the traditional mold.

- The legislation and racist policies immediately proved impactful and produced catastrophic effects.

Social and economic restrictions took their toll and young second generation Black Montanans had to decide whether or not to stay.

In 1915, the controversial and racist silent movie, Birth of a Nation, when public, promoted white supremacy and created an even deeper divide between White and Black Americans.

The Ku Klux Klan rose again and increased its deadly intimidation tactics.

In the face of these injustices, Black children held tight to the stability resting on their parents' shoulders.

Their childhood was secured in large part through the churches, organizations, and social clubs founded by their parents.

Women's clubs across the state began to organize more formally.

- There was the Martha Washington Club, which was in Missoula.

There was the Phyllis Wheatley Club, in Billings.

There was the Pearl Club in Butte.

And there were 15 of these clubs, eventually.

These little clubs, you know, really became very important.

They sort of congregated in 1921, and formed the Montana Federation of Colored Women's Clubs, which became a very important organization across the state.

When they formed this larger club across the state, you know, their motto was "Lifting as We Climb," which is such a beautiful idea and, you know, their aim really was to uplift the next generation.

[gospel music plays] ♪ When the storms of life ♪ are raging, ♪ And the waters start to rise, ♪ You won't see me worry ♪ And you'll never hear me cry.

♪♪ - Black women's organization of clubs that focused on edification and community uplift were uniquely oriented around African American needs and values.

At the same time, Black women's clubs paralleled a larger national club movement that was also going on and being organized by White women during the progressive era.

And in Western states and in Montana, Black women also founded clubs, in which they did all kinds of things.

They tried to improve their own educations by reading together, they tried to organize programs for children, they worked on sewing projects, they worked on community mutual aid programs.

- They live in a society that degrades and disrespects them at every turn.

And so to have a space where you can thrive, be respected, be supported, be nurtured, be seen as a whole human being, show your leadership abilities, show your ability to debate politics, and to grow in those ways.

And a space to do work.

Concrete work that will improve your children's lives, that will improve your life and your community life.

When the entire society around you is sort of aligned against you and designed to undermine you, that's autonomous space, becomes the critical sort of foundation of success.

It's hard to overstate in a lot of ways that the importance of community in Black life, in this period.

- Many second generation Black Montanans benefited from the previous generations' work to establish strong community ties.

Mamie Bridgwater's daughter Octavia graduated from Helena High in 1925 with these ties evident.

- She was very, very intelligent.

She went on to go to the Lincoln School of Nursing in New York City, which was one of two nursing schools for Black women.

And at that time there was no integration in the medical field.

She was really unemployable here in Helena, except for doing private duty nursing.

So when she got out of school and came back to her home, she did private duty nursing.

- Upon her return to Montana, Octavia continued her nursing career and began to take on a leadership role in the Pleasant Hour Club amid the maelstrom of the 1920s and 1930s.

Communities felt the full force of Montana's post-World War I downturn.

The state suffered severe drought and bank failures and economic depression took hold a full decade before the Great Depression hit the rest of the country.

Black communities felt the effects keenly, as jobs grew increasingly scarce and they were barred from certain social freedoms and work opportunities.

- As industry arises in Montana, especially with industrial mining and the smelters, African Americans are often frozen out of those jobs.

Sadly, most of the unions in Montana in the late 19th and early 20th century prohibited Blacks from joining, and thus, you don't see Black underground miners in the mines of Butte.

You don't see them working in the smelters of Great Falls, even though there were often jobs available for others in those kinds of industries.

And because of that, you don't see a dramatic increase in the size of the African American population.

- Economic pressures exacerbated by the onset of the financial crisis in Montana in the 1920s, and nationally by the 1930s, together with an increase in discriminatory policies and laws, led to a steep decline in the black population.

By 1930, the state's largest single Black population in Helena dropped by an astonishing 78%.

- The Black population in Montana peaks about 1910 and then begins to decline for the next 60 years or so.

For the most part, you didn't have local ordinances in Montana that limited Black mobility.

On the other hand, there were the unwritten customs of the time.

It was very clear to African Americans that certain hotels or certain restaurants were simply not open to them, that they would not be served in those places.

- Regardless, some second generation Montanans, like Rose Gordon of White Sulphur Springs stayed and established themselves as important members of their communities.

A few, like Octavia Bridgwater and Alma Smith Jacobs left to get their college degrees and came back.

- Her father had been a Buffalo soldier.

