Segregation Made Them Neighbors: An Archaeology of Racialization in Boise, Idaho 1496217136, 9781496217134

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Segregation Made Them Neighbors

Historical Archaeology of the American West Series Editors

Ben Ford Lee M. Panich

Segregation Made Them Neighbors An Archaeology of Racialization in Boise, Idaho

William A. White III

University of Nebraska Press and the Society for Historical Archaeology

© 2023 by the Society for Historical Archaeology All rights reserved The University of Nebraska Press is part of a land-­ grant institution with campuses and programs on the past, present, and future homelands of the Pawnee, Ponca, Otoe-­Missouria, Omaha, Dakota, Lakota, Kaw, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Peoples, as well as those of the relocated Ho-­Chunk, Sac and Fox, and Iowa Peoples. Library of Congress Control Number: 2022013276 Set in Quadraat and Quadraat Sans.

This book is dedicated to Dorothy Buckner (1927–­2003), civil rights activist and Black trailblazer in Boise, Idaho, and Richard Madry, who let us dig in his grandmother’s backyard.

Contents List of Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix List of Tables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii Introduction: Archaeology That Promotes Antiracism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1. Forging an Urban Place through Racism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 2. Race, Structural Racism, and Whiteness in Boise, Idaho . . . . . . . . . . . 40 3. Creating a Landscape despite Racism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 4. The River Street Public Archaeology Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 5. Archaeological Evidence of Life in a Stigmatized Landscape, 1890s–­1960s. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 6. Saving the Erma Hayman House. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 Conclusion: Using Archaeology to Fight Racism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 Appendix 1: Artifact Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 Appendix 2: Makers’ Marks Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201

Illustrations 1. River Street Neighborhood, Boise, Idaho. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 2. St. Paul Baptist Church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 3. Evolution of buildings in project area. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 4. Diagram of intersection of identity for individuals. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 5. Front elevations at 163, 609, and 611 Ash Street. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 6. Warner L. Terrell Jr. seated in a child’s goat cart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 7. Land ownership in River Street Public Archaeology Project area. . . . 95 8. Collaboration continuum in archaeology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 9. The Erma Hayman House at 617 Ash Street. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 10. A scene from the River Street Public Archaeology Project. . . . . . . . . . 108 11. Distribution of 2015 excavations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 12. Shovel probe stratigraphy along the east edge of the project area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 13. Archaeological evidence of coal oven clean out . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 14. Undecorated ironstone bowl recovered from 633 Ash Street. . . . . . . 130 15. Remains of a cherry pitting tool recovered from 617 Ash Street. . . . 134 16. Wintergreen (celadon) porcelain fragments from 633 Ash Street . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 17. Marbles recovered from 617 Ash Street . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 18. Remains of the first Basque fronton (feature 125) and second fronton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 19. Playing court at the Anduiza Fronton in Boise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 20. Massive outdoor fronton in Jordan Valley, Oregon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 21. Overview of ghettoization in the United States. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

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Tables 1. Oral history interviews used for this project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 2. Research domains of the River Street Public Archaeology Project. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 3. Artifact distribution from controlled excavation units . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 4. Clothing-­related artifacts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

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Acknowledgments The strangest thing happened while I was revising the manuscript for this book. One of the anonymous reviewers, to whom I have the utmost appreciation, suggested I do a better job of citing specific incidences of discrimination that happened to the Black residents of the River Street Neighborhood. While antiblack racism in Jim Crow-­era Boise, Idaho, was mostly nonviolent and subversive, the former residents I personally interviewed told me several times that they faced discrimination outside the neighborhood. However few of these events were clearly remembered; they only cited a few clearly racist events. I headed back to archival documents obtained from the Idaho State Archives in 2014 to see if I could find concrete evidence of discrimination. These files included transcripts of oral history interviews collected in the early 1980s with Black River Street residents who lived there as early as the 1930s. Several of these elders had clear recollections of how white Boiseans had cheated them out of wages, refused to serve them in restaurants, and forced them to sit in the back of public buses, among other abuses. Since I grew up in Boise, I had met some of these elders personally as a child back in the 1980s. They were members of the church I’d grown up in—­St. Paul Baptist Church—­and were some of my grandparents’ close friends. They were elderly when our lives intersected, but in reading these transcriptions, I could hear their voices again. It was as if they were speaking to me, narrating these snippets of their lives, encouraging me to write them down so their stories would not be forgotten. That is what I have tried to do in this book. The book you are about to read was created from the diligent, committed efforts of such a large group of individuals that it would be nearly impossible to thank everyone who helped make this possible. Here is my best attempt. First I want to thank the residents of the River Street Neighborhood—­past, present, and future; Black, white, and other. Your lives have been my inspiration. I am deeply indebted to the descendants who provided oral history interviews for this project: Warner Terrell III, Dick Madry, John Bertram, Lee Rice II, LaVaun Kennedy, Sharon Hill, Ken xiii

Thomas, Gigi Stevens, and Jack and Lois Wheeler. I only hope this book commemorates your invaluable experiences and memories. The project that culminated in this book took place in a city that has a strong, dedicated group of activists who are committed to using history for restorative justice and who value historic preservation. While you all are outnumbered, I am always inspired to see how hard you work to cultivate art, history, and culture in Boise. I could never have accomplished this project without all of my collaborators in the City of Boise: Jill Gill and Todd Shallat at Boise State University, Nikki Gorrell at the College of Western Idaho, Marc Munch of the Idaho Department of Transportation, Shannon Vihlene and Mary Anne Davis at the Idaho State Historic Preservation Office, Terri Schorzman and Amy Fackler at the Boise City Department of Arts and History, and John Bertram of Planmakers. The archaeology component would not have been a success without the support of Shellan Rodriguez at the Capital City Development Corporation and Maria Minicucci formerly with the Boise City Department of Parks and Recreation. I owe sincere thanks to all the volunteers and students who worked on the excavations, but I am particularly indebted to the project staff, Renae Campbell, Lindsay Kiel, and Michelle Sing, who helped make this complicated archaeology project run seamlessly. I also want to thank Pam Demo for freely sharing information about Boise that she had amassed over decades of historic preservation consulting and collected for her master’s thesis. There are whole sections of this research that would have been much more difficult to write without her guidance. My career in archaeology has been fueled by the support of those who wanted to see me succeed. Archaeology is not an easy career, especially for bipoc (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) professionals, but there are a couple of scholars who have always supported me and believed in my abilities. I want to thank my dissertation committee at the University of Arizona who guided me through this process with efficiency and wisdom. I have been strongly influenced by all of you, but my committee chairs Maria Nieves Zedeño and T. J. Ferguson have especially shaped the way I conduct myself as a scholar and what I believe archaeology can contribute to this world. Knowing you has made me a better person. I also owe a deep debt of gratitude to Mark Warner at the University of Idaho who has constantly helped my career move forward. Since 2001 Mark has been a mentor and a friend. His son, Sam Warner, is also handy with a shovel and helped dig several of the shovel probes xiv

Acknowledgments

reported in this book. We could not have done this without the help of young volunteers like Sam. Many organizations provided funding. My graduate studies were partially funded by a University of Arizona Graduate Access Fellowship from 2013 to 2014, which helped my studies at a critical time. The fieldwork in Boise was funded through several University of Arizona funds including the Graduate Research Scholarship (2015), University of Arizona gpsc Travel Grant (2014), and the Emil W. Haury Education Fund for Archaeology (2015). The field effort also found funding from the Confluencenter Graduate Research Fellowship (2015). Much of the archival research for this project was conducted to create the River Street Digital History Project (http://​www​.riverstreethistory​.com/), which was funded by the Boise Department of Arts and History Grant (2014), and the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies (2014), which covered the reproduction permissions for scans of the archival documents and photos. I would also like to extend my gratitude to Rita Sulkosky and Cannon Daughtery for those late nights we spent putting together the River Street Digital Heritage website in 2014. Thanks to you both, I was able to earn the second installment of the Arts and History grant so I could keep the project moving forward. Nicole Lavely also deserves praise for the paperback version of the website she created during the early days of this project titled, Living on the South Side of the Tracks: The River Street Digital History Project and Boise, Idaho. That downloadable pdf was well received by descendants and local agencies, and it helped demonstrate that the larger project I had in mind was possible. People are still downloading that e-­book today. Honing a rough manuscript into this polished book was not a solo effort. I would like to acknowledge the two anonymous reviewers of the manuscript who helped sharpen my prose and hone this book’s logical progression. Many thanks to Rebecca Allen at the Society of Historical Archaeology who steered the manuscript through the editing process and Mathew Bokovoy and Heather Stauffer at the University of Nebraska Press for their advocacy and steady assistance as they helped see this book through. Danielle Phelps also deserves praise for all the maps she made for this project. Finally this work is dedicated to my family, who had to put up with this project and many others, and who selflessly continued to support me over the years. My mother, Lisa Jossis Williams, has encouraged me to pursue this dream since I was in kindergarten. My father, William Anderson Acknowledgments

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White Jr., believed in me for decades and constantly pushed me to pursue a career in archaeology. It saddens me that he did not live to see this book get published. My kids, Cyrus and Lydia White, are my inspiration. Continually striving to make the world a better place for them is the reason why I do what I do. Finally my wife, Clarity White, is the person to whom I owe the most gratitude. You were the one person who never doubted that this was the right thing to do. You have been my inspiration, foundation, and motivation since we first met. Thanks for never letting me quit.

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Acknowledgments

Segregation Made Them Neighbors

Introduction Archaeology That Promotes Antiracism Born in 1927 in Van Buren, Arkansas, Dorothy Buckner came to Minidoka, Idaho, when she was about two years old. Her father, Luther Johnson, hoboed from Arkansas to Idaho during the Great Depression in search of work. He took up various odd jobs, making ends meet, until he could bring his wife, Pearl Johnson, and his eight children to Idaho. As African Americans in an overwhelmingly white part of the country, the Johnsons were unique. Few Black Americans were willing to establish residency in white-­dominated landscapes. Black neighborhoods offered safety and familiarity, even though these places were formed through segregation and racism. The Johnson family started their lives out west in Minidoka until they eventually settled in the River Street Neighborhood in Boise, Idaho, just before World War II. Luther eventually settled into a role as a local pawnbroker. The neighborhood already had a reputation as a rough place, and Luther, known in the neighborhood as “Pistol,” settled in among the gamblers, bootleggers, and hustlers who congregated in a small section of Pioneer Street (Buckner 1981; Osa 1981). This segment of Pioneer Street became one of the city’s vice districts; the main red-­light district in downtown Boise was shut down by local law enforcement. Vice was allowed on Pioneer Street because, between the 1930s and 1950s, local police had an unstated policy of allowing illegal activity in the neighborhood. Segregation already kept Blacks and other nonwhite people out of the main downtown district. The illicit activities on Pioneer Street bolstered the neighborhood’s identity as a negative space. In mid-­twentieth-­century Boise, the police and other officials played an integral role in maintaining the separation between white and nonwhite people. By allowing vice to occur in the district associated with Black people, the police contributed to the stigmatization of Black spaces, which made it an undesirable place for upstanding whites to be seen. This reality reinforced the idea that white people who lived in that neighborhood were also “up to no good” 1

and undeserving of white privilege. River Street was ground zero for the complicated dialectic between space and race in Boise. During World War II, Pistol Johnson played an important role in the informal economy that helped African Americans survive in a segregated world. In addition to operating several businesses in River Street, Pistol acted as an informal rental agent who assisted incoming African American gis to find homes in Boise’s tight housing market. The influx of service people and their families to local military bases strained the local housing stock (Demo 2006). As was the case in other cities in the United States, de jure real estate segregation prevented Black people from living freely throughout the city (Rothstein 2017; Hunter and Robinson 2018). The River Street Neighborhood was the only place they could rent homes, but European American people were still the primary property owners in River Street. White realtors were prohibited from selling to nonwhite people at the time, and white landlords were reluctant to rent to Black servicemen. Landlords were also known for not maintaining their properties because they knew most residents had nowhere else to go. Dorothy recalled how they had difficulties keeping tenants because the window frames were rotten, water heaters broke frequently, and the properties were run down (Osa 1981). Only those who had no alternatives were willing to rent these dilapidated buildings. During the war Black people needed somewhere to live, slumlords wanted to find tenants desperate enough to rent their worn houses, and Pistol Johnson was constantly looking for new ways to make money. He seized the opportunity. He made a deal with a white rental agent, who worked with a white landowner named Kaiser, to rent houses to Black people in the River Street Neighborhood. Johnson split the rental fees and rent 60/40 with him, earning the lion’s share as long as he could either keep the tenants in those places or find new ones to replace them. Johnson kept this deal going throughout the war (Buckner 1981). Pistol Johnson and his wife separated during the war. Dorothy and her mother spent the rest of World War II living in a boarding house in the River Street Neighborhood at 1114 Miller Street, where she astutely watched how Black people used personal networks to survive the war. Housing “agents” like Pistol helped Black folks find places to live. Other Blacks in the neighborhood helped each other find jobs. Rationed foods were shared. Dorothy’s mother regularly cooked plate lunches that others could purchase for a small fee. Dorothy called the war years River Street’s 2

Introduction

heyday, the time when the Black population was at its zenith (Buckner 1981). With the modest influx of African Americans, the neighborhood resembled the Black world that could be found elsewhere in the United States. River Street started to resemble a proper American Chocolate City: a landscape where Black society could be produced and maintained (Hunter and Robinson 2018). African Americans always comprised a small proportion of the River Street population. Dorothy recalls it was less than 25 percent of the neighborhood’s total population even during the war (Buckner 1981). Nevertheless the sheer presence of Black people in that place was enough to label it a Black space. African Americans in Boise attempted to create a place where they could be Black. Violence was not typically used to constrain the freedom of Boise’s African Americans, although it was an option that always remained on the table. In an oral history interview recorded in 1981, Dorothy recalled that overt acts of discrimination in Boise were rare, but the entire society was gripped with what she called a “cryptic type” of discrimination. It was difficult for her to describe: “It’s so subtle, it’s so, you know, that type of thing, but nonetheless it’s here. Then, on the other hand, I think there are certain people that have become so accustomed to certain things that it’s okay, it’s your condition to take second-­best, and it’s a way of life” (Buckner 1981). Pushing for equality was shunned by many longtime Boise Blacks who felt the discrimination in Boise was better than the overt violence they experienced elsewhere in the country. They feared “rocking the boat” could rouse the ire of Boise’s white community, and violence would soon follow. Dorothy’s resistance to hegemony and racism was a lifelong crusade. During the 1960s and 1970s, she was a leading civil rights activist in Boise. Dorothy graduated from Boise Junior College, the precursor of Boise State University, and served multiple terms on the board of directors of the Treasure Valley Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (naacp). During her tenure at the naacp, she built teen programs for youth in the River Street Neighborhood and developed sensitivity training for Boise police. Resistance to racism was something she passed on to her four children—­Charles, Cherie, Pepper, and Carol (Treasure Valley naacp 2018). In 2010 Dorothy’s daughter Cherie Buckner-­Webb became the first African American and first African American woman elected to the Idaho House of Representatives. Cherie became the first Black Idaho state senator in 2012. Her career has been marked by Introduction

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fighting against discrimination in the state of Idaho. The Buckners are among the very small number of Black families who have chosen to call Boise home. They persevered in the face of isolation, prejudice, and discrimination. Major events in their lives have been recorded in documents and recent memory, but much of the mundane of their daily lives was not recorded. Like most families, archaeology has the potential to fill in the spaces between memory and records. For archaeologists, segregated neighborhoods like River Street are the stages upon which the complex, situation-­based, impermanent interplay between race, class, and identity take place. Interpreting life in these communities is particularly challenging when narratives of those places clash with historic texts and material culture. Incorporating local knowledge through oral histories and participation of the descendant community is archaeology’s best chance of understanding the meaning of artifacts and features found in these places. Reading a landscape like this is incomplete without input from local residents. In the process of trying to better understand landscapes of segregation, there is potential to create truly collaborative archaeologies that vindicate local understandings of the past while also helping disenfranchised publics take ownership of their heritage. Narratives of race were at the heart of the differential treatment of “the others” by European Americans in Boise (e.g., those who are not part of “our” society; those who are not “us”). Three processes resulted in the creation of places like River Street. First, over the course of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the racialization process created a dialectic where European Americans positioned themselves politically, socially, and geographically in different places than the nonwhites in their communities. This differential position was essential to the creation of ghettos and segregated enclaves across the United States, including stigmatized multiracial spaces like the River Street Neighborhood. Second, the systematic channeling of public funds and investment away from nonwhite places cultivated material inequalities that helped reify racial identities and justify stigmatization. It also contributed to white flight, which solidified segregation. Disinvestment from segregated neighborhoods happened elsewhere in the United States, except, in the case of River Street, this was happening to a place largely inhabited by European Americans. This suggests the reasons for disinvestment were not always because of race as an expression of phenotype but because of perceived class differences. While this is consistently the case with Black neighborhoods during the 4

Introduction

twentieth century, it cannot be universally applied to poor white neighborhoods. Certainly River Street’s small Black population was enough to cause disinvestment even if the majority of those affected were white. Third, the concentration of poverty in segregated spaces like River Street exacerbated social problems, which in turn further stigmatized those who lived there. The stigma of poor whiteness and Blackness fueled negative stereotypes and further identified River Street as a place for “others,” undeserving of white privilege or integration into upstanding American personhood (Wiese 2004; Hayward 2013, 45). The River Street Neighborhood (fig. 1) was created and maintained through racism, providing the fuel for segregation, discrimination, and inequality in Boise for decades. The racialization of Americans has long been used to maintain social hierarchies that have inscribed themselves on the landscapes of today’s urban spaces. In the United States, desirable neighborhoods and “blighted” ghettos all have origins in the way human beings inscribe meaning from spaces on the landscape. The othering process creates divisions within society that makes it difficult to achieve oneness. One way to maintain these divisions is by segregating landscapes. The Persistence of Racism Within this volume racism is defined as an ideology that rationalizes social hierarchies based on racial categories. In the United States, races are based on real or perceived physiological characteristics that have been historically connected to stereotypes. Racial categories were created through colonization to establish Europeans and their descendants at the top of economic, political, and social hierarchies (Orser 2007). Racial categories were central to slavery and Native American dispossession and genocide, but they were also part of a much larger international effort to justify the brutal methods European colonial nations used against other cultures around the world. Pseudoscientific data created by European scholars was essential to the formalization of racial categories. Some can argue that anthropology and archaeology have always been part of the justification of racial groups, and, as such, they have played an important role in maintaining racism (Deloria 1988, 1992). Creating a dialectic between European Americans, or white people, and non-­European Americans, a specious identifier that includes individuals not considered white, has been central to how social hierarchies were created and maintained in the United States. Racism has been incorporated into our legal, economic, Introduction

