Another Book I want to read......Cathy Williams: From Slave to Buffalo Soldier

Once a slave in Independence, Missouri, Cathy Williams lived andworked in the 'big house' as a servant to its mistress. And thoughbeing a house servant carried greater privilege and status thanthat of the field hand, Cathy began to resent the menial tasks she performed as much as she resented her masters.

After the death of her owner, and having the good fortune of not being sold to pay debts, Cathy realized that the fundamental premise of slavery was a lie and this life was not her chosen destiny. So in November 1866 she disguised herself as a man, used the name William Cathay, and enlisted in Company A, 38th U.S. Infantry and became a Buffalo Soldier. As the first and only African American woman to serve in one of the six black units formed following the Civil War. Interestingly enough, Williams was able to become a member of the Army without detection of her sex, and it was imperative that she keep her true identity unknown. Her adventures took her from Missouri to the Mexican border where she served for nearly two years. After her military career Cathy did not envision returning to her roots in Missouri, plus her heart was now in the West. So she married and created a life for herself on the Western frontier, as a business-woman in Trinidad, CO.

There is much contention surrounding the validity of Cathy's story. Historians claim Tucker's only source about Williams' alleged service as a Buffalo soldier is based on a newspaper account published in 1876 and that there are no official records in existence to authenticate her Civil War service. Some believe it was easy for Williams to get discharge certificates from the 'real' William Cathay and pass it off as her own. And that 'Far too many of the speculations about Williams are colored by a 21st century "politically correct" perspective'.

Yet others offer a more positive analogy, "Phillip Thomas Tucker the prize-winning author of The Confederacy's Fighting Chaplain tells this remarkable tale of Pvt. William Cathay of Company A, 38th U.S. Infantry, who in fact was a big-boned, 5' 7" black woman named Cathy Williams. This is a unique story of gender and race, time and place.

Tucker's work is a recommended read that reaches across categories, from American, African American, and military history to Western and women's history." -- Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ.

Regardless of the controversy, this was a fascinating story presented more in the vein of a documentary than a novel and it allows readers to experience a non-traditional, non-typical life for a 'Colored' woman in the 1800's. Tucker uses this storyline to captivate and educate, and he introduces a believable character who unknowingly and unintentionally charted a course for the role of today's women in all branches of the military. This story vividly brings to life another chapter of our colorful history.

Reviewed by aNN Brownof The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

Author Rita Williams

A sobering survival story of the heart, mind and soul!

In this book, Rita Williams' accounts of her childhood and coming-of-age provide a keenly focused view into the lessons and hardships of poverty and racial discrimination, not to mention puberty itself. Making these lessons much more compelling than most, the turbulence in Rita's young life plays out against a backdrop of the stunning beauty and cruel harshness of the Colorado Rocky Mountains, all of which is described with magical clarity by Ms. Williams.

Orphaned at a young age, Rita takes the reader along with her as she is flung by wicked fate into an unforgiving life under the stern guardianship of her "Real McCoy" Aunt Daisy, a hunting guide and trapper in the mountains of the Colorado wilderness. Tough as any mountain man, Aunt Daisy is not ready for, nor able to coddle, a small child. Little Rita must toughen up to the mountaineer's lifestyle, or else! Funny, heart wrenching, and often just plain shocking, Rita Williams' book exudes a fearlessness that few writers ever muster. Powerful, courageous books such as this one often change minds and opinion. "If The Creek Don't Rise" shines bright light into dark corners of human relationships and emotions - corners that many writers are fearful to even obliquely illuminate, especially when the subject at hand is purely personal.

In the end, this book leaves the reader with a tremendous appreciation for not only the hardships of others, but also with an increased self-awareness. Ms. Williams' efforts are unique in that her book is not a "mountain wilderness survival story" about a plane crash or stranded, lost campers running out of food or freezing to death. Rather, it is a mountain wilderness survival story that is just as perilous nonetheless. It is the mind and soul, however, at risk of a "starvation and freezing death" in the high mountains.

An amazing tale of tremendous courage and a survival story like no other, this book is a must-read!

Slavery in Mississippi

Slavery and Frontier Mississippi, 1720-1835
By David J. Libby
Edition: illustrated Published by Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2004 ISBN 1578065992, 9781578065998 163 pages

In the popular imagination the picture of slavery, frozen in time, is one of huge cotton plantations and opulent mansions. However, in over a hundred years of history detailed in this book, the hard reality of slavery in Mississippi's antebellum world is strikingly different from the one of popular myth.

It shows that Mississippi's past was never frozen, but always fluid. It shows too that slavery took a number of shapes before its form in the late antebellum mold became crystalized for popular culture.

The colonial French introduced African slaves into this borderlands region situated on the periphery of French, Spanish, and English empires. In this frontier, planter society made unsuccessful attempts to produce tobacco, lumber, and indigo. Slavery outlasted each failed harvest.

Through each era plantation culture rode the back of a system far removed from the romantic stereotype. Almost simultaneously as Mississippi became a United States territory in the 1790s, cotton became in cash crop. The booming King Cotton economy changed Mississippi and adapted the slave system that was its foundation. Some Mississippi slaves resisted this grim oppression and rebelled by flight, work slowdowns, arson, and conspiracies.

In 1835 a slave conspiracy in Madison County provoked such draconian response among local slave holders that planters throughout the state redoubled the iron locks on the system. Race relations in the state remained radicalized for many generations to follow. Beginning with the arrival of the first African slaves in the colony and extending over 115 years, this book is the first such history since Charles "Sydnor's Slavery in Mississippi (1933).