Unique class to chart quest through the multiracial American West

An unusual “traveling classroom” hitting the road this summer will have 36 UW–Madison students logging nearly 3,000 miles by bus, piecing together a cultural history tour of the sprawling American West.

The three-credit course, “The Santa Fe Trail: In Search of the Multiracial West,” is being offered by the Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies Department and the College of Letters and Science. It will present a vivid, personal take on the region’s racial diversity and civil rights history. The 15-day bus trip, which begins June 2 after two days of classroom work, will combine the insights of four UW–Madison history, political science and ethnic studies faculty with visits to Indian reservations, border towns, historic black settlements, specialty museums, sugar plantations and other unique sites.

“In the American West, you will find a racial history that is very distinctive,” says Susan Johnson, a professor of history and part of the traveling teaching team. “Other regions of the United States are becoming more multiracial, and that’s certainly true of Wisconsin, but the West has been that way for a very, very long time and its history is relevant to virtually anywhere in the country.”

What’s especially compelling about the racial history of the West, Johnson says, is that it doesn’t follow the same “black and white dichotomy” that defines race relations in much of America. The West blends together cultural influences of indigenous peoples, relocated American Indians, black migrants, Mexican and Asian immigrants, and Spanish settlements from colonial times.

“Our goal with this kind of experiential learning is to make history matter to the students and to get them to think critically about issues of race and ethnicity,” Johnson says. “It’s also an interesting topic for this generation of students, which has had less exposure to Hollywood mythology about the West and more experience with multiracial communities.”

While the western venues will be new, the idea for the class is a direct spinoff of a 2001 summer course called the “Freedom Ride,” which looked at civil rights issues through a bus tour of the Deep South. Tyina Steptoe, who was part of the Freedom Ride as a master’s student in Afro-American Studies, is now a doctoral student in history and a driving force behind this summer’s American West trip. She and history doctoral student Michel Hogue came up with the idea for the course a year and a half ago and have been working on it ever since.

Steptoe says the focus on the West is an ideal fit for UW–Madison, which has long had an academic focus on the region through faculty in history and ethnic studies programs. The Freedom Ride had an extraordinary impact on participants, Steptoe says, and sparked some lasting connections between UW–Madison and tour stops such as the National Voting Rights Museum in Selma. She says the 2005 trip has the same potential while covering a lot more ground.

Some of the stops along the way will include:

• A visit to the Cherokee Heritage Center in Tahlequa, Oklahoma, and a meeting with Chad Smith, chief of the Cherokee Nation.

• An evening concert and dinner with blues musician D.C. Minner at the Down Home Blues Club in Rentiesville, Okla., a historically black town.
• A visit to the excavated site of the Levi Jordan sugar plantation outside Houston, a project that is chronicling the lives of slaves, tenant farmers and sharecroppers in the 19th Century settlement.
• A discussion of contemporary border issues between the United States and Mexico during a trip to El Paso.
• A meeting with Pueblo tribal leaders in Isleta, New Mexico to discuss water rights and conflicts over the use of sacred lands.
• A stop in Granada, Colo., where a project is under way to tell the story of a Japanese American internment camp based there during World War II.

Of course, there will be stops at some of the icons of the American West, such as the Alamo in San Antonio and the Santa Fe Trail itself, but Johnson says the goal is to balance “formal” historical sites such as museums with more “real people” interactions.

Aside from Johnson, other faculty participants include: Camille Guerin-Gonzales, a professor of history and director of the Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies program; Ben Marquez, a professor of political science; and Ned Blackhawk, a professor of history and American Indian Studies. All of the faculty have research and scholarship background on the American West, and will be giving lectures and leading discussions on the trip between formal stops.