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Fig. 1. River Street Neighborhood, Boise, Idaho, 2021. Adapted from Google Earth.

and political systems because elites of European descent wanted to codify their supremacy over nonwhite Americans, and others deemed white desire to maintain this supremacy due to the benefits of such preferential treatment (Roediger 1991; Orser 2007). Racism is systemic because it has become infused in the systems that maintain our society. Racism is also a system in itself and is extremely adaptable, able to metamorphose as American society changes throughout time. Because racism is redefined and maintained through daily actions, it can adapt to prevailing social mores while still preserving social hierarchies that disproportionately benefit certain social groups. The nuanced system of racism must be differentiated from the thoughts and actions that maintain it, because the system provides structure and opportunities for the types of behaviors and actions required to codify, define, maintain, and replicate the system (Winant 1994; Bonilla-­Silva 1997). Systemic racism is the syntax in which hierarchical relationships between persons of different races take place. This syntax transmogrifies as society changes. Because racism is so ingrained in American society, its citizens are all inculcated with the social knowledge necessary to maintain that system. Racism, prejudice, and discrimination are learned at a very early age. Research has shown that children in preschool are capable of noticing racial differences and developing a sense of white superiority (Derman-­ Sparks, Ramsay, and Edwards 2006). Research conducted by Montiero, de França, and Rodrigues (2009) showed that, by six or seven years old, children in the United States are able to discriminate against Black children. This same study showed children will hide discriminatory behavior from adults by nine to ten years of age (Montiero, de França, and Rodrigues 2009; DiAngelo 2018). In addition to learning to act on prejudice at an early age, children quickly learn how to conceal their discrimination. Moving discrimination underground helps keep racism incognito, which is one of the most important ways racism is able to shape-­shift and persist across long periods. This research also shows that children raised in a racialized society may be discriminating against others long before they are legal adults, a fact that refutes the idea that children are colorblind and shows how difficult it will be to completely eliminate racism from American society. Racism is maintained through thought and action, which includes prejudice and discrimination. Prejudice is a prejudgment about individuals or groups based on preconceived stereotypes, beliefs, attitudes, and Introduction

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feelings (DiAngelo 2018). When it comes to race in the United States, our understanding of others originates in carefully constructed narratives that were designed to support the supremacy of European Americans over non-­ European Americans. It was crafted to facilitate colonialism and human exploitation. Racism and racialization in the United States fueled the practice of white supremacy, which is the belief that persons of European origin are mentally, physically, socially, and economically superior to non-­ Europeans. Most Americans today associate white supremacy with neo-­ Nazi, Ku Klux Klan, and alt-­right groups, but the belief that whiteness is “better” than nonwhiteness is inextricably infused into our society because of the origins of the American colonial system. David Roediger (1991) explains that the creation of whiteness as a racial category was a central mechanism for socially and politically separating poor whites from Native Americans and African Americans. As will be expanded upon in this book, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, European colonial elites cultivated white solidarity as a means of preventing poor, landless European laborers, many of whom were former indentured servants, from connecting with free African Americans and urban Native Americans. Poor whites and nonwhites had more in common because they lived alongside each other and were in similar economic and political straits. Largely ostracized from political and economic power, the downtrodden in the North American colonies had the potential to join forces as a bloc. Colonial elites feared this possibility. In response they spread the idea that already prevailed among colonial elites, most of whom were white: Europeans were superior to those they dominated. Although poor, landless whites were superior to Blacks, Native Americans, and anyone else not considered white because of their heritage and phenotype (Roediger 1991). North Americans were not the only ones to promote this concept. The idea of white supremacy and white solidarity was also prevalent in African colonies, Asia, Australia, and Latin America. White supremacy remains salient in the United States despite numerous interventions to dislodge it from our social lexicon. Racism and white supremacy are the backdrop against which discrimination and prejudice take place. Discrimination is action based on prejudice (DiAngelo 2018). While prejudice can remain largely dormant throughout an individual’s life, most of us act on prejudices, even if in a minimal way, which gives discrimination the potential to affect others. Discrimination manifests itself in subtle and overt ways. Drawing from my own experience, the uneasy feeling created by internalized fears of young 8

Introduction

African American men can cause European Americans to behave differently when they find themselves in situations with Black youth. Among politically correct whites, there may be a tendency to qualify statements in such a way that prejudiced thoughts are cast as innocent statements. Among avowed racists, there may be an extra effort to make discriminatory thoughts more impactful, such as telling an explicitly prejudiced joke about African Americans in a group where Black people are present. Discrimination is based on the context in which the actions take place. In certain instances discriminatory behaviors can serve to subjugate others such as when overt acts are perpetrated against non-­European American groups. In other cases discrimination serves to reinforce group belonging. Laughing at racist jokes or not chastising those who tell them are discriminatory acts to demonstrate group belonging. In short racism is pervasive in American history and American spaces. Crafting an Antiracist Platform for Archaeologists The centrality of race is important for antiracism programs. Antiracism advocacy helps to reveal the ways this segregation has a negative impact on American lives. While antiracism advocacy acknowledges the importance of other identities such as gender, religion, class, sexuality, and ethnicity, it places racial categories as a major source of oppression. Addressing race-­based discrimination directly can become a platform for addressing other sites of identity discrimination. Because of the intersectionality of social identities at the individual and societal level, antiracism seeks to change the structures created to support differential access to resources that are at the heart of racial constructs (Dei 2013). Antiracism advocacy in archaeology is a position that requires recursive action that originates from a place of reflexivity and a desire to cause positive change in the world. As community-­based archaeology seeks to expand inclusivity and make our research a contribution to local histories, conducting this work from an antiracist standpoint adds another layer of public benefit (Franklin et al. 2020). Antiracism in archaeology is action-­oriented, as it is not enough to simply identify the presence of difference in the past in the hope that it will help create change among people in the present. Racial identities forged through colonialism have been thoroughly infused in our modern social systems; our institutions were created to reify racial hierarchies, and we are currently living with the fruits of these systems. Antiracist archaeology recognizes the need Introduction

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to identify and decenter the social structures that sustain racism. While archaeology should be a tool to combat social problems like racism, it frequently falls short (Farnsworth 1993; Dawdy 2009). A major source of these shortcomings is because archaeology is a product of the colonial experience, although its practitioners can use their craft to bring about positive change for the descendants of colonialism. This will not happen without thoughtful, reflexive, concerted effort among historical archaeologists, their students, their collaborators, and their communities. Antiracism advocates must acknowledge the existence of past historical contexts that allowed for racism in the past and enable it in the present. As the creators of narratives of the past, historical archaeologists are excellently positioned to help identify the ways racism in the past reverberates in the future. An antiracism position, then, prompts archaeologists to be agents of positive change by going beyond revealing past racism by disseminating their research in such a way that helps communities heal past wounds and address archaeology’s racist past. This is one way it can be curtailed in the future. Historical archaeology, in particular, is a subfield that has the potential to engage in formative dialogue on race because it focuses on social interactions born of the colonial period. Because capitalism was the genesis and legacy of colonialism, the subfield can also make substantial contributions to the establishment of an antiracist archaeology. Archaeology can be a player in addressing racism in the United States because it is one of the sources of information from which our social identities are drawn. Historical archaeological research either “ground truths” existing narratives or challenges them. This includes narratives on race. When our intellectual privilege is added to this situation, historical archaeologists play a disproportionate role in the maintenance or dispelling of narratives on race. Bringing whiteness into full view allows archaeologists to investigate the origins and functionality of much larger research domains in historical archaeology like capitalism, colonialism, class, power, and landscape creation. Antiracist archaeology can be a reflexive response generated by the desire to undo what the field of anthropology has done to contribute to white supremacy and also an answer from those who desire to practice action anthropology. In Transforming Archaeology (Sonia Atalay et al. 2014) scholars propose transforming archaeology from a scholarly tool to a device for making positive social change. Rather than being a gate 10

Introduction

keeper of social knowledge and a governmental tool that confines the power to create historical narratives to a narrow constituency, archaeologists interested in community-­based collaborative work are encouraged to harness archaeology to address contemporary concerns. Power over narratives, research questions, and archaeological analyses should be shifted to include other publics aside from archaeologists, scholars, and government administrators (Atalay et al. 2014, 13–­14). From this perspective an antiracist archaeology seeks to remedy a divisive social system designed to maintain hierarchies that hurt many of the communities in which archaeologists work. Making this shift is increasingly important in the face of reactionary populism. Alfredo González-­Ruibal, Pablo Alonso González, and Felipe Criado-­Boado (2018) argue that archaeologists need to be ready to defend expert knowledge in the public arena while also conducting reflective, critical inquiry of human pasts. Archaeologists can find leadership in the antiracism movement through pedagogies promoted in education. Teachers and schools have historically been complicit in the racialization process. Now antiracism advocacy educators are attempting to spread a pedagogy that addresses racism’s negative aspects and train other educators how they can become advocates for change. In an exploratory paper on whiteness, Ayan Abdulle (2017, 23) discusses the way anti-­Blackness is central to the formation of whiteness as a racial construct with an idealized core identity around which other white ethnicities orbit: “Anti-­ Blackness anchors and centers Whiteness. Whiteness is situated at the center; an ideal Whiteness occupies the core of the center while White ethnicities orbit the core.” Abdulle continues by taking the controversial position that, in order to decenter whiteness as the ideal racial identity, anti-­Blackness must be unpinned as the principal dialectic; however, the author never states specifically how this can be done. Like race theory, scholars have developed a framework for critical antiracist theory (cart) to dissect the ways racial constructs affect African diasporic people. Anne Nelun Obeyesekere (2017, 7) defines the principal elements of cart as: 1. Salience and centrality of race: race is a prominent part of our identities and shapes our thoughts and behaviors 2. Race identity: the emic and etic (re)production of race Introduction

11

3. History and context: race is situational, transmogrifying across space and time 4. Intersectionality: race is one of several overlapping identities expressed and performed simultaneously 5. Othering: using racial categories to determine social association and disassociation 6. Whiteness: the racial category against which “others” are compared in the United States Acknowledging the existence of race is the first part of cultivating an antiracist platform. The next step in antiracism is to actively address race’s social engagements, constructs, and politics associated with racialization with the wider goal of making social change. Antiracism advocates ultimately seek to change the structures that maintain race with a goal of diminishing race-­based discrimination in the hopes of, ultimately, cultivating more inclusive social frameworks (Dei 2013; Obeyesekere 2017). The degree of permanence of race as a site of oppression marked onto particular bodies is often denied or dismissed along with the severity, saliency, and centrality of skin color in relation to race, notably in discourses of pluralism or plurality which posit that we are all simultaneously oppressed or even we shall overcome. In such cases, the politics of difference separates itself from a politics of race. This allows centralist dominant systems to maintain their hegemonies of privilege. This permanence of race, including skin color racism, can be read and seen in the continuous persecution of racially marked bodies. (Dei 2013, 4–­5) Recognizing the durability of how racially marked bodies embody the permanence of race is particularly salient to interpreting everyday life in the River Street Neighborhood. Archaeological data shows people in the neighborhood were very cognizant of the way others viewed their homeplace and their bodies, and they used material culture to fight against the stigmas of Blackness, poverty, and immigrant status. Additionally an antiracist archaeological standpoint centers the mechanisms behind the racialization process that happened in the past and continues to happen in the present.

12

Introduction

The River Street Public Archaeology Project and Antiracist Archaeology Conducted in an overwhelmingly white community, archaeology in the River Street Neighborhood was the first project conducted on an African American site in the city of Boise, Idaho. It led to the establishment of the second African American historic property in Boise and prompted local white historians and preservationists to start thinking about whiteness and taking a stance against racism. Boise and the state of Idaho are not known for diversity. In fact the activities of prominent Aryan Nations sects in northern Idaho during the 1980s and 1990s have firmly cast the state as a racist place. The fact that more than 90 percent of Idaho residents identify as European American is an additional constraint for diversity efforts as many nonwhite Americans are reluctant to live in communities dominated by white people. Nevertheless a small group of African Americans boldly made homes in Boise. De facto segregation eventually forced most of them to live in the River Street Neighborhood, a place that had been associated with immigrants and white working-­class residents since the late 1800s. By the 1950s River Street was known as a Black place even though most of the people living there were working-­class whites. The River Street Public Archaeology Project, conducted in 2015, attempted to reveal what everyday life was like for all residents—­Black, white, and immigrant—­while providing Boise residents an opportunity to participate in a public archaeology project as visitors, volunteers, and students. As the project centered on race, volunteers and collaborators were forced to engage with race. They had to confront racism but also the same racialization process that had infused their own lives with a racial identity. This book documents the archaeology project and its results as well as positions this work within historical archaeologies of the American West. Chapter 1 situates archaeology in River Street and Boise, Idaho, among the historiography of the American West. Commonly understood as a frontier, urban centers like Boise were where class and race intersected in real time. African Americans, Chinese, and European immigrants congregated in cities of the American West to build community and protect themselves from race-­based violence. In cities European Americans also reinforced whiteness as a racial identity, expanding upon prevailing racial

Introduction

13

mores at the turn of the twentieth century. The American racialization process is explored from an anthropological lens in chapter 2. Social constructs derived through European colonization in the Americas led to the creation of whiteness while simultaneously stigmatizing nonwhiteness. While access to economic resources was central to differentiating white people from nonwhites, these economic benefits were not evenly distributed to all white people. Poor whites occupied an interstitial space between whites and nonwhites; inheritors of European heritage but not considered to be the same status as middle-­and upper-­class white people. This chapter also provides an overview of how historical archaeology has approached African American sites in the American West and how it has grappled with the concept of race. The narratives behind the stereotypes that create nonwhite identities are at the heart of how urban landscape enclaves of segregation are created in the United States. Chapter 3 discusses how social identities are based on narratives that are told, internalized, and projected outward for others to consume. In a racialized society, the collective identity construction process is competitive. Social actors create and circulate narratives while they compete with other social actors who offer alternative stories of who “we” and “others” are. The narratives crafted by the most politically and economically powerful social groups are told and retold until this perspective becomes institutionalized—­imbedded in the social institutions, rules, and laws that define the norms and standards of society (Hayward 2013, 38). Segregating nonwhite people into a defined geographic space was important to maintaining whiteness as a racial category, especially in Boise where European immigrants phenotypically looked white. The categorization of geographic space into landscapes, culturally defined and understood places, is part of the human experience, except, in the case of the racialization process, this involved preventing racially stigmatized persons from living in spaces carved out for white people. Concentrating “the others” in a specific geographic landscape unintentionally provided space for cultural practices to be continued and insulated nonwhite Boiseans from constant racist bombardment. Segregated from the rest of Boise, the River Street Neighborhood became a region of refuge for African American, Basque, and poor, white residents. Chapter 4 highlights the River Street Archaeology Project, born from a collaborative, community-­based ethical framework. The project sought to 14

Introduction

involve descendants, students, scholars, and local government representatives in a heritage conservation process dedicated to improving understandings of Boise’s only Black neighborhood. Participants were given the opportunity to engage with how racialization continues to shape the city’s residents. Chapter 5 describes the results of these excavations and oral history interviews. Artifacts show River Street residents lived frugal lives and used neighborliness to partially overcome racism. Material culture is used to show how residents participated in widely held early twentieth-­century mores regarding gender, cleanliness, and masculinity. Adults, both Black and white, worked hard to provide for their families, and children were expected to pull their weight at home and in school. Oral histories recorded with former neighborhood residents added texture to artifact interpretations, providing previously undisclosed insights of what it was like to live in a segregated landscape. Basque residents continued cultural practices, including constructing a handball court, or fronton, in the neighborhood. This became a place where Basque men congregated to maintain their connection to home in a place far from Basque Country. The Erma Hayman House, which was central to the project and our understandings of Blackness in Boise, was designated as a historic property soon after the archaeological fieldwork ended. As this book is being written, the Hayman House is being rehabilitated and will be the second African American historic property in Boise. Chapter 5 summarizes how preservationists in Boise are trying to use the past history of this place to better understand whiteness, Blackness, and how that continues to shape American life. This volume concludes with a discussion of what an antiracist archaeology could look like. Archaeology and heritage conservation in Boise’s River Street Neighborhood are examples of one way an overwhelmingly white community is trying to commemorate histories of others. The River Street Public Archaeological Project is comparatively small but one that has had disproportionately large impacts. In the process of investigating an overlooked Black community, archaeologists unearthed the history of race in the American West. This project contributes to a part of American West history that is not well understood: what life was like in an interracial neighborhood that became synonymous with nonwhite people. This book shows what antiracist archaeology can do for our communities, a scholarly platform that has great potential in the United States.

