We sat down with Anthony Wood to talk about his research focus on Black history in the west. We talk about his new research along with his book, Black Montana: Settler Colonialism and the Erosion of the Racial Frontier, 1877–1930. We dive into storytelling, history-making, and the stories that we tell about ourselves and what those stories and historical narratives can tell us about the past.

Anthony Wood is a historian of the American West. His work looks at race and place-making during the 19th and 20th centuries. He completed his PhD at the University of Michigan earlier this year and now serves as the senior historian on a new National Park Service project to survey and collect a comprehensive history of African Americans in the Parks of the Intermountain Region. His 2021 book, Black Montana, was a finalist for the Great Plains Distinguished Book Prize. His next writing project develops his dissertation, "Forty Years within the Veil: The Black West and Counternarratives of Race and Place in the Rocky Mountains.