Feb 27 - Online lecture with Margaret Hangan

Thursday, February 27 at 7pm

People of African descent first arrived in the southwest with the early Spanish explorers in the late 1500s as both free and enslaved persons. After the Mexican American war in 1848, early African American Mountain men such as Jim Beckworth roamed the west, and enslaved Africans accompanied their owners as they traveled to the gold fields in the Sierra Nevada Mountains before California entered the Union as a free state in 1850.

In 1860 the first federal census of the Arizona Territory noted a very small percentage of "free" African Americans in Arizona. But by the 1890, the population of African Americans in Northern Arizona was significantly higher due to companies of U.S. Colored Troops (aka Buffalo Soldiers) being station at Fort Verde and Fort Whipple. Construction of the Atlantic and Pacific Railway was completed by 1882 opening Coconino County to ranching and logging interested, and homesteading. 

African Americans came west to homestead and take advantage of economic opportunities such as ranching where African American men worked as cooks and cowboys, and as laborers in construction and in the mills in Flagstaff. It was not until the 1920s, when the post-Civil War lumber industry of the south started to dramatically decline, that a diaspora of African Americans from the south to the northwestern lumber industry began as southern lumber companies, like the Louisiana based Cady Company left the south for better opportunities in California, Oregon, and Arizona. Soon lumber centered communities across Northern Arizona like Winslow, Flagstaff and Williams saw an influx of skilled African American workers to the area.

This online (Zoom) presentation will talk about the history of African Americans in relationship to the Grand Canyon area and the Timber Industry. Presenter Margaret Hangan has worked as a professional archaeologist since 1989. Originally from California, she moved to Williams, Arizona in 2007 and has worked for both the Kaibab and Tonto National Forests. She recently retired from the Forest Service in January 2025. Margaret has served on many boards and advisory committees through out the years and currently is a member of the NAU School of Forestry Advisory Committee, the Arizona State Historic Sites Review Committee and chair the Historic Preservation Commission for the City of Williams. She is currently the Chair of the Naco Heritage Alliance Board of Directors.