Introduction

15

1 Forging an Urban Place through Racism The city of Boise was founded during a time of great racial tension in the United States, which largely revolved around the role Native Americans, African Americans, and immigrants would play in American society. Historians frequently describe the history of Boise, Idaho, as a triumph of human beings over an arid, yet fertile land. This narrative centers white people as the primary force for creation, only briefly mentioning the ancestral Northern Shoshone, Chinese and Basque immigrants, and African Americans: All of Boise’s various ethnic groups enjoyed the fabulous climate of many blue-­sky days, dry, clean air, the tree-­lined river, and protection from the wind between the hills and desert plateau in the valley, the same climate that the Northern Shoshone had enjoyed for so long before them. The character of the new town, Boise City, continued differently because the Shoshone had not been allowed to stay. It was distinct because Chinese lived there in relatively large numbers between 1882 and 1910, and . . . Basque came to stay permanently. Small as their numbers were, Boise’s blacks also lent variety and contributed to the city’s culture. The dominant white, Anglo-­Saxon Protestant culture found enrichment with those various people pulling them away from prosaic homogeneity. Over time, racial slurs aimed at Chinese and blacks . . . lessened and softened . . . and praise for them could be found. No race riots, union fights, or civic disorders of note marred the conservative, peaceable community. People from different heritages enjoyed a healthy life and joined together in this isolated environment to build community that served mutual goals of safety, health, and progressive institutions. They enjoyed life at what remained of a feasting and meeting place on the banks of the cottonwood-­lined river after the Shoshone had gone. (MacGregor 2006, 38)

17

This is the historical narrative many Boise residents know and understand. There is brief mention of how Shoshone people were dispossessed of their lands, no discussion of why Boise’s Chinese community was diminished, and few words about what the Basque had to do in order to remain in Boise. There is only scant mention of what it was like to be Black in Boise, Idaho, at the turn of the twentieth century. And there is no mention of what happened to white people in the process of subjugating nonwhites to gain political and economic dominance. In the case of African Americans, the Civil War determined that they would not be chattel, but the failure of Reconstruction and centuries of race-­based discrimination meant Black people continued to be considered second-­class citizens (Holt 2010). Initially the small number of Black people in Boise lived freely among European Americans. Segregation and discrimination were aimed toward Native Americans, Chinese, and Basque, who threatened white political and economic power. Boise schools were integrated, so Black students learned alongside students of all races and ethnicities. Boise’s African American population found work in service industries and as entrepreneurs. By the early twentieth century, Boise’s River Street Neighborhood was stigmatized because it was where nonwhite persons of European ancestry lived even though few African Americans lived there. Not until the mid-­ twentieth century did River Street became a Black place. Discriminatory housing practices meant the influx of African American military personnel and their families during World War II could only live in the place designated for “the others”—­the River Street Neighborhood—­because housing at nearby military installations was reserved for active-­duty servicemen and servicewomen of color. Even though most African Americans left Boise as soon as the war was over, the stigma of Blackness colored the neighborhood’s identity for the rest of its history. Boise and New Western History Historical narratives of the American West do not adequately describe the African American western experience. Aside from California, Black people rarely lived across most of the Mountain West. Blacks were more common in the western states that bordered the Mississippi River: Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Black people formed small communities in less populous areas like the Mountain West state of Idaho (Taylor 1998), which, even in 2019, had fewer than 10,000 African American residents in 18

Forging an Urban Place

a state with more than 1,754,000 people. African Americans were reluctant to go into overtly white spaces like those that dominated the American West. In the American West, the Black experience is largely urban, as cities and towns offered protection, camaraderie, and familiarity (Taylor 1998). Contrary to popular depictions of the European American experience in the West as rugged and marked by violent encounters with Native Americans, banditry, and homesteading, the historic West was primarily an urban place. Most people—­especially the small, isolated, nonwhite communities—­lived in cities; boomtowns, company towns, and regional hubs were spaced widely apart across the region (Ross 2017; Warner 2017; Warner and Purser 2017). Traditional historical narratives in the American West pioneered by Frederick Jackson Turner described the West as a frontier that acted as “a unique and independent agent, little influenced by outside forces and . . . a powerful environmental determinant in shaping human inhabitants to accord with its own requirements.” This narrative played into concepts of European American exceptionalism and dominance (Robbins 1991, 196). Living in the West was difficult; bringing civilization could only be done by an exceptional people at the top of the social and physiological pyramid. From this perspective there was no room for the Native Americans who had settled the region for millennia, nor Spanish colonists and Mexicans who had been living in the Southwest and California for centuries prior to the Gadsden Purchase. Nineteenth-­and much of the twentieth-­century histories of westward migration also failed to mention the role played by a number of different nationalities and races, including Asian immigrants and African Americans (White 1991; Limerick 1987). Historians like Patricia Nelson Limerick (1987), Richard White (1991), and Donald Worster (1992) have challenged this perspective. Rather than a frontier that could be closed, a wild, uninhabited space that could be tamed, New Western History attempts to democratize historical narratives by acknowledging gender, race, class, and industrial capitalism as major factors that shaped how humans interacted with each other in western environments. These historic narratives also sought to complicate Eurocentric narratives of human pasts that have been depicted in the West since the sixteenth century. Since the 1990s archaeologists have dovetailed their research in the American West with leading New Western History scholars. Adding nonwhite people to historical narratives of the West brings them more into

Forging an Urban Place

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alignment with current historical archaeological theory, as archaeological research conducted across the region since the 1990s attempts to address questions previously unasked by aiming its query toward spaces that have not yet been investigated in more inclusive ways (Dixon 2014). United States Army soldiers dispatched to the Idaho Territory to protect Oregon Trail emigrants established several renditions of Fort Boise, the place that would become the city of Boise. Expanding along the Boise River near the fort, the city of Boise began as a service hub for mining communities in the Boise Basin before it became the capital city. European and Chinese American entrepreneurs established businesses in Boise that facilitated mining operations to the north. Homesteads, orchards, and farms that supplied Boise Basin boomtowns dotted the Boise River Valley. When the gold panned out, farmers remained in the area. They expanded their operations by constructing extensive irrigation networks that harnessed the Boise River while also controlling its seasonal floods. Boiseans used trade, transportation, and social networks to participate in the western economy. Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Boise was the epitome of what archaeologist Mark Warner (2017) calls the “Mild, Wild West”—­where residents used revenue derived from local ventures to build households where conspicuous consumption demonstrated they were part of wider American cultural and economic memes despite living in remoteness. Boise’s European American residents adhered to the racial and ethnic hierarchies that had long organized American urban spaces across the country. This dominant European American culture considered Native Americans, Chinese, and minority European immigrants like the Basque as undesirable residents of Boise. After forcing the ancestral Shoshone onto reservations, the racial animosity of European Americans in Boise was primarily directed toward the Chinese in the nineteenth century and minority European immigrants at the turn of the twentieth century. Boise’s African Americans escaped the brunt of racial discrimination until World War II because of their small population. Not until Black soldiers arrived as part of the World War II effort did African Americans begin to experience overt acts of discrimination and segregation. Forging an Urban Place through Racism In the Boise area, Native Americans and Chinese immigrants were the first to face discrimination and violence from European Americans. Fol 20

Forging an Urban Place

lowing the Civil War, European Americans in the American South honed violent strategies against African Americans to thwart Black political and economic gains and to maintain white supremacy. Terrorist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan are only the most emblematic actors in Jim Crow America. Acts of violent intimidation like lynching and massacres were the punctuation used to drive the point of white superiority. Social dogma, which included early anthropological pseudoscience, “proved” Black mental and physiological inferiority. This message was not limited to the southeast and was not applied solely to Black people; it permeated throughout white society across the United States. Government administrators codified discrimination with Jim Crow Laws, providing a legal basis for the separation between white and Black Americans, a key structural element that sustained racism. These activities had pre-­Civil War origins, but Reconstruction helped this coalesce into a coherent strategy designed to maintain white hegemony (Arrington 1994; Alibrandi and Wassmuth 2001). Historian Paul Krugler (2015, 11) calls this strategy “anti-­black collective violence”; however, in the American West, it was liberally applied to immigrants, Native peoples, and African Americans. European Americans brought this supremacist strategy to Idaho. Native peoples had occupied the Boise River drainage for generations by the time European fur trappers arrived. Carbon dating shows the ancestors of today’s Northern Shoshone and Bannock tribes had been in southwestern Idaho for more than 10,000 years and were well adapted to this arid environment by 7,800 years ago (Butler 1986; Green et al. 1998). Ethnographically the Northern Shoshone lived in an area that extended from eastern Oregon into Wyoming and south into Nevada. Combining both Great Basin and Columbia Plateau cultural characteristics, the Shoshone lived in small bands subsisting on seeds, pine nuts, wild wheat, bitterroot, and camas. They also fished for salmon, conducted communal rabbit, sage hen, and antelope drives, and hunted for other game as it was available. Their mobility was greatly increased after obtaining horses in the late sixteenth century, and the Shoshone people began to project their presence in the northern Great Plains east of Idaho (Butler 1966, 1986; Murphy and Murphy 1986; Wells and Hart 2000, 18–­20). The location where the city of Boise would evolve was an important Native American trading place in the Snake River corridor that traverses Idaho from east to west. The Boise River, a tributary of the Snake, had several places where Great Basin and western Great Plains groups congregated seasonally for

Forging an Urban Place

21

trade, including the location of present-­day Boise. This is what attracted European fur trappers in the 1810s (Wells and Hart 2000). By the 1830s American fur trappers had joined British trappers, establishing a permanent non-­Native presence (Schwantes 1991, 32–­38). Despite the persistence of British and American trappers, French trappers’ name for the river stuck: Rivière Bois (Wood River). It became known as “Boise” after 1836, although it remained labeled as Wood River on Hudson’s Bay Company maps (Wells 1982; Wells and Hart 2000, 13). Fortified trading posts were erected along the Boise River, including two named Fort Boise, one in 1834 at the confluence of the Boise and Snake Rivers, approximately forty miles west of Boise City. This was moved in 1838 before being abandoned in 1855 because of frequent Native American raiding (Schwantes 1991; Wells and Hart 2000). African American fur trapper James Beckworth is reported to have trapped along the Snake River before his death in 1836 and is considered the first Black person noted in Idaho (Oliver 2006). Native American attacks on these fortified fur trading posts intensified in the 1840s and 1850s as thousands of immigrants flowed across southern Idaho on the Oregon Trail. The United States Army intensified campaigns against Shoshone bands, but their maneuvers left Fort Boise so vulnerable that it was abandoned between 1854 and 1860 (Schwantes 1991; Wells 1982; Wells and Hart 2000). The August 2, 1862, discovery of gold in the Boise Basin brought a surge of non-­Native people into the region, further straining water, forage, and timber resources on Shoshone and Bannock lands. Between fifteen thousand and twenty thousand people streamed into the Boise Basin mining camps by the summer of 1863, leading to the establishment of the Idaho Territory on March 2, 1863 (Wells and Hart 2000). The 1863 Organic Act establishing the Idaho Territory brought Indian agents to southern Idaho and spawned a series of treaties. A third Fort Boise was established in 1863 along the Boise River in what is now the city of Boise. This garrison’s main objective was to use force and cohesion to prevent the Shoshone from hindering white goals in the area. The Treaty of Fort Boise called for all Shoshone lands within thirty miles of the Boise River to be ceded; the treaty was signed on October 4, 1864. On April 12, 1866, the Bruneau Treaty sought to force the relinquishment of additional lands south of Boise. These treaties were never ratified by Congress and were protested by Shoshone bands (Schwantes 1991, 47). As thousands of miners swarmed into the region, the Shoshone and Ban 22

Forging an Urban Place

nock continued to fight back during the Snake War of 1866–­1867. Fort Boise was the operating base for engagements in southwestern Idaho and southeastern Oregon that ultimately led to the suppression of Shoshone freedom (Wells and Hart 2000). Pres. Andrew Johnson signed an executive order in 1867, establishing the Fort Hall Reservation east of Boise for the Shoshone exiled from the Boise River Valley. Shoshone and Bannock people from the Snake River drainage joined them in 1869 (Schwantes 1991; Madsen 2000). After thousands of years in the Boise River area, most Shoshone were removed to a reservation three hundred miles away from their ancestral lands. Native Americans would never again comprise the majority of Boise’s population. As happened elsewhere in the American West, thousands of Chinese immigrants made the voyage to remote gold strikes hoping to strike it rich; as was the case elsewhere in the American West, racism prevented them from fully benefitting from the economic boom caused by the gold rush. During the 1860s thousands of Chinese immigrants came to the Idaho Territory in search of opportunity in the Boise Basin. Before being constrained by racist laws, they staked claims and reworked claims originally mined by European American miners wherever possible (Arrington 1994). In the American West, Chinese immigrants were part of a transnational migration that accelerated during the 1840s, expanding rapidly until the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. During the nineteenth century, Chinese immigrants settled in countries throughout the Pacific Rim; an estimated 380,000 came to the United States mainland (Voss and Allen 2008). Most of these immigrants arrived via sponsorship from labor companies organized at the local level in China and entered into agreements with Chinese villagers to cover immigration costs in exchange for repayment within a specified time. As a result the majority of nineteenth-­century Chinese immigrants came from a small region of China, specifically the Guangdong and Fujian Provinces, and found employment through connections with other Chinese immigrants already working outside China (Voss and Allen 2008; González-­Tennant 2011). Upon arrival these immigrants formed communities, started businesses, and became integral parts of local economies. Most found work in labor industries like mining; they also built small stores and other businesses in their new homes to supply the expatriate Chinese community with familiar goods and services. Despite being relegated to previously worked claims and lower-­grade hard rock claims, Chinese presence in the Boise Basin, South Boise, and

Forging an Urban Place

23

Owyhee Mountains increased throughout the rest of the decade as Chinese miners continued to stream into the territory. By 1870 there were 4,274 Chinese people in Idaho, where they comprised more than a third of all non-­Native Americans in the territory and nearly two-­thirds of Idaho’s miners. About two thousand Chinese miners were working claims in the Boise Basin in 1869–­1870, where they accounted for about half of the region’s population (Arrington 1994, 252–­53). Until the 1870s mining laws did not explicitly prevent Chinese miners from staking claims in Idaho, but they were taxed for the privilege of mining as early as 1864 (Yu 1991). Between the 1870s and 1900, most mining districts had established laws against Chinese miners patenting claims. By the early 1900s Chinese immigrants were the most prevalent group of nonwhite people in Idaho’s mining towns and larger cities. Anti-­Chinese racism swelled soon after their arrival in the American West as action was taken to maintain white supremacy—­action that included both legislation and violence. In 1854 the California Supreme Court established that Chinese people were not legally “white” and thus could not testify against European Americans. While they were granted the right to form contracts and court proceedings in 1880, the United States signed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, which prohibited the entry of Chinese laborers. Only wives, children, and business professionals could enter the country. Congress renewed this exclusion act in 1892 and 1902, before making it indefinite in 1904. The Scott Act of 1888 limited the reentry of Chinese immigrants, forcing the Chinese in the United States to choose whether they would stay in the country indefinitely (Voss and Allen 2008). Working for lower wages than European Americans, Chinese miners in the West became scapegoats for mine owners and the white community. There had been anti-­Chinese agitation in Idaho as early as 1865, but these sentiments turned particularly violent during the 1870s and 1880s (Yu 1991). In 1878 four Chinese immigrants were tried for the murder of a white miner in Idaho City, about twenty-­ eight miles north of Boise, even though the white person had shot three Chinese individuals, killing two of them. Thirteen Chinese miners were killed in another massacre at Oro Grande in 1879 (Yu 1991, 250–­52). In 1885 in Pierce, Idaho, a lynch mob killed four Chinese immigrants because they were implicated in the murder of a white miner (Arrington 1994, 373–­74). All of these events took place before the savage murders

24

Forging an Urban Place

of thirty Chinese miners by a group of white people in Hells Canyon in 1887 (Yu 1991; Nokes 2009). In the face of all this adversity and violence, Chinese immigrants in Idaho first retreated to urban areas, but discriminatory immigration policies that prevented the arrival of more immigrants led to the decline of Chinatowns across the American West. While Boise’s Chinatown grew from 366 before 1870 to 1,279 in 1890, its growth declined after the passing of the Scott Act and into the 1900s (Yu 1991). With no way to add to their population, Chinese communities in the West coalesced in larger towns like San Francisco and Seattle. Chinese communities in smaller towns like Boise withered. Traditional historical narratives highlight African American cowboys, buffalo soldiers, railroad workers, and sometimes homesteaders (Painter 1992; Katz 1996; Taylor 1998). Despite the importance of these narratives, the American West was an urban place for African Americans, as it was for most non-­Native American westerners during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The West as an urban place conflicts with the romantic narrative of the western frontier. Allmendinger (2005, xiii) explains, “Since the West is not urban, in the minds of people who cling to the notion of a mythic frontier, the concept of a modern multicultural West is not very popular.” Urban settlements were important for all westerners as they were the cradles of culture, commerce, and community necessary for survival away from established cities in the eastern United States. For African Americans and other nonwhite people, cities in the West helped maintain the cultural cohesion necessary to survive in the face of European American discrimination. Cities helped Black westerners maintain a sense of community and provide an important network of connections required to obtain work, housing, and camaraderie (Taylor 1998). Cities functioned similarly for Chinese immigrants (Chang 2003), religious outsiders like the Mormons (Bowman 2012), and European immigrants not yet considered white enough for European Americans (Jacobson 1998; Totoricagüena 2004). Safety was important as racial violence was common in the United States during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the American West was no different. Pogroms against the Chinese and Native Americans pockmark the region’s history (White 1991). Nonwhite people were reluctant to move away from population centers where there was comparative safety in numbers.



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African American Discrimination: Under the Radar During the nineteenth century, most Blacks settled on the geographic periphery of what can be considered the American West in states like Texas, Kansas, and Oklahoma. African Americans tended to avoid places with small Black populations like the Dakotas, Utah, or Idaho unless clear job prospects were possible. In a society rife with potentially violent racism and pervasive antiblack discrimination, it was dangerous for Black people to find themselves alone in predominately white communities (Oliver 1995; Taylor 1998, 104–­5). During the nineteenth century, Black people in the West lived where other Black people were already present. Texas had the largest Black population in the West, followed by Oklahoma and Kansas. San Francisco and Los Angeles were anomalies in the fact that they had significant Black communities in the 1800s (Taylor 1998). Racist homestead and mining laws prevented most African Americans from acquiring land and resources from the public domain in the American West. Black homesteaders like the Exodusters of the 1870s, who obtained land in Colorado, Kansas, and Oklahoma, were among the minority of African American agriculturalists in the West (Painter 1992; Taylor 1998). Antiblack sentiment in Idaho during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was not as intense as it was elsewhere in the United States. African Americans comprised only a small segment of Idaho’s nonwhite population throughout the territorial period and into the twentieth century, and Boise has always had a small Black population. Idaho’s Black population remained small throughout the territorial period as African Americans in the United States have been reluctant to move to communities without Black spaces (Taylor 1998). Boise never developed a large African American community. This lack of African Americans has left Boise out of the conversations regarding Blackness and whiteness in the American West. Because Black people in the American West congregated in small communities, life for African Americans in remote places like Idaho was urban, close-­knit, and conducted in obscurity. Although there were 284,000 Black people in the American West in 1870, there were only 60 within the Idaho Territory, whereas there were more than 4,000 Chinese immigrants in Idaho. The Black population in the Idaho Territory shrank to fifty-­three by 1880. At statehood in 1890, there were 201 African Americans in Idaho, growing to 293 in 1900. By comparison more than 765,000 African Americans lived in the American West at that time (Oli 26

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ver 1995, 2006; Taylor 1998, 135). Early racial animosity was directed first toward Native Americans, to dispossess them of their land and resources, and next to Chinese people, who were perceived as taking white jobs and wealth and threatening to become the predominate group in Idaho (Yu 1991). The Black presence in Idaho provoked none of these fears, allowing Boise’s Black people to fly beneath the radar (Oliver 1995, 5). The earliest African Americans in the Boise area were part of United States Army activities out of Fort Boise. In the nineteenth century, a contingent of Black soldiers lived outside the city of Boise. Black soldiers out of Fort Boise spent most of their time in the high desert searching for Shoshone and Bannock people hostile to the appropriation of their land (Mercier and Simon-­Smolinski 1990). After the Shoshone were forced onto reservations, African American soldiers from Boise, Spokane, and other Pacific Northwest posts were used to break union strikes in North Idaho communities in the 1890s. The use of Black soldiers to control Idaho’s miners was used in labor union advertisements to rally white miners’ opposition to African Americans in their communities (Taylor 1998). A small number of African Americans traversed Idaho on the Oregon Trail and as railroad employees. Few of these individuals stayed long (Etlinger 1987; Mercier and Simon-­Smolinski 1990; Oliver 2006). Most Blacks in Idaho congregated in urban centers like Boise and Pocatello, where they could find work on the railroad, in service industries, or by starting businesses (Mercier and Simon-­Smolinski 1990; Oliver 2006). By 1910 there were forty-­seven African Americans living in Boise, but they were not restricted to a specific part of town like the Chinese. Boise’s Black people lived throughout the city at that time. A Black neighborhood had yet to coalesce, and there was also no Black church. African American churches served multiple functions, and by the twentieth century, they were at the heart of most Black communities. African Americans could find housing, food, clothing, information, and, most importantly, camaraderie through the church (Oliver 1995). Boise had an African American pastor named Rev. William Riley Hardy as early as 1904. Sermons were held in different homes and businesses at that time, including at a blacksmith’s shop in the city’s commercial district (Oliver 1995, 7–­9). The first Black church in Boise, St. Paul Baptist Church, was built in 1912 at 124 Broadway Avenue on donated land, as Black people were not allowed to purchase property in Boise. Figure 2 shows some of the ways the church has become a meeting place and anchor for the local Black community.

