FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 8, 2008
CONTACT:  Martyn Beeny, (605) 773 8161, martyn.beeny@state.sd.us

State Historical Society publishes new book about African Americans in South Dakota

PIERRE, S.D.—Coinciding with Black History Month, the South Dakota State Historical Society has published a history of African Americans in the state. Forgotten Lives: African Americans in South Dakota features new information about this small but vital group.

Throughout South Dakota’s history, African Americans have been vastly outnumbered by their white and American Indian neighbors. Underreported as well, they have been misrepresented by historians, journalists, even census-takers. However, from the first African Americans to visit the Northern Great Plains as fur traders in the early 1800s to twentieth-century voting-rights advocates or professionals recruited after World War II, African Americans have pioneered here. They have participated in the state’s successes and failures and contributed to its rich history, and their story is brought to life.  In Forgotten Lives, historian Betti VanEpps-Taylor provides insights into their lives and communities over two centuries.

VanEpps-Taylor draws attention to such well-known historical African Americans as filmmaker Oscar Micheaux and York, who accompanied Lewis and Clark on their expedition. Equally important, but less well-known, are the pioneering women in the Black Hills or the isolated African American cowboys on South Dakota’s open range. The human-interest stories that VanEpps-Taylor explores illuminate the state’s African American history in this readable and thought-provoking book.

Betti VanEpps-Taylor is a historian and speaker on black history and culture. Born and raised in South Dakota, she now teaches English at the College of Southern Idaho in Twin Falls.

Available for $17.95 plus shipping and tax, Forgotten Lives can be purchased from most bookstores or ordered directly from the South Dakota State Historical Society Press. Visit www.sdshspress.com or call (605) 773-6009.