How Bass Reeves Made Me Weep For America
How Bass Reeves Made Me Weep For America
Lots of people sharing that Bass Reeves post this morning. That's great. No where near enough people know about Bass. I learned about him from the book mentioned in the post: Bad News for Outlaws.
My wife worked for the book's publisher in 2010 when it was printed. She didn't work on it, but had seen a proof and said I'd love it. We bought a copy when it was published (if you work for a publisher, you can buy anything for like $2.00. We've got so many kids books. We'd buy whole series at a time).
Anyway, I thought it was really cool and was pretty into western miniatures at the time. I was painting and converting a lot of weird west stuff. I also spent a lot of time on miniatures forums. So I started a post about Bass in the western section of a popular website. I said I'd never heard of Bass before and isn't it crazy that here's an african american old west hero 99% of people have never heard of, etc, etc.
I was totally blindsided by the reaction. "If you knew anything about history you'd know about Bass Reeves." "He was was just one marshal. There were lots of marshals. They should have written a book about them all." And mostly the implication that people shouldn't get their history from movies or TV and read a real book and there's no problem with the lack of black people in westerns etc. Just a steaming pile of white dudes telling me what's what. I was so disgusted I abandoned my own thread.
I stopped going to that site a long time ago.
So, on a positive note, if you've got kids or know kids who like western stuff and want to be a cowboy/girl when they grow up, get them this book.
https://www.lernerbooks.com/badnews/
Lots of people sharing that Bass Reeves post this morning. That's great. No where near enough people know about Bass. I learned about him from the book mentioned in the post: Bad News for Outlaws.
My wife worked for the book's publisher in 2010 when it was printed. She didn't work on it, but had seen a proof and said I'd love it. We bought a copy when it was published (if you work for a publisher, you can buy anything for like $2.00. We've got so many kids books. We'd buy whole series at a time).
Anyway, I thought it was really cool and was pretty into western miniatures at the time. I was painting and converting a lot of weird west stuff. I also spent a lot of time on miniatures forums. So I started a post about Bass in the western section of a popular website. I said I'd never heard of Bass before and isn't it crazy that here's an african american old west hero 99% of people have never heard of, etc, etc.
I was totally blindsided by the reaction. "If you knew anything about history you'd know about Bass Reeves." "He was was just one marshal. There were lots of marshals. They should have written a book about them all." And mostly the implication that people shouldn't get their history from movies or TV and read a real book and there's no problem with the lack of black people in westerns etc. Just a steaming pile of white dudes telling me what's what. I was so disgusted I abandoned my own thread.
I stopped going to that site a long time ago.
So, on a positive note, if you've got kids or know kids who like western stuff and want to be a cowboy/girl when they grow up, get them this book.
https://www.lernerbooks.com/badnews/
Yeah most of who people hear about is Nat Love (who was no slouch).
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