Black Settlers of Cheyenne Valley

This interview by Charlie Knower was originally broadcast on WDRT’s Kickapoo Review and includes several people discussing the Black Settlers of Cheyenne Valley. “The Cheyenne Valley area near Hillsboro was Wisconsin’s largest rural African American settlement in the 19th century. The State’s early defiance of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act and the later demise of the slavery system after the Civil War encouraged freed slaves to settle in Wisconsin. Nearly 150 African American settlers, with the assistance of the Quaker religious order, came to Hillsboro, where they successfully farmed. Many settlers became landowners, and a few, like Thomas Shivers who was born […]