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Fig. 2. St. Paul Baptist Church, 2014. Photo by the author.

The church has remained at the heart of Boise’s Black community, and by the 1970s one-­fifth of Boise’s Black population was affiliated with St. Paul Baptist Church (Oliver 1995, 9). In 1998 St. Paul Baptist Church moved into a new building; the original church (listed on the National Register of Historic Places) now serves as the Idaho Black History Museum. Building a Neighborhood South of the Tracks Building upon the land that would become the River Street Neighborhood is directly related to two late nineteenth-­century developments: the arrival of the railroad in Boise and the erection of flood control dams along the Boise River. Gold in the Boise Basin wanned by the 1870s. Cities—­like Boise in Idaho and Walla Walla and Spokane in Washington—­that serviced the goldfields fared much better than the mining boomtowns that initially drew attention to the area. The settlement around Fort Boise continued to grow during the 1860s and 1870s as land was cleared, irrigation ditches constructed, and agricultural fields planted. Log structures gave way to frame buildings, followed by churches, schools, and substantial brick buildings. By 1868 Boise had more than 400 buildings, 250 private dwellings, 20 saloons, 2 churches, and 4 elementary schools filled with 200 students (Schwantes 1991; Wells and Hart 2000). 28

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As the commercial and agricultural hub of southern Idaho, irrigation was key to the city’s growth. The earliest cultivated fields in what would eventually become a city sprouted up along the banks of the Boise River, approximately three-­fourths of a mile south of Fort Boise in the area of the future River Street Neighborhood. Diversion dams and canals conveyed water to fields away from the Boise River. By 1876 more than fifty individuals and ditch companies had filed claims along the river, which was a reliable source of water but prone to frequent flooding disastrous to local farmers. In 1876 a large flood destroyed many of these levees, diversion dams, and ditches along with several homes along the river. Chinese farmers were quick to build dams to protect their fields south of downtown Boise, but not all farmers were as lucky (Stacy 1993, 3–­5). Undaunted by the floods, major canal expansions were launched in 1878 and 1882 (Wells and Hart 2000, 39). These plans stalled due to floods and lack of capital. A flood in 1896 caused widespread damage to truck farms on the floodplain that supplied vegetables to the city while also destroying lumber mills, warehouses, utilities, and bridges (Stacy 1993, 6–­8). The area that would become the River Street Neighborhood, which had only been recently platted, was spared the brunt of the damage, although the threat of flooding hampered development in this location until the construction of Diversion Dam in 1909 and Arrowrock Dam in 1910. Funded and designed by the United States Reclamation Service, these two dams provided electricity, additional irrigation water, and sorely needed flood control (Stacy 1993, 8–­12; Wells and Hart 2000, 78–­79, 85). Catastrophic flooding was less common after their completion. Construction in the area that would become the River Street Neighborhood increased immediately after the dams were finished. As the leading regional commercial center in southern Idaho, Boise sought a rail connection for larger opportunities and connections outside the state. Schemes to bring a rail line to Boise were integral to the creation of the River Street Neighborhood as the proposed alignment through town made it strategically located to benefit from any railroad-­ related commercial development. Various plans for a railroad were pitched during the 1860s and 1870s that never came to fruition (Wells and Hart 2000). Pro-­railroad advocacy reached a crescendo during the 1880s, and boosters believed their campaigns had come to fruition when construction crews on the Oregon Short Line (osl) Railroad entered southern Idaho on June 16, 1883. To their disappointment the osl chose a route south

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of Boise (Wells and Hart 2000, 43, 45). City officials remained hopeful and proposed the construction of a fifteen-­mile-­long branch line to the osl mainline. A “Railroad Reserve” is depicted in an 1885 Boise City map adjacent to what would become the River Street Neighborhood, demonstrating property owners and city officials were willing to set aside land for a railroad. Rail access to Boise became a reality when the Idaho Central Railway completed the branch line to Boise on September 4, 1887 (Wells and Hart 2000, 50–­51). The spur track passed just south of downtown Boise, and over the next decade, a series of warehouses, switchyards, and a roundhouse flanked its alignment. A small strip of agricultural land remained on the floodplain south of the railroad tracks, land that would become the River Street Neighborhood. As soon as the railroad was a reality, real estate speculators launched various development schemes and subdivision additions that would culminate in a residential area wedged between rail warehouses and the Boise River. A homesteader named John McClellan, who had lived along the Boise River since 1864, owned most of what would become River Street. McClellan arrived to what would become Boise in 1863, before the city had even been surveyed, but left the area soon after as it was still occupied by Native people hostile to white settlers. After a short stint as a miner in the Owyhee Mountains, McClellan returned in 1864 to establish a ferry across the Boise River in what would become the River Street Neighborhood near present-­day Ninth Street. McClellan patented this property on the floodplain and maintained an orchard there since the 1870s (Hawley 1920). McClellan and other property owners south of the tracks sold their land to developers in the 1890s. The Riverside, Miller, and City Park additions were platted during the 1890s. City administrators and developers planned for this area to become occupied by workers employed at the warehouses, railroad facilities, and businesses in downtown Boise (Stacy 1995; Demo 2006). By the early 1900s, the neighborhood was a mixture of commercial and residential properties, as shown in figure 3, but not all of the lots had yet been developed (Sanborn Map Company 1903, 34; 1912, 36, 41–­42). Floods continued to periodically plague the neighborhood, but they were greatly diminished when compared to the 1800s, so development in the neighborhood was consistent and steady into the 1930s (Stacy 1995; Wells and Hart 2000). The city of Boise continued to grow following Idaho’s statehood in 1890, and historical documents, maps, photographs, and oral histories 30

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Fig. 3. Evolution of buildings in project area, 1912 and 1949. Adapted from Sanborn Fire Insurance maps by the author.

illustrate how the neighborhood south of the railroad tracks developed in the first decades of the 1900s. Initially city residents considered it an attractive district. The neighborhood was close to the river’s riparian zone, which Boise residents used for picnicking and other recreation. In 1902 Riverside Park opened as an attractive, convenient place for Boiseans to enjoy amusements, have a picnic, play sports, and hear music. The park was near the intersections of River Street and Capitol Boulevard and featured a dance pavilion, bandstand, theater, carousel, and baseball field (Hart 1989, 143; Demo 2006, 17–­18). Visiting major league and professional Pacific Northwest teams played several memorable baseball games here. The San Francisco Opera Company performed at Riverside Park after the earthquake in 1906 while awaiting a new venue back home (Hart 1989). Riverside Park remained a city attraction until around 1912 when railroad warehouses were built on a portion of the park. The remaining open space became a Girl Scout camp and Forest Service office until the mid-­twentieth century. Former neighborhood residents recall using the softball field at the Girl Scout camp into the 1960s (Madry 2014; Terrell III 2014). Housing stock in the River Street Neighborhood included several “ready-­built” houses along with a smaller number of vernacular houses of various styles (Demo 2006). By the early 1900s, railroad transport helped popularize prefabricated houses—­ready-­built houses made from materials manufactured elsewhere in the country that could be shipped to the owner’s property by rail and assembled there based on instructions enclosed in the packaging (McAlester 2013). Demo (2006, 32) explains the popularity of these dwellings by American homebuyers: “By the early 1900s, the grandiose architectural plans for ‘cottage’ and ‘bungalow’ were scaled down by enterprising home-­building companies as they responded to huge demands for affordable, quality housing from a growing American working-­class that was more than willing to settle for small, uncomplicated, and unadorned homes.” Companies compiled plan books and catalogs for ready-­built houses during the 1900s through the 1920s that allowed home buyers to select the floorplan and features for homes they wished to buy. Materials and elements no longer needed skilled carpenters and architects for construction and design. Most of the early dwellings in River Street were one-­ level, detached, single-­family houses placed at the front of the lot with outbuildings like outhouses, sheds, stables, and garages at the rear of the 32

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lot. The majority had only one or two bedrooms. Maps show how over time, outbuildings were occasionally converted to dwellings that could be rented out by property owners (Sanborn Map Company 1906, 1912, 1949; see fig. 3). Of European Descent but Not Quite White Due to the complicated nature of whiteness in the United States, Basque immigrants to Idaho were not initially considered white people. This is important for understanding the Basque experience in the American West, but it is also relevant to the history of the River Street Neighborhood. Basque numbered among the earliest residents of this part of the city, and the neighborhood was integral to the survival of the Basque community during its formative years in Boise. The neighborhood was where the Basque could practice their customs and language away from the gaze of Boise’s European Americans, who would use these traditions to fuel anti-­Basque stereotypes and discrimination (Totoricagüena 2004; Demo 2006). Unlike the Shoshone and Bannock, Chinese immigrants, or African Americans, the Basque’s fair skin color and European heritage gave them the opportunity to become white. In order to have whiteness, the Basque had to leave the stigmatized neighborhoods where discrimination and a desire to continue cultural practices prevented them from being accepted by the European American community of Boise. They found a way to persist despite persecution and benefit from white privilege in a way that was not possible for African American residents. Basque history in Boise complicates the way whiteness is understood in American West historiography and archaeology, demonstrating that there is more to being white than skin color and ancestry. The Basque diaspora refers to the transnational communities of people of Basque ancestry living outside Basque Country, called Euskal Herria in the native Basque language. The real and the romanticized histories of Basque Country in northern Spain and southeastern France have played a formative role in the continuation of Basque identity abroad. Euskal Herria is neither a country nor a state; it is a geographic region with a shared ethnicity, language, and heritage (Totoricagüena 2005). Due to high fertility rates and inheritance customs that left land to first sons, Basque second sons and daughters were forced to make a living in urban places, becoming tradespeople, mariners, and laborers in Basque cities. By the sixteenth century, Basque people had long been part of European

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colonization, wars, and exploration in North and South America (Totoricagüena 2005). Basque emigrants used informal networks originating in Euskal Herria to find employment and housing and maintain connections with families back in Europe. As a result region-­to-­region migration has been prevalent. For example most Basque people in southwestern Idaho came from a Basque area within an approximately fifteen-­mile radius around the town of Guernica, or Gernika (Totoricagüena 2005, 91). The first wave of single Basque men came to Idaho during the late nineteenth century, paving the way for their brothers, uncles, and cousins to follow. The first Basques found work as laborers and livestock tenders, particularly in the sheepherding industry. They agreed to contracts for several years of service, but these contracts could be canceled or extended at the whim of the herd owner. This system remained in place well into the twentieth century (Bieter and O’Dell 2014). By the twentieth century, wives, sisters, and other women joined their male relatives and helped to solidify a Basque diasporic community in Boise. While boarding houses in downtown Boise housed most single men and entrepreneurial families servicing the Basque community, a second enclave of Basque people arose in the River Street Neighborhood. The first Basques arrived in the neighborhood in 1902 and were followed by a few more Basque families and sheepherders during the 1910s. Extended families in River Street shared homes, congregating around Lee and Ash Streets and on Lover’s Lane (Alegria 1987; Demo 2006, 105–­6). The Basque suffered discrimination in Idaho because of their unique language and customs. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, European Americans in Boise did not consider Basque immigrants to be “white,” and they faced difficulties finding work and housing. At school Basque children were ridiculed because of their language and the way they dressed. Basque children were not allowed to speak their traditional language in Boise schools (Totoricagüena 2004). Anti-­Basque sentiments persisted well into the twentieth century. Racist cattle ranchers resented the presence of Basque shepherds on southern Idaho’s open ranges, likening the Basque to African Americans through racial slurs. Jose Luis, a Basque shepherd who came to Idaho in 1958, remembers being called a “dirty black Basco” by white Idahoans (Bieter and O’Dell 2014, 22). Blackness had long been considered a negative trait in the United States; this memory shows how the stigma of Blackness could even be 34

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levied on European immigrants. One way the Basque could overcome this discrimination was by suppressing their traditions—­dance, language, and dress—­and by adopting European American customs. Another mechanism was distancing themselves from other nonwhite communities. In Boise this meant moving out of River Street and the downtown Basque district. To do this the Basque would have to conceal their cultural roots until a time when they would not be seen as a liability. An increase in the Black population of River Street provided motivation for Basque and other European immigrants to move elsewhere in the city. As the African American population rose in the River Street Neighborhood during the 1940s, Basque families moved away to escape the stigmatization of living in “the Black neighborhood” (Demo 2006). River Street Becomes a Black Place Structural and de jure discrimination against nonwhite people hindered hopes of profiting from the opportunities provided by living in western communities, and nonwhite people needed a community of others of their race to help navigate life in racist western cities. Cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Oakland were large enough to provide spaces where Black people could continue cultural practices, forge relationships important for reciprocity, and provide some insulation from discrimination (Taylor 1998). Over hundreds of years of living in a racist society, African Americans used Black spaces to survive in a racist country. Discrimination forced African Americans into segregated urban spaces, but, as was the case with Boise’s Basque community, this segregation provided space to maintain cultural practices that were essential to navigating a racist society. Being left alone gave Black people the power to shape their own communities in the American West. African Americans transplanted Black culture wherever they went because the simple presence of Blackness transformed otherwise benign, even white, urban spaces into “the Black Neighborhood” or “Chocolate Cities” (Hunter and Robinson 2018). Creating new Chocolate Cities in the American West accelerated with the onset of World War II when thousands of Black workers went west in search of work (Taylor 1998, Taylor 2012). Wartime industries provided the impetus for Black people to venture into landscapes where few African Americans had previously existed. Discrimination, segregation, and racism caused by the presence of Blackness followed African Americans across the United States like a shadow, a reality that remade urban spaces in the American West.

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Boise’s small Black population survived because of a network of reciprocal relationships that could be relied upon in times of need. At the core of this network were relatives—­aunts, uncles, and grandparents—­as well as adopted African American “family,” who depended upon each other for food, shelter, clothing, and employment. African Americans did what they could to help each other due to both reciprocity and lifelong experience with the deprivation caused by structural racism. Oliver (1995, 10) writes, “Very few African Americans could hope to acquire a surplus of goods or money in any degree because of the needs of the entire community were so great.” This adaptive reciprocity network included persons of all ages and was extended to all Black folk throughout the small community. Children were fed, housed, and clothed regardless of whether they were genetic relatives. Black people also watched out for each other’s children, freely disciplining them when necessary. They also taught each other’s children about racism and how to safely navigate the surrounding white community. In this way African Americans in Boise were able to keep their children out of trouble, reinforce acceptable behavior, and avoid racially motivated violence. The actions of African Americans in Boise were a continuation of survival mechanisms originating from the Jim Crow era in the eastern and Midwestern United States (Oliver 1995, 10). African Americans moving to the River Street Neighborhood solidified its identity as a Black space. Black people were able to live throughout the city prior to World War II due to their small number, but the arrival of Black soldiers and airmen to nearby military installations roused alarm among Boise’s white population (Osa 1982). The airfields at Gowen Field, adjacent to the city of Boise, and Mountain Home Air Force Base, approximately twenty miles east of town, expanded during World War II, bringing Black military personnel and their families to southwestern Idaho. Base housing was provided for Black soldiers, but the military did not provide housing for their families. Because of River Street’s association with Basque and other European immigrants from the 1910s to 1930s, the neighborhood was already affiliated with nonwhite people. Thus African Americans were forced to rent in River Street, as it was the only place where nonwhite people could live in Boise (Stewart 1980; Osa 1982, 5). Property owners in the neighborhood saw an opportunity for this new population of Black renters; European American landlords were quick to capitalize on the housing boom by renting small houses to multiple families and converting outbuildings to dwellings. As was the case throughout 36

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the United States, African Americans had difficulties buying property in urban spaces. Segregated neighborhoods were about the only places Black people could own homes, despite widespread real estate discrimination and lack of lending opportunities. In River Street Black-­owned houses were homes and investments; owners got a chance to earn extra revenue from their properties. Bessie Stewart was a Black homeowner in River Street who convinced her husband to buy another house in the neighborhood around 1945. The Stewarts immediately rented it out to four Black servicemen and their wives, who subdivided the two-­bedroom house to accommodate its many residents. Stewart and her husband did not move into the house until after the war, continuing to reside on the dairy farm outside Boise where they had been living since 1943 (Stewart 1980). The result was an overcrowded neighborhood of working-­class white people, who had to live there because it was all they could afford, and Black families, who had no other places they could live, regardless of their economic status. Additionally Black renters were charged more than whites for the same dilapidated houses. Most African Americans left Boise at the end of World War II, but the stigmatization of the River Street Neighborhood as a Black place remained long after. Racial lines hardened in Boise and many other cities in the American West as discriminatory housing covenants concentrated nonwhite people in specific neighborhoods until the Fair Housing Act of 1968 (Rothstein 2017). The small population of African Americans prevented the overt expression of Jim Crow that prevailed elsewhere in the country: Boise schools remained integrated, and Black people in Boise could work outside the neighborhood. A few found ways to own property and operate businesses in River Street. The same race-­based violence that had plagued Chinese and Native American lives in the nineteenth century rarely occurred against Boise’s Black community. The neighborhood was still largely occupied by poor whites, many of whom forged durable friendships with their Black neighbors, but the presence of African Americans made it a Black space because it contained Black people, not because most of the people there were Black. Black spaces arise in cities because they become the scaena where Black people are able to (re)create Blackness through their cultural expression, beliefs, and everyday lives. White persons living in these spaces are considered closer to Blackness and, therefore, further from whiteness because of their address. Marcus Hunter and Zandria Robinson describe how Black