Went to Great Falls schools.

She graduated in 1934.

- Alma got her degree from Talladega and went on to get a scholarship at Columbia University.

- She got a Library Science degree from Columbia.

- Alma went on to become the first African American head of both the Montana Library Association and the Northwest Library Association.

She was named to the National Library Association Executive Board and broke down racial barriers across the U.S. - So, Alma served extremely well as head librarian.

She led the community through two failed bond issues for a new library and onto a third one.

So the third try was the charm and they built what we call, "the house that Alma built."

- Many young Black Montanans left in the 1930s to study elsewhere and never came back.

They moved to more viable cities on the West Coast and university towns on the East Coast.

James Dorsey, son of 25th Infantry veteran Ephram Dorsey, grew up in Missoula and graduated from the University of Montana in 1922.

He was the first African American to enroll at the U of M. Five years later he earned a degree from the University of Montana Law School, and he practiced law in Milwaukee for nearly 40 years.

He became a local leader in the NAACP.

With more and more young Black Montanans leaving the state, there were fewer and fewer opportunities for those who stayed.

They faced dimmed social and employment prospects.

With the black population on the decline, many second and third generation Black Montanans moved away after years of being one of the "only" remaining.

- I was in Scouts.

I was in Campfire, and I wasn't anyplace very long, because you'd have a Caucasian family who would come and bring their kids.

And they said, "Uh-uh we don't want her here."

So, often I was sent home, and I didn't go back.

And my grandmother always said, you know, nothing, "Don't worry about it.

That's the way it is.

You just have to accept it."

So I was in a lot of things, but not long.

- To combat the decline and discrimination, the Montana's Black Women's Clubs took it upon themselves to offer social events and fun, and the chance to "lift" the next generation.

They established a college scholarship and fought to advance civil rights.

Clubs formally addressed the accommodations laws in the 1930s, they lobbied the legislature through the 1940s.

When the U.S. entered World War II Octavia Bridgwater used this activist mindset, and continued her family's military tradition, by serving the nation.

She served with the airmen at Tuskegee in Alabama during the war.

- She was one of very few African American women nurses who were allowed to join the Army.

There was a quota of not very many, a hundred or something, and she was one of those chosen.

When she came back after her service, she was a First Lieutenant when she was honorably discharged.

And she came back and she had a very long career as a maternity nurse.

People still remember Octavia and her wonderful care.

She was really good at her job.

- She loved...she loved her work and she, you know, people talked about the fact that, you know, some people would even wait to have their baby until she got there because she was just... she was known to just help... help in those deliveries.

She loved her work and I think she really loved Montana.

- As the 20th century progressed, population centers shifted.

A new migration of Black Americans made their way to Montana through military service at Malmstrom Air Force Base.

Great Falls became home to the state's largest community of Black American residents during the 1940s and 50s in response to military, and other, assignments.

Some among this new wave of Black Americans to arrive in Montana found the place refreshing, and chose to stay.

- My name is Dexter Reed and I'm originally from Great Falls, Montana.

My father had this professional baseball career, he was playing for the Memphis Red Sox.

Then when baseball started integrating, the Cleveland Indians bought his contract.

So then he got a better offer from the Dodgers and he jumped contracts and signed with the Dodgers.

And the Dodgers ended up sending him to Great Falls, Montana.

And he got out there and he couldn't believe how friendly the people were.

And coming from Jim Crow South in rural Alabama, in the 30s, 40s, White people were very welcoming to him.

They wanted us to get the best education possible and they didn't want us going to a school in Alabama were second class education, the rural schools for black children weren't up to par with the white schools, and they felt for their young family, living up here was the best thing for them.

- Through the 1950s and 60s.

Montana's small Black communities continued to root themselves in unity and perseverance.

As the national struggle for Civil Rights dominated the news across the country, including the Brown vs Board of Education decision in 1954, Montanans also took action.

The women's club's work finally succeeded with the repeal of the interracial marriage ban.

They also led the establishment of the equal accommodations law.

Progress was being made within the legal system, but national headlines shined a spotlight on the tones of the era.

[gospel music plays] ♪ This little light of mine.

♪ I'm going to let it shine.

♪ This little light of mine.

♪ I'm going to let it shine ♪ This little light of mine.

♪ I'm going to let it shine.

♪ Let it shine.

Let it shine.

♪ Let it shine.

♪♪ - The '60s were a pretty turbulent time.