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villages are established in the United States. Black people are able to navigate hostile landscapes by moving from Black village to village. Not always labeled on maps, Hunter and Robinson (2018, 86–­87) explain that Black villages are “a precursor to the places on chocolate maps; a description of existing places, small towns, neighborhoods in big cities, and Black back sides of places on chocolate maps: and a disposition toward community life that reflects Black people’s collective practices of resistance in and through place.” Black neighborhoods are wherever Black people make their homes, but Black neighborhoods frequently included non-­Black people too, especially when a city has a small Black population. This is most common in cities with small Black populations. Michele Boyd discusses how race relations in Chicago during the late nineteenth century were harmonious enough that elites pursued an integrationist agenda. Chicago’s Black population between 1870 and 1890 was barely more than 1 percent of its total population. African Americans still created “colonies” (e.g., geographic population clusters) but did not compose monoracial neighborhoods. Black enclaves were found in several parts of the city, and Black people congregated to support each other and express their culture among like-­minded individuals. White people in Chicago at that time did not fear Black political or economic power, so they did not take overt action to segregate themselves from Black enclaves, even entertaining Black calls to eliminate discrimination in the city (Boyd 2008, 4–­6). Things changed dramatically in the early twentieth century as African Americans surged into Chicago as part of the Great Migration. Black colonies expanded beyond their recognized boundaries, sparking the ire of whites and European immigrants who were also vying for scarce housing and jobs. Black elites sought to physically distance themselves from poorer Black emigrants, while white administrators and property owners created increasingly strict housing regulations. The white citizenry also resented the rapidly growing Black population, responding with violence and terrorism. Between 1917 and 1921 Black homes in Chicago were bombed at least fifty-­eight times in an attempt to remove them from white neighborhoods (Boyd 2006, 8–­11). Chicago’s Black population continued to grow throughout the twentieth century, surging 77 percent from 1940 to 1950, despite housing and employment discrimination. A 1948 Supreme Court decision prohibiting racially restrictive housing covenants opened up new areas for Black people to move but also sparked rapid white flight as white Chicagoans emigrated to suburban neighborhoods. The city 38

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started disinvesting from Black neighborhoods, which disincentivized absentee landlords to maintain their properties, and segregation meant that African American renters would be forced to pay higher prices for inferior housing stock. This also diminished the value of Black-­owned homes. Beginning in the 1940s Chicago’s administrators targeted Black neighborhoods for urban renewal, establishing planning committees and empowering housing authorities to demolish Black homes to make way for high-­rise apartment towers (Boyd 2008). While Boise’s Black population was nowhere close in size as Chicago’s, the town did have a Black village that suffered a similar fate. City administrators disinvested from Black urban spaces across the United States, including in Boise. Landlords neglected their properties in River Street, and many city officials considered the place blighted by the 1970s. This would have a powerful effect on the neighborhood during the urban renewal campaigns that preoccupied American cites during the 1960s and 1970s. As discussed later in this book, urban renewal and targeted redevelopment would nearly annihilate the buildings in River Street. Intact archaeological deposits contain the echoes of the neighborhood’s former residents. Material culture discarded and forgotten by Basque, poor whites, and African Americans was the target of archaeology conducted on the 600 block of Ash Street. The archaeology of River Street complicates Boise’s whitewashed history by describing the process by which European Americans used racial mores and discrimination to cultivate a landscape stigmatized because of the people who lived there. While white people rarely used overt violence against Black people in Boise, the entire city is built upon the violent dispossession of Northern Shoshone people. When Chinese immigrants surged into the Boise Basin in search of gold, white people created discriminatory laws to discourage their presence. When that did not work, Chinese were killed. Basque immigrants had the potential to use their European phenotype to become white if they chose, but they were forced to hide their cultural expression to benefit from white privilege. Boise’s African Americans also arrived in search of opportunity and formed a close-­knit village to survive. Their small population allowed them to avoid violence, but their Black skin prevented them from full participation in society; centuries-­old racial mores were activated as soon as Boise’s Black population rose. Researching the River Street Neighborhood demonstrates some of the ways white supremacy is manifest in the American West, all of which is rooted in America’s racialization process.

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2 Race, Structural Racism, and Whiteness in Boise, Idaho During the twentieth century, work shaped daily life for River Street residents. Life was not easy. People found work however they could. Itinerate workers frequented the River Street Neighborhood because it was next to Boise’s rail corridor (D. Thomas 1981). Most residents cobbled together an income by performing a range of service activities, doing odd jobs, or working from their own homes. Few residents had long-­term positions. Those who did were janitors, shoe shiners, housecleaners, restaurant cooks, and other wage workers (Perkins 1980; Stewart 1980; Tigner 1981). River Street residents used personal connections to find employment to make ends meet. When money was forthcoming, neighbors borrowed from each other with the understanding that they could expect reciprocity in the future. Regardless of race this was the way things were before and after the Great Depression. “People in those days helped other people. Like on this block, when a new family would move in and if they were hard up or the man wasn’t working or something, all of the people went together, fixed a box to take to them of food stuff and things. Nobody thought anything about it” (D. Thomas 1981). Ken Thomas recalled that, like nearly all the other white people who lived in the neighborhood, his parents worked long hours leaving their children to do household tasks on their own. His parents managed a café in downtown Boise that was open from breakfast until late into the night, so the Thomas kids woke themselves up for school and walked about a half-­mile across the railroad tracks to the restaurant for breakfast (K. Thomas 2015). Children also worked hard in the neighborhood. Chores were not optional for River Street kids—­they were mandatory. Warner Terrell III and Richard Madry (2014), Black men who grew up in River Street, recalled how they were responsible for a range of household tasks including weeding and watering the family garden, doing landscaping, and cleaning coal ovens and stoves in addition to doing homework. Only when chores were

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done could children freely play in vacant lots, gravel pits, and along the Boise River bank. Adults of all races kept an eye on neighborhood children, correcting their behavior when necessary, informing parents of misdeeds whenever they happened. Jack and Lois Wheeler (2015) said surveillance from adults made it hard for children to get into too much trouble. Living in River Street meant you were part of a community where knowing your neighbors helped make a hard-­knock life a bit more livable. Census records reveal most of the people living in the neighborhood were white, but the neighborhood’s Black residents gave it its most enduring identity—­the presence of a few dozen people had the power to make it a Black place. Longtime African American resident Bessie Stewart rented her home during World War II to other Black people and only moved into the house when the war was over to become the only Black family on her street: “Well as I say, when we moved here, we did finally move in, . . . we were the only colored family besides the Hortons and . . . Mrs. Whiteman. . . . All the rest of them was white” (Stewart 1980, 11). Stewart also said that although the neighborhood’s social circles revolved around church activities, the Black church in Boise (possibly St. Paul Baptist Church) was unable to get more than about thirty parishioners until after the 1960s. In an interview Ellen Perkins (1981) said most Black families lived in River Street between 1935 and 1965, but Black residents started to inhabit previously white spaces in the neighborhood during the late 1960s. Still she was one of the only Black residents in the neighborhood throughout her tenure (Perkins 1981). White residents in the River Street Neighborhood provide an opportunity to investigate the complicated nature of whiteness as a racial identity in the United States. European ancestry gave them a white racial identity, but their economic status and the fact that they lived in River Street tinged their whiteness with a certain level of stigma. River Street was an economically disadvantaged place in the city of Boise. Its residents had a lifeway synonymous with other impoverished urban Americans across the United States. For Black residents, structural racism hindered economic and political gains. Created to maintain the transatlantic slave trade and slave economy, Blackness is one of the oldest racial categories in the United States, and it has been specifically designed to keep African Americans as second-­class citizens. Blackness is also considered the opposite of whiteness—­Blackness being composed of the lack of attributes ascribed to white people. Race, Racism, and Whiteness

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This chapter explores how whiteness is created and maintained in the United States and Boise, and the symbiotic relationship between whiteness and Blackness as racial categories. It also interrogates how the racialization process, which is situational, positional, and constantly changing, affects persons of European ancestry living in Black spaces like River Street. River Street is unique because it is a space ascribed to nonwhite people but was largely occupied by European Americans, a group that is racialized as white. The white people who lived in the neighborhood were working class or poor, a demographic that has an interesting and tangled relationship with whiteness as a racial identity. Racializing White People Racialization is a social and cultural process that has political and economic effects. In the United States and other nations born from European colonialism, the racialization process took place early on in the colonization process and impacted all living in the country. By the twentieth century, eugenics not only explained the inferiority of African Americans but also why so many European Americans were unable to rise in society, specifically poor whites (Hartigan 2005; Isenberg 2016, 175–­76). Eugenics distorted the evolutionary concept of descent with modification highlighted in evolutionary biology literature with the concept of pedigree that was central to animal husbandry in an attempt to explain and justify social inequality, which influenced how poor whites were viewed by white elites (Isenberg 2016). Anthropology was complicit in articulating and repeating racial stereotypes developed during the nineteenth century (Darwin 1858, 1871; Spencer 1860; Morgan 1877). Contemporary anthropological understanding of race can be traced back to Fredrik Barth (1969), who articulated the way social groups establish and maintain ethnic boundaries. Barth defined ethnic groups as self-­perpetuating designations created and recognized by people, using a lexicon through which group members can recognize each other and nonmembers can use to differentiate themselves from that group. He attempted to go beyond previous anthropological thought where race was synonymous with culture to construct a definition of ethnic groups that described the relationship between phenotype and cultural beliefs. He recognized that phenotypic expression can be independent from cultural expression. This is particularly significant for understanding how African Americans defined themselves, as it provided an opportunity to acknowledge the agency of Black people as precipita 42

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tors in the ethnogenesis of both Black and white people. In the process of creating Blackness as a race, white people were forced to adjust their own ethnic, cultural, and national expressions to create a pan-­European identity ultimately called whiteness. Later twentieth-­century scholars expanded upon earlier ethnic identity creation theories to investigate the complex, intertwined nature of ethnic identities. Ethnic group boundaries are flexible, positional, and change over time, and they are enmeshed with other identities such as class, sex, gender, and religion. Siân Jones (1997) differentiated between scholars who viewed ethnicities as objects with defined boundaries and those who defined ethnicity as subjective, that is, culturally constructed categories that inform social interactions. The reality is a combination of both. Most people feel like they understand the boundaries that define their ethnicity until they are asked to explain them. The emic understanding of ethnic boundaries tends to melt upon analysis from outside persons unfamiliar with the signifiers and lexicon affiliated with ethnicities unrepresented in their communities. Likewise defining ethnic boundaries requires input from persons with the social knowledge to be able to articulate those boundaries. From this vantage point, racial designations function similarly to ethnic groups in the United States. Social identities like race are simultaneously created and reified by individuals as a means of signifying both who they are individually as well as their affiliation with social groups that have ascribed cultural practices. Racial identities are understood by persons acculturated in the United States’ social system, as we are able to simultaneously interpret, discern, and reify racialized attributes through our cultural knowledge. The complicated, subjective process of racialization is constantly occurring in real time across the United States, although racial designations and their identifiers change throughout time and have regional variants. Race is just one of many identities forged by American people, and it is inextricably enmeshed with other identities, as diagrammed in figure 4. The dialectic between African Americans and European Americans in Boise, Idaho, can be examined by positioning these racial identities within a larger, worldwide capitalist system. Like capitalism, systemic racism is interlocked with issues of economic, political, and cultural power. The status of social groups in hierarchical capitalist systems is situational and highly enmeshed because the means of acquiring the resources necesRace, Racism, and Whiteness

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Fig. 4. Diagram of intersection of identity for individuals. Created by the author.

sary for daily life are primarily obtained with money generated from wage labor. Money becomes not only the means of providing food, shelter, and clothing, but also a medium through which the material symbols of social status can be attained and displayed. When someone conspicuously purchases items in a capitalistic society, others familiar with that society instantly understand that individual’s economic status. In capitalism, social systems support wealth accumulation while also drawing boundaries between those who benefit from wage labor and those who supply the labor. This is important because the social systems that support capitalism, like race and class, simultaneously maintain the boundaries between social groups. The concepts of competitive individualism and the scarcity mentality lead to a widespread belief that racial groups can only succeed by outcompeting others. If there are winners, there are also losers, and it is up to each racial group to do what they can to uplift their own race, even if that comes at the detriment of other races. Scholars remain inconsistent when it comes to theoretical treatments of race. In the introduction to his landmark book, Europe and the People without History, Eric Wolf (1997, 19) writes that “there can be no ‘Black history’ apart from ‘White history,’ only a component of common history suppressed or omitted from conventional studies for economic, political, or ideological reasons.” This statement comes on the heels of a lengthy section where Wolf excoriates twentieth-­century anthropologists for focusing on individual case studies at the expense of cross-­cultural comparisons that 44

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include societies with clear hegemonic groups at work. Wolf understood the way social structures form networks that bind communities together in such a way that individual social groups cannot be easily separated from each other. More recent literature associated with race, racialization, and racism suggests that anthropologists agree that racial categories are based on physiological or cultural attributes, although there is much less consensus on what constitutes racism and race-­based discrimination and their effects. Leith Mullings (2005, 670) states that historians generally agree that racism is: (a) inextricably enmeshed with the emergence of nation-­states, (b) builds upon earlier conflicts, and (c) emerges from contestation. This agreement among historians is situated amid differing perspectives on how racism is perpetuated. Prejudicial treatment toward social groups considered “other” existed before European expansion to the western hemisphere, but the modern manifestation of racism is the product of economic and social systems derived from European colonial expansion (Mullings 2005, 671–­72). Eduardo Bonilla-­Silva (1997, 469) proposed a generalized concept of racialized social systems designed to investigate societies with economic, political, social, and ideological systems that are “partially structured by the placement of actors in racial categories or races.” Emphasizing the role of social systems in the creation, maintenance, and perpetuation of racial constructs is particularly useful for studying landscapes created through segregation like the River Street Neighborhood. In European colonialism race became central to the creation and maintenance of social power structures. Structural racism is the use and misuse of the power of systems and institutions to further race-­based prejudice. Power is defined as the ability to control, use, and apply social systems such as government systems, religious institutions, education, and economics to further the gain of the dominant race in relation to other races (Bonilla-­Silva 1997, 470). In a racialized society, social groups are divided into categories that are “normalized” through concepts that are perpetuated and internalized throughout that society. Dominant groups gain control by projecting negative attributes upon the groups they intend to dominate. For example Europeans widely described African Americans as physically and mentally inferior to themselves. Structural racism articulates with other social structures like gender and class (Bonilla-­Silva 1997, 471,473). Structural racism does not mean all members of the dominant race benefit from social hierarchies, an important admission when conRace, Racism, and Whiteness

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templating the lives of poor whites. It also does not mean that all members of subjugated races fail to rise in society. In the case of River Street, white Boiseans needed nonwhites in order to establish themselves as a distinct social group. The differences between white and nonwhite people were also used to sort Boise’s residents into social groups that already existed within the wider hierarchy that pervaded twentieth-­century American society. For European Americans the goal of racialization was to place themselves in a privileged position to aggrandize social and economic power (Hartmann, Gerteis, and Croll 2009). Racial hegemony in Boise did not equally benefit all white people, nor was it meant to. While they did benefit legally and socially, the majority of whites in River Street did not receive substantial economic benefit from their preferential racial status because they lived in what was considered a Black place and in a capitalist society. Discrimination against white residents existed, but it was less overt and extensive than the discrimination against immigrants or Black residents. The relationship individuals have regarding race and racism change with situation and time, whereas the social systems that perpetuate racism and racialization are slower to change. Structural racism relies on the establishment of institutional values that selectively benefit members of the dominant racial group. White elites in the United States imbued racial categories with an aspect of competitive individualism that has infused our society with the idea that success is derived from individual prowess. If an individual is not economically or socially successful, it is because that person is flawed or has shortcomings. Americans are supposed to compete against other individuals as well as the natural environment. Under this narrative those with the best skills, greatest knowledge, or are most capable are those most likely to enjoy economic success. Those without the proper skills are defective, deserving of lower social status (Hartigan 2005; Isenberg 2016). This interracial competition is also bolstered by a perceived scarcity. In American society everyone is hypothetically competing for a limited number of resources. A narrative has been crafted explaining how some will not have what they need to maintain a fruitful existence. In a world of limited resources, there will be winners and losers. Rather than working for the common good, individuals are encouraged to struggle for scarce resources. Finally an aspect of secrecy has been used to infuse structural racism into American institutions. Overt discrimination against nonwhites and 46

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women remained common among government officials, educators, and religious figures, especially prior to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Discrimination against poor whites had been less overt. Social elites in the United States were primarily those with economic wealth who used their social networks with other elites and government officials to improve their own social and economic situation. While an “up-­from-­the-­ bootstraps” message was broadcast to nonwhites and the poor, elites knew that most political and economic decisions were made behind closed doors between different elites in social circles that omitted the poor, women, and nonwhites (Isenberg 2016). The entire racialization process in the United States was designed to force nonwhites and poor whites to economically compete against each other. Structural racism was cultivated to keep nonwhites in a subordinate position, but this same system also kept poor white people down. Nonwhite people were scientifically classified in a subordinate status and kept there through social structures. Legal, educational, scientific, and religious institutions perpetuated the idea that this inequality was natural and should be accepted by Americans. All of these motivations are behind the racialization process at work in American cities like Boise, and they are the foci of African American historical archaeology. Former River Street residents of European descent occasionally recalled the discrimination they faced because they lived in the neighborhood, although it was not as intense as the memories recalled by Black residents. To the rest of the European American community, whites in River Street were considered a lesser type of white. One European American former resident recalls she had difficulties making friends or finding boyfriends in school because other whites knew she lived in River Street (Loralee Badgett, personal communication, 2013). Other whites were harassed in school and got into fights with other white students because they were “South Side of the Tracks Kids.” This intra-­white discrimination may have gone unnoticed by Blacks, but it was a real aspect of everyday life for the neighborhood’s white residents, who most likely measured discrimination differently. The African Americans who were interviewed did not remember these incidents, but the discrimination was formative for white residents. Intra-­white discrimination was not the same as the virulent antiblack racism present elsewhere in the United States, but aggressions against stigmatized European American River Street residents was common enough that it came out in oral history interviews and conversations with white former residents. Race, Racism, and Whiteness

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African Diaspora Archaeology, Whiteness, and the American West Archaeologies of race in the United States must address the way racial hierarchies have cultivated and maintained Americans of European descent as white people. This means acknowledging the fluidity and contextual nature of racial identities, including those who identify as white. Archaeologists understand racial identities are purely ideological concepts. In United States history, racial designations have served to separate human populations, justify social hierarchies derived from capitalism, and acculturate subsequent generations into these racial hierarchies so they may be perpetuated into the future. Race has served to solidify European Americans as a unique race and increase the likelihood of European American success at the expense of those deemed nonwhite. Central to the racialization process is the strategic use of real or perceived physiological differences to create a hierarchy where some racial collectives are deemed superior to others (Orser 2004, 115–­18; 2007). White archaeologists are also a product of this system, and it colors the way they view nonwhite people, a reality that is rarely addressed in archaeological literature. Boise was no different than the rest of the country when it came to building and maintaining prevailing racial hierarchies, which were structured to define and maintain social relations between various racial groups. In the United States, race mediated interactions between those deemed white (i.e., European Americans) and those categorized as nonwhite. Whiteness has proven a major part of controlling access to goods, political power, economic strength, and overall life opportunities (Orser 2007; Hartmann, Gerteis, and Croll 2009). Interestingly the same social processes that created nonwhiteness were used to create whiteness. Whiteness has become the normative value that has become synonymous with American-­ness. As the default race, whiteness is the identity against which others are compared. This has had serious consequences for white and nonwhite communities throughout U.S. history. Historical archaeology’s treatment of race is incomplete as it has been reluctant to address whiteness as a racial category, which is very curious given the fact that more than 90 percent of archaeologists in the United States are of European descent. Historical archaeology has focused on “otherness,” class, gender, nonwhite race, and subaltern groups but has not cast a gaze on the racial category that most of its practitioners occupy: 48

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whiteness. Most African diaspora archaeology in the United States has been conducted in the eastern portion of the United States where the bulk of Black people have historically lived. In the southeast archaeologists focused on the effects of slavery on African diasporic peoples, and in the northeast and to a lesser extent the Midwest, African American archaeology has emphasized the marginality of Black communities (Singleton 1985, 1999; Matthews and McGovern 2016). Many of the African Americans in the East and Midwest were never enslaved by chains, but legal, social, and cultural racism prevented them from full participation in society. Very little African American archaeology has been conducted west of the Mississippi River where Black populations were much smaller, and it is difficult to archaeologically detect African American-­ness in the absence of historical documents. Oral histories and archival documents are important links in evaluating and investigating Black sites in the United States, and this is even more important in the West where the small Black population oftentimes has material culture that is similar to that of non-­Black neighbors. Recent African American archaeology reflects a movement toward investigations of the more abstract aspects of Black pasts. As most archaeology in the United States is conducted under the rubrics of historic preservation—­which is very structured and prescribed in its treatment of archaeological sites as properties that can be owned, managed, and preserved (or, destroyed after mitigating adverse effects)—­there is little room for addressing the intangible aspects of Black heritage that cannot be defined within a rubric and are difficult to preserve. Historic preservation and cultural resource management have not succeeded in equally protecting African American historic properties or addressing relevant questions in African diaspora heritage studies because of the emphasis on quantifiable data associated with bounded “properties” (Barile 2004; Babiarz 2011). The way historic properties are valued, recorded, and preserved is rooted in a field that systemically privileges other site types over African American sites. In the American West, this means few African American sites have been investigated or preserved when compared to prehistoric or European American historical sites, and few of those Black sites have received comparable levels of effort with regard to preservation or analysis. This clashes with the movement in American archaeology over the last thirty years to bring our work more in alignment with theoretical approaches that advocate for a greater range of voice for peoples of the past. Race, Racism, and Whiteness

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Early African American archaeological literature focused on identifying material culture patterns that could be connected to Black people because historical archaeologists at that time believed the unique otherness of Black people could be discerned from archaeological assemblages. The earliest works also make efforts to espouse the validity of text-­aided archaeology as a supplement to archaeological data. Initially African American archaeology focused on slave contexts for two reasons: (1) slave sites are unquestionably associated with African Americans, presumably making it easier to identify patterns in Black assemblages, and (2) the material realities of slave life in the United States were largely unknown at that time. African American archaeology sought to fill this data gap. Prior to the 1970s, references to “slave quarters” were ancillary to the study of plantations in the southeastern United States at that time, but they soon became the focus of archaeological investigations. Perhaps the first mention of slave quarters was made in James A. Ford’s 1934 work at Elizafield Plantation in South Carolina. In these excavations slaves were considered an unfortunate component of plantation life but not a worthy focus of archaeological study. The artifacts collected from the slave quarters were mentioned as the residues of one planter’s solution to the labor problem that plagued the plantation system (Singleton 1985). Asher and Fairbanks (1971) published one of the earliest journal articles focused on an African American site in their excavation of a slave cabin on Cumberland Island, Georgia. Race was not a focal point of this work although it sought to connect archaeological data with the life of enslaved Black people as described in slave narratives and other written sources. Charles Fairbanks would become known as a pioneer in plantation archaeology through his 1968 work at Kingsley Plantation in Florida and 1969 work at Rayfield Plantation in Georgia (Otto 1984; Singleton 1985). Fairbanks used problem-­oriented archaeology in accordance with processual archaeology but also as a means of dispelling the myths of the inferiority of African Americans (Singleton 1985). Fairbanks used archaeology to demonstrate agency and practice among the enslaved by connecting them with historical documents and through rigorous archaeological analysis (Asher and Fairbanks 1971). John Otto, one of Fairbanks’s graduate students who worked on the slave cabin excavations, would come to publish another canonical work in the early history of African American archaeology based on his 1974 excavations at Cannon’s Point Plantation in Georgia. Otto (1984) contin 50

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ued the problem-­oriented approach to historical archaeology pioneered by Fairbanks. Otto sought to evaluate the economic difference between slave owners, white overseers, and enslaved African Americans (Orser 2007), realizing that African American identity was inextricably linked to class and race. His work at Cannon’s Point sought to use material culture—­in particular refined, white-­bodied earthenware vessels—­as a basis for demonstrating class differentiations. Otto’s research design was dependent upon a tripartite race-­based social system with an unstated Marxist tinge where white plantation owners sat at the top of the social pyramid above landless white laborers. It is known that both groups were above African Americans in this social hierarchy, but Otto wanted to see if the racial benefits afforded white laborers translated into higher economic status. At the same time, Otto was attempting to identify an archaeological signature for African American slaves. In the end Otto concluded that both white overseers and Black slaves lived similar lifestyles based on archaeological evidence, but there was evidence suggesting white overseers enjoyed some benefits, particularly in the form of housing. Furthermore he was unable to identify a discrete African American identity that could be easily differentiated from European Americans of the same class (Otto 1980, 1984). This work foreshadowed the difficulties of separating class from race that continue to plague African American archaeology. The 1980s were a formative period in African American historical archaeology. Several influential publications were produced that decade that would help position African American history within the field of archaeology. Archaeological Perspectives on Ethnicity in America: Afro-­American and Asian American Culture History (Schuyler 1980) and The Archaeology of Slavery and Plantation Life (Singleton 1985) were landmark publications that defined African American archaeology at that time. These texts were among the first anthologies of African American archaeology to summarize what was known to that date and set the stage for future inquiry. Archaeology was doing its best to scientifically document the uniqueness of African American life though material culture and was just starting to hypothesize about agency, identity, and syncretic development of Blackness in the United States. These books also exemplify the philosophical wrangling among the archaeological community regarding archaeologically addressing race. The quest to identify truly African American cultural traits in the archaeological record—­Africanisms—­would continue in the 1980s and 1990s, despite the initial difficulties archaeologists had in difRace, Racism, and Whiteness

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ferentiating race from class. The 1980s drew upon the desire to define an archaeological signature that could be specifically attributed to Black people. The search for Africanisms on plantations in the southeastern United States in the 1980s is most clearly seen through the colonoware debate (Brandon 2009). While archaeologists had noticed that slave assemblages included a diagnostic form of low-­fired, coarse earthenware, these ceramics were originally attributed to enterprising local Native Americans who were supplying cheap vessels to slave owners. In 1979 Historical Archaeology published its first article on African Americans that focused on the colonoware enigma. The article concluded that the colonoware on Limerick Plantation, South Carolina, was a development of both African and Native Americans who were working to fill local demand (Lees and Kimery-­Lees 1979). Other archaeologists also discussed colonoware’s origins with inconclusive results. Leland Ferguson (1980) was among many unsure of who it could be attributed to, though he recognized it had African characteristics with decorative styles not seen in the Old World. He would later affirm colonoware was an American ware type with African antecedents (Ferguson 1992). At Spiers Landing, Leslie Drucker (1981) was unsure that slaves had independently made colonoware, despite the fact that 40 percent of the ceramic assemblage was this type. Richard Vernon (1988) concluded that colonoware was produced by both Native and African Americans, depending upon local labor conditions, because it was found in both slave and historical Native American contexts. Archaeologists also noted that colonoware increasingly mimicked European vessel forms while African design elements became rarer. This observation added to the confusion surrounding this ware type in the archaeological literature while also demonstrating the artistic license of enslaved African Americans. Archaeologists of the 1980s were reluctant to credit slaves with creating their own ceramics, as seen in the fact that they were initially called Colono-­Indian wares rather than colonoware. Frequently colonoware was recognizably different than Native American ceramics in the South and Caribbean. Other times it was not. Most scholars at that time believed the slavery system in North America was so onerous that slaves did not have enough freedom to create their own ceramics. Even though Fairbanks and Otto identified evidence of firearms in slave deposits, which suggested they had the agency to self-­provision in other ways, archaeologists remained reluctant to give African American slaves the agency to create a 52

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unique ceramic type that fulfilled needs and demonstrated technological skills and artistic freedom. African American archaeology of the 1980s remained rooted in plantation life but slowly expanded to other contexts at this time. Some archaeologists embraced a wider interpretation of African American lifeways and behavior, moving away from the search for Africanisms and archaeological patterns. This was partially in response to the popularity of theoretical paradigms that emphasized the situational nature of archaeological interpretations and acknowledged that there were multiple ways of knowing the past (Wylie 2002; Hegmon 2003). It was also a result of the expanded interest in African American sites within historical archaeology. Work at Black Lucy’s Garden (Baker 1980), Weeksville (Bridges and Salwen 1980), Parting Ways (Deetz 1977), and Sandy Ground (Askins and Salwen 1985) brought African American archaeology out of the slave context, expanding the focus of archaeological inquiry to address other sites where Blackness lived. At the same time, African American plantation archaeology began addressing the creation of a uniquely ethnic identity rooted in both American and African culture. Archaeologists embraced the complexities of acculturation and race-­based class formation processes and how they could be seen in the archaeological record (Jones 1985; Moore 1985; Wheaton and Garrow 1985; Adams and Boling 1989; Joseph 1989). Some archaeologists even recognized the shortcomings of the focus on identifying Africanisms above all else. Archaeologists also recognized that it was unlikely that a uniquely African American archaeological signature could be found in material culture, especially after the Civil War (Orser and Nekola 1985; Singleton 1985). Archaeology of the 1990s was greatly impacted by social justice movements among nonwhite people that forced historical archaeologists to reflexively reevaluate their role in perpetuating racism and think about how archaeology could be used to combat social injustice. Archaeologists of the 1990s started to investigate intangible elements of the African American experience such as material culture consumption (Mullins 1999a, 1999b), ethnicity (Perry and Paynter 1999), and spirituality (Orser 1994; Stine, Cabak, and Groover 1996; Russell 1997). African diaspora archaeologists also rethought the level of agency Black people had in the past. Previous work sought to reveal regular patterns or artifact types that could be used to investigate behavior, but this focus prevented archaeologists from addressing the ways Black people were able to carve out a new Race, Racism, and Whiteness

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identity that was separate from African and European culture. Terms like acculturation and creolization continued to be used in the 1990s, but a new effort to investigate the ways African Americans used material culture to convey messages to each other and express themselves as a unique subculture emerged. African American archaeological literature of the 1990s is marked by two influential pieces, Uncommon Ground: Archaeology and Early African America, 1650–­1800 (Ferguson 1992) and “I, Too, Am America”: Archaeological Studies of African-­American Life (Singleton 1999). Leland Ferguson’s contribution on early African America made the strongest connection between Africa and Blacks in the United States. In addition to addressing the colonoware debate in archaeology, he connected this ceramic type as well as other elements of African American life, such as housing, to African roots (Ferguson 1992). “I, Too, Am America” was an edited volume that tackled the major topics in African American archaeology. Several chapters discuss popular resistance against commemorating African American pasts (Deagan and Landers 1999), evidence of antiblack racism in the past (Bastian 1999), and the multivalence of material culture (Perry and Paynter 1999) alongside the traditional topics of Africanisms (Ferguson 1999) and colonoware (Mouer et al. 1999). The journal Historical Archaeology became the main platform for discussing current research in African American archaeology during the 1990s. A flurry of articles brought African American archaeology in a completely new direction that was spearheaded by a small group of African American archaeologists including Michael Blakey (1997), Ywone Edwards-­Ingram (1997), Maria Franklin (1997), Cheryl LaRoche (1997), Theresa Singleton, and Terry Wiek (1997). These Black archaeologists were joined by European American archaeologists who focused on African diaspora sites like Paul Mullins (1998, 1999a, 1999b), Charles Orser (1992, 1994), Paul Shackel (1995, 1998), Mark Warner (1998), and Laurie Wilkie (1996, 1997). This new guard of African diaspora archaeologists made it clear that, although African Americans dwelled in racism, they were able to live meaningful lives by using material culture in unique ways. They eschewed the search for patterns and focused on site-­specific narratives as a means of learning more about the racialization process, enculturation, and the struggle against discrimination. The African Burial Ground (abg) Project became a microcosm for the way archaeology had been practiced and how politically minded African 54

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Americans, including archaeologists of African descent, expected it to be practiced in the future. In 1991 a federally mandated cultural resource management (crm) project in New York City unearthed an eighteenth-­ century cemetery where enslaved Africans had been interred. Named the African Burial Ground, the site was dedicated to New York’s African and African American community, but the abg Project sparked a controversy among the city’s Black community for a number of reasons. The initial crm research design did not fully address the concerns of the city’s Black community. It did not adequately address the importance of the cemetery to African Americans and was not created in collaboration with the Black community, which had long known about the existence of the cemetery and wanted any research conducted at the site to contribute to Black heritage. Additionally the crm contract was awarded to a company that did not include a diverse staff of archaeologists. New York’s Black community saw a European American company with predominately white archaeologists digging up their ancestors without collaboration. Protests ensued. New York City was forced to change the project into a collaborative endeavor that included not only the local Black community but also scholars and archaeologists of African descent (LaRoche and Blakey 1997). The resulting technical report series created from this project was more inclusive than it would have been had the Black community not protested. Addressing aspects of eighteenth-­century African diaspora life helped descendants better understand what it was like in New York as a first-­generation African American (Frohne 2015; Howard University Press 2009). Archaeology also benefitted from this more inclusive analysis as the questions answered went far beyond the initial theoretical approach. From a wider view, the abg Project forced historical archaeologists in the United States to reassess their relationship with African Americans. It made the profession think about what archaeology was, or was not, doing to improve the status of Black America. The project also formally questioned who should be allowed to research African American pasts, what the resulting interpretations meant for Black people, and, most importantly, for whom are archaeologists working? What had archaeology done to help dispel racism, decolonize Black pasts, or benefit the Black community (Potter Jr. 1991; Franklin 1997; Brandon 2009)? It also forced archaeology to think about how the profession disseminated knowledge to interested publics (Gibb 1997) and how professionals include or fail to include Black communities in heritage conservation (McDavid 1997). Singleton (1999) Race, Racism, and Whiteness

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made one of the most compelling calls for archaeologists to use their discipline for social justice and to combat racism in the United States. This call for social activism, increased collaboration with Black communities, and reflexivity among archaeologists has been partially heeded during the twenty-­first century. In the 2000s African diaspora archaeologists, including Anna Agbe-­Davies (2007, 2010), Whitney Battle-­Baptiste (2007, 2011), Jamie Brandon (2009), and Chris Fennell (2007, 2010, 2017), continued to build upon the theoretical and social justice-­oriented foundations laid in the 1990s. Race finally became a starting point for further investigating aspects of Black archaeological sites like feminism, spiritual cosmology, and the materiality of race. Charles Orser’s analysis of race and the racialization process in the United States has become foundational for both archaeological inquiry and investigating the role race plays in the profession. Building upon the concept that race is rooted in culture and society, Orser (2004, 2007) uses material culture to provide insight into how race was practiced in the past. His work also reveals the role archaeologists play in the racialization process, something African American archaeologists who emphasized social justice had been stating since the 1990s. Most importantly Orser shows how the racialization process has been applied to European ethnic groups, specifically the Irish. He is one of a small group of historical archaeologists who have addressed aspects of whiteness in the archaeological record (Babiarz 2011; Gorsline 2015; Lewis 2015; Matthews 2015). Discussing the way Irish immigrants were treated by white Americans in the nineteenth century, Orser (2004, 2007) explains how immigrants from Ireland were not considered the equals of whites upon their arrival to the United States. They had difficulties obtaining employment and adequate living conditions. Sequestered in ethnic neighborhoods, Irish immigrants in the eastern United States fought for political and economic power. Discrimination against the Irish was common well into the twentieth century, a case study that parallels the way Boise’s Basque immigrants were treated by the white community until well into the twentieth century. Today’s archaeologists are asking what it means to do African American archaeology and are building projects that collaborate with Black communities. Historical archaeology is now at a point for debate and discussion (Agbe-­Davies 2007) that positions the work conducted today within a self-­ reflexive gaze. The expansion of community-­based participatory research 56