I mean, there's all sorts of things going on.

In particular in the black community, there was the assassination of Dr. King, assassination of Medgar Evers, riots in L.A. and Detroit.

The Civil Rights Movement was running strong, The Black Panthers were on the uprise.

And it was a pretty turbulent time all around.

- In the 1960s, more Black Americans attended college, and the University of Montana was no exception.

- Educational opportunities had increased for African Americans, and with that, a lot of students were going to college for the first time.

- I would say probably 99% of the kids on this campus had never seen a Black person in the flesh.

It was kind of nasty here that first year we'd have to walk across the bridge to get downtown and we were called the n-word all the time by people driving by, they'd holler out their windows, you know, and you didn't know if at some point if somebody was going to stop and do something.

- Tired of the discriminatory practices at college campuses, students demanded a change to their education, the inclusion of Black history and Black Studies programs, and hiring Black faculty, deans, and professors.

The Black Student Union at the University of Montana in Missoula protested the lack of a diverse faculty and representational academic programs.

- In the fall of '67 they approached the University President at the time, Robert Pantzer, and stated that they wanted to have a Black Studies program.

And Pantzer, he wanted to do something to kind of show some good faith from the University standpoint and said, "Yeah, where do we want to go?"

Well, at that time, Ulysses Doss, who had been a confidant of Martin Luther King and Saul Alinsky out of Chicago.

He was a community activist and a preacher out of Chicago, had come to Missoula.

And he was approached and decided that that he would become the director of the Black Studies Program.

- All of that happened within a year-and-a-half period.

I mean, it changed us, it changed this community, it changed the school, you know, and then all of the people involved with that in that as they traveled outside of Missoula, outside of Montana, and they carried all that stuff with them.

- The movement for Black Civil Rights and the political and cultural push for the recognition of Black beauty and Black power, contributed to the development of Black Studies programs, because there was a recognition that the history of Black people, the contributions of Black people, the arts of Black people had been not only ignored, but also maligned.

And so the work of achieving equality, the work of achieving equal access, equal rights, equal regard, is also the work of increasing Black visibility.

And this is what these programs were meant to do.

They were meant to research and to demonstrate the existence and the persistence of Black experience and contribution in the U.S. [music resumes] ♪ ...shine.

Let it shine.

♪ Let it shine.

Let it shine.

♪ Let it...shine.

♪♪ - By the late 1960s, progress continued but the Black population in Montana became more and more transient.

Families moved in, and then they moved out.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 made discrimination illegal, but prejudice and bigotry still existed.

The few Black families that remained did so with their eyes and ears wide open to the preconceived notion of their white neighbors.

- It's hard to describe though.

I mean, it's hard to describe because you made some lifelong friends, people that you, you know, will always know and always remember, but there were challenges.

I mean, it was, it was not easy.

You know, I...I always said if I ever would write a book, I would like to write a book about what it's like to be the "only," because there are some difficulties and sometimes you don't even realize it until you're gone.

- You know, you can be the only Black person in the room and sitting there, and no one will say a word to you.

You stand out like a sore thumb, and everybody's in their little groups.

And you're the only one there.

And no one is going to say a word.

So basically invisible, but you're standing out.

- In 1972, the Montana Federation of Colored Women's Clubs dissolved in the face of dwindling membership.

Today, Montana's Black population is less than half of a percent, but is on the rise.

The state boasts a number of individuals and groups who promote racial equity, social activism and engagement throughout their communities.

Whether it's Missoula or Great Falls, Bozeman, Billings or Kalispell, these Montanans exist as modern-day leaders for justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion.

- I was always taught, it's never about color.

Because when you take that away, then you just have the person.

And either you're a good person or you're not a good person.

I think people should take the time to really dive into these stories and learn about what it means to be different.

- Black history is a part of Montana's history.

It's not separate from it, it's a part of it.

It's essential to it in many ways, without the Black population in Montana, many of Montana's towns and cities would not exist in the ways that they do.

So we would actually have to work and try hard to exclude it and to pretend that it's not important.

If we study history, we should study all of history, for Montana, that includes African American history, and the histories of many other groups of people of color.

- I've seen how people treat each other.

I've seen the ignorance of racism.

I constantly pray that me as a person, I'll leave this state a better state, a better city, better country.

And that I set the example for the next generations who are going to be the stewards of everything we leave behind.

I want to make sure we get them on a good foot.