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into African American archaeology bolsters that reflexivity while it also increases the contributions archaeology makes toward addressing the questions that count for Black people. Archaeology at New Philadelphia, which is now a National Historic Landmark, is indicative of the way African American archaeology has become something by and for the people (Fennell, Martin, and Shackel 2010; Shackel 2011; Agbe-­Davies and Martin 2013). Contributions from local descendants have added to interpretations of African American sites and imbued this work with an emic perspective that would not have been told otherwise. Currently African diaspora archaeologists are seeking ways to explain how racism transmogrifies to affect all Americans. While racialization is deeply impactful, the process itself often goes unnoticed; it is silent and invisible. This work engages the trilateral forces of racialization: how the creation of racial categories affected people in the past, impacts the social present, and impacts how we interpret the past (Orser 2011). Historical archaeologists have also begun to investigate the ways whiteness influenced American communities and continues to impact archaeology today. Jennifer Babiarz (2011) suggests today’s archaeologists, who are overwhelmingly white, embrace research in critical whiteness studies so they can see the ways whiteness affects archaeological interpretations. She argues this will help bring us toward an archaeology of accountability that addresses white privilege in the past and present and forces us to reevaluate what we considered “normal” in archaeology. African American Archaeology in the American West Historical archaeology in the American West has helped create a more holistic understanding of what life was like for the diverse population of Native Americans, European immigrants, Asians, and African diasporic peoples, but African American sites are the least known in this region. Built on resource extraction and agriculture, the West was a continuation of the capitalist experiment at the heart of this country’s origins. Labor in extractive industries or agriculture was a central aspect of life in most western communities (Hardesty 1991; Purser 1991; Warner and Purser 2017). Commercial centers arose to service and support these extraction and agricultural outposts; but, like most other westerners, the African American experience in the West was primarily urban (Taylor 1998). As a result urban spaces are the most likely places to contain archaeological traces of the African American West. Race, Racism, and Whiteness

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While diaspora studies in the American West are useful for better understanding the composition of European immigrants (Orser 2007), Hispanics (Voss 2008), Chinese (Wegars 1993; Voss and Allen 2008), Japanese (Ross 2011, 2013) and Native Americans (Lightfoot 1995), very little work has been conducted on African American archaeological sites in the West (Dixon 2014). African diasporic people were among the first visitors to the American West. Beginning with the journey of the Black Moroccan Estevanico (Esteban) across the Southwest in the sixteenth century, people of African descent were among the first non-­Native Americans in the West (Taylor 1998). Racial designations were different for African people living in the Spanish colonial system than they were for African diasporic peoples living in the colonies of other European colonial nations. Archaeology in Spanish colonial California indicates religion and ancestry were more important characteristics than racial hierarchies for Spanish colonials. Persons of African descent were able to achieve similar legal and social parity to other Hispanic colonists, even people from Spain, based on their behavior, religious beliefs, and participation in local society (Voss 2008). This contrasts sharply with the way African Americans were treated in the Anglo West. Slavery brought the majority of African Americans to the West prior to the Civil War. Historically Texas has been home to the West’s largest African American population (Taylor 1998). Because of its comparatively large African American population, both during and after the Civil War, more is known about African American archaeological sites in Texas than elsewhere in the American West. The campaign to save Freedman’s Town in Dallas and research on the Levi Jordan Plantation provide insights into the lives of Black Texans in urban and rural contexts (McDavid 1997, 2002, 2011). Cultural resource management excavations funded by the Texas Department of Transportation at the Freedman’s Cemetery in Dallas were an opportunity to learn about how the mediation of class and race followed nineteenth-­and early twentieth-­century African Americans into death. Bioarchaeological and material cultural studies of the burials in this Black cemetery provided insight into the ways African American spirituality and the quest for equality shaped burial practices (Davidson 2004). African American archaeology in Texas highlights the resilience of Black communities in the West and illustrates the ways they combated discrimination, especially by selectively using material culture and adornment items to express their identities (Flewellen 2018; Franklin 2020; Lee 58

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2020). This work in Texas demonstrates the complicated avenues African Americans, especially Black women, had to navigate to maintain the ability to demonstrate upstanding lifestyles that combated racist stereotypes of Blackness. These projects also show how African Americans in the present continue to fight for their heritage. While most African Americans lived in western cities, the activities of Black soldiers following the Civil War has become the most enduring perception of Blacks in the West. African American cavalry and infantry units in the West, named Buffalo Soldiers, have become historical icons of taming the West and major participants in nineteenth-­century Indian wars. African American soldiers operated across the region, and some of their military posts have been archaeologically investigated. Archaeological analysis of a small dump from Fort Missoula attempted to interrogate the material remains of the Buffalo Soldiers, but the refuse could not be directly connected to Black soldiers (Mueller 2009). Recent work at Fort Davis in Texas includes a refuse deposit and sediments dated to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a time when African American soldiers stationed there (Rodriguez 2016; Eichner 2017). Materials recovered from the vicinity of the fort’s laundresses’ quarters shows African American residents straddled several overlapping identities. Material culture was employed to demonstrate African American, European American, Mexican, and Mexican American identities individually in a space where Black and Hispanic people were denigrated. Nonwhite residents worked hard to demonstrate their worth in a space shaped by racism (Eichner 2017). Thousands of African Americans looking to escape discrimination and racism following the Civil War traveled to western cities. In most cases their quest for equality was not forthcoming. African Americans tended to find social and economic opportunities in the West, but they did not find equality (Taylor 1998). For example African Americans in the Comstock Mining District and Virginia City, Nevada, in the second half of the nineteenth century encountered a complicated political and economic climate that held sway over many aspects of their lives. Living in a society with greater economic opportunity that lacked overt racism, based on material culture, archaeologists believe African Americans in Virginia City enjoyed a higher standard of life than Blacks in the East and Southeast. Excavations at the Boston Saloon in Virginia City, which catered to an African American clientele, showed Blacks on the mining frontier enjoyed quality food and beverages and popular musical enterRace, Racism, and Whiteness

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tainment in the company of handsomely dressed women. It was a known recreational venue that helped African American miners feel comfortable in the face of subtle racism, resistant attitudes, and discriminatory laws (Dixon 2005, 2006a, 2006b; Schablitsky 2006). Archaeology in California has provided insight into life in Black communities on the Pacific coast that were not reliant on extractive industries. Cultural resource management work conducted in West Oakland, California, between 1994 and 1996 for the i-­880 Cypress Freeway Replacement Project has been the largest archaeological project of an African American community in the American West. The project encompassed twenty-­two city blocks in a historically diverse neighborhood that became synonymous with Oakland’s African Americans after World War II. Black people in West Oakland used material culture to show their upward mobility. Membership in fraternal orders, compliance with domesticity mores, and religious objects can be interpreted as displays of affluence and demonstrations of affiliation with certain social networks. In West Oakland African Americans used the objects in their houses as evidence of their class and social status. Material culture became a language used to convey status, a language important to the continued campaign against discrimination and stigmatization (Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2004). Archaeology in West Oakland showed that Oakland’s Black community also suffered from the same disinvestment and stigmatization as elsewhere in the United States (Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2004). The history and archaeology in West Oakland mirrors that of the River Street Neighborhood in Boise. Beginning in the nineteenth century, West Oakland was inhabited by Chinese, Portuguese, Hawaiian, and other immigrants, but it became increasingly Black during the second half of the twentieth century. By 1989 the neighborhood was 77 percent African American (Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2004, 46). This demographic shift was accompanied by neglect, and the neighborhood was designated as blighted by local officials. As a blighted place, West Oakland became ground zero for Housing and Urban Development to impose “superblock” projects and freeway expansions that fractured the community. The Black Panther Party evolved in this landscape as both a reaction to structural racism and to provide basic amenities to a needy community (Solari 2001). Stigmatization and neglect were at the heart of this neighborhood’s treatment by local citizens and officials. Archaeological work there gave the past a more human face and could be used to combat this negative view of West Oakland. 60

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Other work in California is a chance to understand what life was like for African Americans in other parts of the state. Some African Americans sought to escape racism by creating their own settlements, removed from the existing European American-­dominated cities. In 1908 Lieutenant Colonel Allen Allensworth, a former slave from Kentucky, purchased land in Tulare County that would become a Black agricultural community. The town grew for its first few years before succumbing to struggles over water rights that starved nearby agricultural lands of a necessary resource. Archaeology at the Allensworth Hotel shows residents’ aspiration toward betterment and affluence. Today the settlement is part of the Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park and is a protected resource (Cox 2007). In San Diego County, archaeology centered on the life and history of Nate Harrison, a legendary African American hermit, explains how the desire of Black people to be free can turn into a mythological narrative. Nate Harrison was an African American farmsteader in San Diego County who had escaped slavery by the 1870s. Records show he had made a home in the San Jacinto Hills by the 1880s, where he would live until his death in 1920. Living a simple life alone in the hills, Harrison was able to escape enslavement, and by living in a remote location, to a certain extent, he was free (Mallios and Lennox 2014). Historical Archaeology in Boise, Idaho While several historical archaeological projects have been conducted recently in Boise, the River Street Archaeology Project was the first one in the city centered in an African American community. There are no other African American archaeology projects in the state of Idaho recorded in crm publications or academic presses; thus very little is archaeologically known about Black people in Idaho. Excavations in Boise’s former Chinese neighborhood and a prominent Basque-­related site are important to our understanding of what life was like for nonwhite Boiseans and provide the closest comparative databases for the River Street Archaeology Project. Two previous architectural surveys and a master’s thesis comprise the bulk of previous investigations in the River Street Neighborhood. The surveys—­an oral history and building inventory project conducted in the early 1890s (Osa 1981) and a building survey conducted in the 1990s as part of the Interstate 184 expansion through downtown Boise (Stacy 1995)—­were designed to evaluate the historicity of the neighborhood’s built environment. In 1981 Mateo Osa conducted oral history interviews with several Race, Racism, and Whiteness

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African American River Street Neighborhood residents with the intent of documenting the history of the Lee Street area to make historic preservation recommendations to the city of Boise. The interviews provided a background for the neighborhood from the perspective of its African American residents and formed a baseline for what is known about the neighborhood’s social dynamics. Osa documented twenty-­three homes along Ash and Lee Streets in the vicinity of the Erma Hayman House. At the time (1980–­81) this was a relatively intact portion of the River Street Neighborhood that was increasingly encroached upon by commercial development. Osa noted that it was one of the oldest intact areas of Boise. Describing Lee Street in the early 1980s, Osa wrote: Lee Street is lined with mature trees and fences separate the yards from the sidewalks in front of the houses. Set in the midst of a warehouse and urban redevelopment district as it is, Lee Street stands out as a unique and self-­contained neighborhood. It deserves attention, not only as the traditional home of a segment of Boise’s black community, but also as an area of virtually unaltered vernacular residential architecture. Also, noteworthy, is the degree of continuity in relationship to the rest of the community since, unlike many neighborhoods, it has not altered its basic character over the years but still provides basic low-­income housing close to downtown. Osa (1981) recommended this one-­block area be saved from development because of its character as a historical residential district. Transcripts of the conversations recorded by Osa and photos of several inventoried houses are on file at the Idaho State Historical Society Archives in Boise. His final report Survey of Lee Street Neighborhood is on file at the Idaho State Historic Preservation Office (shpo) in Boise. Susan Stacy conducted a second architectural survey in 1995 to evaluate neighborhood buildings in anticipation of the construction of Interstate 184. Building upon Osa’s work, the River Street Reconnaissance Survey was prepared for the Boise City Historic Preservation Commission, covered 300 acres in central Boise, and evaluated more than 150 buildings including many in River Street. The 1995 inventory provided preservation recommendations, stating that the River Street Neighborhood was unique because of its identity as Boise’s Black neighborhood and corroborated Osa’s recommendation to preserve the Lee and Ash Street portion of the 62

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neighborhood. Some of the houses documented by Osa are shown in figure 5. Stacy (1995, 13–­14) writes: About 1980–­1982 the Idaho State Historic Preservation Office undertook a survey of the “Lee Street Historic District,” (Osa 1981) 22 houses located on Lee and Ash Streets. The survey analyst and the shpo office concluded that the area was eligible for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places. When Boise City objected to this conclusion, the survey and report were sent to the National Park Service (nps). The nps agreed with the shpo and issued a formal determination that the district was eligible. The significance of this decision is that any agency proposing to impact the area adversely and use federal funds to do so (such as Boise City Community Development Block Grants or other federal resources) will be obliged to mitigate such impacts according to a plan negotiated with the shpo. This requirement derives from Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. The whereabouts of this correspondence between Boise City, the Idaho shpo, and the National Park Service is unknown. Stacy (1995) continued to state that the Lee and Ash Street area remained one of the few places in River Street where older homes were still standing. Stacy recommended that other historic houses be moved to the Lee and Ash area to fill in vacant lots, which would strengthen the likelihood of preserving the place as a historic district. No agency, including the Idaho shpo and city of Boise, heeded these recommendations, and River Street continues to be threatened by development. The neighborhood was not determined to contain a historic district, and the Erma Hayman House, designated eligible for the National Register of Historic Places in 2018, is the only African American historic property in the neighborhood. Completed in 2006 Pam Demo’s work Boise’s River Street Neighborhood: Lee, Ash, and Lover’s Lane/Pioneer Streets, the South Side of the Tracks is the most complete documentation of buildings in the vicinity of the Erma Hayman House. This master’s thesis incorporated ethnographic interview transcripts, historical maps, building plans, and photographs to describe the relationship between the River Street Neighborhood’s residents, buildings, and how both changed throughout time. Demo also describes how the city of Boise has strategically targeted development into this space in a manner that has damaged its historical fabric. The author continues to Race, Racism, and Whiteness

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Fig. 5. Front elevations at 163, 609, and 611 Ash Street. Osa 1981.

promote a case for preservation because, despite its fragmentation, the neighborhood describes the oft overlooked lives of poor white, Basque, and Black families in Boise. Other than work done in River Street, archaeology on historical Chinese and Basque sites in downtown Boise are the best-­known studies of nonwhite life in the city’s past. In 1979 researchers from the University of Idaho excavated a portion of Boise’s Chinatown as part of the Boise Redevelopment Project. The excavations collected Chinese ceramic vessels, faunal

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bone, and other mass-­produced items readily available in Chinese communities of the American West. Chinese people in Boise were segregated because of their race but were able to obtain material goods form China as well as products from the rest of the United States (Jones 1980). These excavations were little reported, and subsequent analysis of the assemblage was never conducted. Excavations at the Cyrus Jacobs-­Uberuaga House in downtown Boise, about a half-­mile east of the River Street project area, focused on the analysis of artifacts recovered from a well built in 1864 and used until the 1890s (Goodwin 2014). The house was originally built by the Jacobs family, a European American immigrant family that arrived in Boise in 1862 to capitalize on the Boise Basin gold rush. The Jacobs family became merchants and influential socialites. In 1928 the Basque Uberuaga family purchased the Jacobs house and used it as a boarding house for single Basque men. It remained a boarding house until 1969. Material culture from the house demonstrates, like other aspiring middle-­ class families, the home’s nineteenth-­century owners sought to display the affluence associated with a socially upstanding European American household by strategically using material culture (Goodwin 2014). The house itself is an example of upwardly mobile life in white society until the 1920s, when it became an important element in the Basque community. The neighborhood surrounding the Cyrus Jacobs-­Uberuaga house had become a Basque place by 1928 when the house changed ownership. By then this section of West Grove Street had become the heart of Basque Boise, and the house became a central element in a Basque community strained by the 1924 passage of the Johnson-­Reed Immigration Act, which established quotas for a number of different countries. Because Basque Country is divided between the nation-­states of Spain and France and is not its own nation, the quotas for Basque immigrants were rolled into the national quotas for these larger nations, making it difficult for Basque immigrants to enter the United States after 1924. The Basque in Boise and elsewhere in the United States had to decide whether they would remain in the country because it was unclear if they would be able to return if they left (Totoricagüena 2004). The Uberuaga family was among the thousands of Basque that decided to stay in the United States. Their presence forever changed the ethnic milieu of communities like Boise. The Cyrus Jacobs-­ Uberuaga House is a material manifestation of the multivalent ways historical sites can be created and recreated through time (Goodwin 2014).

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Etching Racism into the Landscape of the River Street Neighborhood Whiteness is not a monolithic social category. The socialization of white people plays a strong role in the way they view nonwhites. The nuances and situations that create whiteness are intrinsically connected to class and economic power. This influences the ways white archaeologists view nonwhite sites like River Street and the ways archaeological sites are investigated, overlooked, or protected in the United States. It is also a symptom of being socialized in a racialized society. The same system that created Blackness also created whiteness as a social identity, and these powerful, enduring structural forces still exist today. Capitalism and colonialism in the Americas are the progenitors of today’s racial categories, the same “others” studied by historical archaeology. Since the 1960s historical archaeology has sought to discover differences between African American and European American sites, but finding these differences using material culture was elusive. By the 1990s Black communities were asking white archaeologists to think about what their work has done to African American identities. This created a context where it has become difficult for a field that is overwhelmingly white to avoid thinking about the unstated normalcy of whiteness. Only recently have archaeologists begun to engage with their own race as an influencer on their strategies, data, and its dissemination. The River Street Neighborhood was an ethnic landscape that fed geographic segregation through its designation as an ethnically nonwhite urban setting. Segregation in twentieth-­century America depended on dividing up the urban landscape into ethnic and racial enclaves because it created places that existed in opposition to whiteness. Geographic domains for whites and nonwhites were created through ethnic landscapes. Ethnic landscapes aided the social benefits bestowed upon whites, but the battle for white supremacy was always being waged because many persons of European descent were not considered white. This was particularly true for European immigrants and poor whites (Hartigan 2005; Roediger 2005). Larsen (2003, 120) explains, “There are clearly two established sides to the conflict: those who are among those who belong and those designated as the ‘other.’ It is a system rife with inequity. Its goal was to maintain a special status for whiteness, and yet it never reached resolution. The status quo was always under threat, and segregation was always an unfinished product.” 66

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In the case of River Street, whites in Boise inscribed supremacy on the landscape. This neighborhood was essential for the aggregation of white racial identity because of the important role it played in delineating the social niche of “other.” This “other” identity was conferred on anyone living in River Street, regardless of race, and was the basis against which white society contrasted itself. The boundaries of the River Street Neighborhood were uncontested, long-­lived, and known by all Boiseans. These boundaries remained constant throughout time, which allowed the place’s identity as “the Black neighborhood” to coalesce while marking the rest of town as part of the European American ideological domain. In the River Street Neighborhood, Black, white, Basque, and other immigrant families lived side by side. Across hundreds of years, economic and social structures had crafted class divisions that were known and reproduced by subsequent societies. Racialization was used to hammer a wedge between poor people, splintering them into smaller social groups and making it more difficult for them to come together and push for equality. Structural racism was designed to disproportionately benefit white folks, but the desired economic benefits were not spread evenly. Capitalism assured that there would always be economic winners in our society—­ and not all white people were economic winners. In the American racial schema, poor whites were portrayed as a lesser form of white—­society’s losers—­who suffered due to their own inferiority. Racial conceptualizations kept poor white people in a subordinate position to white elites, holding them just barely above nonwhites in American society. The slight privilege gained from being white was oftentimes just enough to keep poor white people from rising against the corporations and white elites. In River Street all residents were familiar with what it was like to live in poverty or to have a life shaped by labor. Most of the people who lived there were white, but the neighborhood was a white place affected by the presence of its Black residents. Living in proximity gave the poor whites in the neighborhood a chance to get to know Black people, something that racialization prevented for the rest of the white community. The neighborhood provided a chance for white residents to contest prevailing stereotypes of Blackness. In the process they built strong interracial relationships that were rare for that time. Boise’s white elites and middle class sought to prevent Basque immigrants, poor whites, and Blacks from living elsewhere in the town and, until recently, were uninterested in preserving this historical landscape. White elites in Boise’s government and business Race, Racism, and Whiteness

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community benefitted from the subordination of River Street’s residents by being able to keep them in service occupations, charge them higher rents, and prevent as many of them as possible from owning property. The structural racism at the heart of American society informed these actions and was the force behind maintaining River Street as a “Black place” to keep African Americans, poor whites, and their neighbors geographically segregated. Racism was carved into the landscape.

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3 Creating a Landscape despite Racism Oral histories with former River Street Neighborhood residents paint a picture of a community held together by familiarity and neighborliness. Because of the racial demographic composition of this place, relationships between neighbors frequently transcended prevailing racial and ethnic sentiments. Growing up in the neighborhood during the 1940s and 1950s, Kenneth Thomas (2015), a white man, fondly remembered playing with other neighborhood children, including Black kids. The Thomas family lived next door to a Black family—­the Haymans—­and attended public school with a small number of Black children. Camaraderie born from an awareness of class status helped support interracial neighborliness. Ellen Perkins (1980, 11–­12) remembered how her white neighbors were among the first to offer assistance after the death of her husband: “The neighbors right straight across over there, came to me and said, ‘We are not just your neighbors, we are your friends. If you need anything or want anything or anything comes up that you can’t take care of, call us.’ And they have proved to be my friends.” African American resident Doris Thomas (1981, 9) recalled interactions with Basques in the neighborhood: “Oh yeah, I knew them all but it’s kind of hard to talk to them—­they’re all too old country and the old people talk Basque, the language, and they taught their children to talk Basque.” The River Street Neighborhood had been a “homeplace” since its conception. In her description of “homeplace,” Annelise Morris (2017, 29) builds upon the centrality of the dialectic between place, identity, and race when it comes to African Americans: “Our homeplace allows us to understand that we African Americans are a people with a history in a world that tries to make us invisible. Homeplace makes us. Homeplace, in some ways, exists tangential to the systems of oppression that created our racializations in the first place.” Morris (2017) builds upon concepts put forth by bell hooks (2015), including hooks’s conflation of home and place into a source upon which Black people can draw identity but also a space from which this identity 69

can be projected. This is important for understanding the role the River Street Neighborhood played in the formation of Boise’s Black community. Forged through segregation the neighborhood became a place where Blackness could be practiced away from the eyes of the wider white community. By practicing Blackness in this place, African American residents were inscribing it on the landscape as “the Black Neighborhood,” segregating it further from the rest of the urban landscape while also making it more precious to Boise’s Black community. Geographic segregation is one way that racial boundaries have been maintained in the United States. During the twentieth century, municipalities and communities undertook significant efforts to divide urban spaces into zones that separated communities by race. The River Street Neighborhood became a refuge for nonwhite people, but this also threatened its existence. By the 1960s the neighborhood was widely considered a negative place in the minds of white Boiseans; it was home to a certain element that, through structural racism and discrimination, European Americans sought to eliminate from the landscape. The River Street Neighborhood physically embodied segregation. The Creation of Archaeological Landscapes Human activity creates landscapes. While the physical attributes of landscapes, topography, plants, animals, and to a certain extent, people, exist independently from the human mind, these physical and biological features are organized based on human concepts that are deeply rooted in society and culture. The creation of landscapes is one way to organize and interpret the three-­dimensional world; interpretation of landscape is colored by the lens of cultural heritage. Archaeologists have long been aware of the role culture plays in landscape creation and maintenance. As human creations, landscapes are filtered through the lens of culture (Nassauer 1995; Stewart, Darren, and Joan 2004, 202; Longstreth 2008, 1). This filtering process has many layers, but for archaeological considerations, landscapes consist of spaces, places, and texts. These three categories overlap when encountered in everyday parlance, which means they are difficult to articulate unless investigated with nuanced consultation with those rooted in the cultural systems that can interpret cultural meanings imbued on geographic spaces. All three are intrinsically linked to the ways human beings move throughout the three-­dimensional geographies. Geographer Carl Sauer (1925) is credited with formulating the first 70

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formal definition of landscape in geography, and, from its conception, landscapes were stated to be culture-­specific creations of human beings. Sauer suggested that landscapes were distilled from the natural environment and interpreted through a cultural lens. As cultural creations, landscapes had a service life that could change along with its parent culture, which meant landscapes were a form of cultural palimpsest where new interpretations could be superimposed upon previous ones (Anschuetz, Wilshusen, and Scheick 2001). Different landscapes can exist in the same geographic space at the same time, overlain upon each other by persons from different cultures, because of the way the subject-­object dialectic is governed through a cultural lens. The creation, cultivation, and maintenance of landscapes is tangled with aspects of space, place, and interpretation, making it possible for persons with different cultural backgrounds to simultaneously generate different interpretations of the same geographic space while standing next to each other at the same time.

Landscapes as Space Archaeology’s central mode of analysis centers on human interactions within concrete spaces. The recovery of artifacts, observation of soil characteristics, recordation of buildings, and interpretation of archival documents are all activities that occur in concrete space with concrete objects. Late twentieth-­century archaeology has been a story of how archaeologists can use objects and observations originating in concrete space to address concepts that exist in abstract space. American archaeology of the 1960s stressed scientific positivism that could be used to create generalizable theories. Building upon the historical particularism pioneered by Franz Boas, Alfred Kroeber, and Clark Wissler, archaeologists promoted the idea that material culture was an extension of human culture and could be used to examine past behavior throughout space and time (Raab and Goodyear 1984; Hegmon 2003). European theorists addressing aspects of human activities in abstract space like Jean Baudrillard (1981), Michael Foucault (1980), Anthony Giddens (1979), and Daniel Miller (1987) strongly influenced archaeological practice. More recent archaeologies emphasize the situational nature of archaeological interpretations and acknowledge that there are multiple ways of knowing the past (Wylie 2002; Hegmon 2003). This school of archaeology increasingly acknowledges the presence and reality of abstract spaces, like landscapes, and attempts to record them using archaeological methods.

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The human conceptualization of space is an outgrowth of a rational mind that seeks to distinguish between material objects of the self and those outside our material bodies. Human brains help us to become calculating, visual, and symbolic beings. Human perception allows us to segment elements of the natural environment, both man-­made and organic, into categories that help rationalize our actions on Earth. Interpretation of space requires an understanding of ethnocentric knowledge; thus making sense of the material world is rooted in the same traits that help us navigate the world of our creation (Tuan 1974, 14–­15). Spaces are transformed into places based on the values superimposed upon them by local cultures and those that seek to understand cultural geographies. The resulting product has a syntax and symbolism of its own that can be read, interpreted, and understood by those with the proper cultural knowledge (Lury 2011; Smith 2011). Archaeology in River Street demonstrates the way geographers stress the culturally specific ways people interpret landscapes and see themselves in geographic places. Boise’s residents understood the spatial boundaries of the neighborhood as discrete boundaries, as divisions between the racialized space and the remainder of the town that was considered a de facto white space. The unspoken attributes of whiteness were expected, replicated, and perpetuated outside the neighborhood through everyday actions and inaction (e.g., the refusal of white people to serve Black Boiseans). In the neighborhood’s boundaries, nonwhiteness could be expressed and was expected. This meant poor whiteness, Basqueness, and Blackness was accepted in the neighborhood but abhorred outside its boundaries. Wayward Blacks who found themselves outside this boundary attracted the wrath of white Boiseans. In this way the spatiality of the River Street Neighborhood was part of the cultural language of Boise’s residents before the Civil Rights Movement.

Landscapes as Place While human beings inhabit a three-­dimensional, concrete space of material objects, populations also formulate social spaces derived from the abstract space residing within the mind as well as from everyday practice. Culture exists through the activities that perpetuate it; these activities occur in spaces, both outside and inside the mind. The culture taking place in three-­dimensional space is identified as somewhere—­a place (Casey 1996, 33). Placemaking is the process of embodying spaces with the identity necessary to perpetuate everyday activities. Bourdieu (1977) called the everyday 72

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life activities habitus, which include the activities that keep a human being alive but also the meaningful, culturally specific activities that acculturate individuals into a given society. Local knowledge, including understanding places, involves knowledge that helps people know how to move within a community (Casey 1996, 34–­35). Local knowledge involves an understanding of “what is generally true in the locally obvious; it concerns what is true about place in general as manifested in this place” (Casey 1996, 45). Part of acculturation means learning how to translate landscapes as places and to weave their meanings throughout daily habitus. Place is manufactured from orientation, observation, and understanding of materials and other living entities in nature. Places are social spaces that include both cultural elements like religion, government, kinship, and commerce, but also elements of the natural and social environment like renewable and nonrenewable resources, topographic features, roads, markets, plazas, parks, and undeveloped areas or wilderness. These created spaces are all part of tangled networks that enable social interaction. Each of these spaces is produced, serves a purpose, has meaning, and is consumed and recycled by societies (Lefebvre 1991, 403; see also Hodder 2012 for a discussion of entanglement and Ingold 2000 for perceptions of the environment). The process of conceiving, manifesting, and delineating social spaces forces humans to imbue these creations with an identity. This is the heart of making places out of spaces. Places are also the settings where the activities of everyday life are conducted. According to Clack (2009, 116) human existence is experienced in spaces, and these spaces are rendered meaningful through personal experience. The cultural act of transforming space into place helps humans relate to the land. Landscapes are places that are interpreted through cultural lenses and connect cultures to the land (Clack 2009, 116; Hood 2009, 124). Landscapes are given names that help explain and define their role in local culture (Basso 1996; Stewart, Keith, and Scottie 2004). As spaces where everyday life is conducted, places and landscapes are part of human practice. Introduced by Bourdieu (1977) practice theory suggests people enact, embody, represent, and interpret traditions in such a way that these traditions are continually altered. Everyday practice does not always intend to alter traditions, but traditions change over time because they are never practiced in the exact same manner. Simultaneously some traditional behaviors are intentionally altered as part of the continuing battle for power between social groups. This philosophical and teleological

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battle, in conjunction with unconscious and imperfect execution of traditional behaviors, are major forces in the way people understand, interpret, embody, and practice life in landscapes (Pauketat 2001). Daily practices are also part of historical processes in that they are conducted as a continuation of events that have come before and contribute to activities yet to come. Understanding the way cultural knowledge becomes enmeshed with historical events requires archaeologists to acknowledge that cultural practices are generative; they are not simply the result of processes but rather are the processes (Pauketat 2001, 74; Sassaman 2005; Smith 2011). Places are also where the struggle between groups for resources, money, labor, and power take place. This struggle occurs not only in three-­ dimensional space but in abstract space; intangible places that are also social and cultural constructs. The geographic landscapes and networks created through capitalism depend on constructs like gender, class, race, age, and markets as much as they do on natural resources (Harvey 1996; Tilley 2006). Capitalism depends on the dynamics between these cultural constructs, exploitation of natural resources, and movement of capital. As sentient actors people are aware of this constantly moving interplay, but they are also aware of their rootedness in three-­dimensional places (Harvey 1996, 295–­99). To a certain extent, people are also aware that engaging in the capitalist world involves engaging with “the mediating power of money” (Harvey 1996, 319). People in capitalist societies are mindful of the places in which they live. Capital becomes a key tool for daily survival. It moves from place to place seeking to seize upon opportunities that are not equally distributed, as people migrate in search of the advantages that come along with being close to sources of capital. This movement affects culturally created places (Harvey 1996). Movement and migration are a source of placemaking as new residents lay new meaning on existing places. Capitalism plays a role because, in its never-­ending quest for opportunity, capital moves human populations around the world. As cultural landscapes are places that exist in the mind and memory, previous cultural meanings may be replaced or changed. An echo of past meanings often remains in the mind of descendant communities and archival documents. These memories color what is known about a place. Building upon this interpretation of memories is also used to interpret and create cultural landscapes that reside both in individual and social memory (Mills and Walker 2008). It is a means of contextualizing memory and connecting cultural narratives to the land. In the case of the River Street 74

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Neighborhood, oral histories were drawn upon to aid the interpretation of maps, artifacts, and extant buildings. These memories also showed the evolution of race relations in Boise. Individuals interviewed in 2014 and 2015 had a more bucolic memory of life in the neighborhood largely because they were children in the 1940s and 1950s, when racial tensions in Boise were peaking but children were spared these realities. Enjoying a youth marked by interracial play along the banks of the Boise River, the elders in the 2010s had a different relationship to segregation, racism, and everyday life. Conversely the elders interviewed in 1980–­1981 by Mateo Osa recalled the harsh reality of Jim Crow Boise. Relegated to service jobs and farm work and forced to live in a stigmatized district of the city, these folks understood how racism and segregation had shaped their lives even though people within the neighborhood had amicable relations. Calling upon these memories helps archaeologists better understand the creation, maintenance, and meaning of the River Street Neighborhood as an influential place in Boise’s history.

Landscapes as Texts For those with the proper cultural knowledge, landscapes can be read and interpreted like texts. Although the concept of landscape originated among geographers, meaningful interpretation of landscapes has drawn heavily on anthropology. Clifford Geertz (1973) is commonly cited as the first to discuss how human actors interpret meaningful symbols and codes on the landscape. Deciphering these codes is akin to reading them like texts, an activity social scientists and geographers use to study landscapes as symbols of social, ideological, and cultural change (Morehouse 1990, 28). Geographers, landscape architects, and environmental designers have come to consider landscapes not as a single construct but as a multiplicity of texts coexisting in a particular location. They note that material elements of landscapes may remain unchanged for long periods of time, but interpretation of these places can undergo dramatic change. Landscape archaeologists follow upon this tradition of reading landscapes as texts to interpret observations made about the spatial and temporal variability of material traces (Anschuetz, Wilshusen, and Scheick 2001, 165). Archaeologists have documented the phenomenon of interpreting landscapes as texts. Most of this work has been conducted among Native peoples. For example among the Harvaqtuurmiut, an Inuit people from northern Canada, landscapes are known in culturally familiar ways and

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are understood as “pictures” or “texts.” Elements on the landscape like caches, dwellings, and caribou bone refuse contain meaning for Native people. These meanings also chronicle events, much like texts, and are considered recollections of people, events, and their way of life (Stewart, Keith, and Scottie 2004, 190–­91). Ethnographers among Native Americans have also noted the way spoken language, when documented, results in the creation of texts that not only provide insight into the meaning of geographic places but also document how place is understood through a cultural lens. Work done by Keith Basso among the Western Apache is among the best-­known documentation of landscape and its relationship to language in anthropological literature. Basso describes how sense of place is conveyed through the Apache spoken language, a phenomenon that interanimates physical landscapes into something meaningful, significant, and valuable. Part of an ethnographer’s job is to translate this cultural meaning into academic prose; transforming cultural knowledge into a different type of text meant for a different audience (Basso 1996, 55–­57). The symbolism of landscapes is also interpreted by urban folk using the same faculties and motivations as those of Native people. Urban architecture, especially monuments, are designed to send a message to individuals familiar with the cultures for which they are constructed. In urban landscapes collections of monuments can be used to produce a desired image for a city. A message is conveyed that can only be read by individuals familiar with the means of communication. When mixed with vernacular styles and inscribed geographic networks like roads, districts, counties, and political divisions, urban architecture becomes a text that can be used to guide individuals across the landscape, shape their activities, and convey messages to other citizens. In the city the places where a person dwells are keenly associated with architectural elements of that place (Tuan 1974). Being able to read these signs was essential to the creation and maintenance of the River Street Neighborhood for Boiseans. River Street as a Segregated Landscape To the various cultural groups residing in River Street, their landscape was a source of cultural and emotional support. River Street was a multiracial community where families were made and sustained in relative freedom from the discrimination faced outside the neighborhood. It was also a place where social relations were inscribed on the land in such a manner that persons of power, specifically European Americans outside 76

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the neighborhood, could craft landscapes that better suited their needs (Hood 2009). The practice of crafting places like the River Street Neighborhood involves continual negotiations of meaning that were created consciously and unconsciously. The history of this process is written in the built environment as well as archival documents and oral histories that chronicle historical life in the neighborhood. Places like the River Street Neighborhood are established and maintained through a meshwork of culture, emotion, identity, knowledge, and memory writ in three-­ dimensional space (Clack 2009). Oral history interviews collected memories of the neighborhood’s landscape and how living in River Street shaped the lives of the descendant community. Former neighborhood residents were invited to visit the archaeology project area to speak about their recollections of life in this location. During the 2015 excavations, elders were invited to come to the site and record interviews in the neighborhood. It was hoped that returning to the neighborhood would amplify the powerful relationship between memory and places. As the entire project focused on racial dynamics in Boise, oral history informants were given the opportunity to comment on how race relations within the neighborhood compared with relations in the wider community. Table 1 lists the fifteen people from whom oral history interviews have been collected. These interviews, along with four previously recorded interviews conducted in 2014 prior to the excavations, were added to five interviews recorded in 1980 and 1981 as part of Mateo Osa’s historic preservation survey of the River Street Neighborhood (see chapter 4) to provide a robust understanding of how Black and white residents forged lives during the twentieth century. Transcripts of the 1980–­ 1981 interviews were obtained from the Idaho State Historical Archives in Boise, and they are invaluable treasure troves of information as all five of the persons interviewed in the 1980s have since deceased. Table 1. Oral history interviews used for this project Year Recorded

Name

Race/ethnicity

Interviewer

1980

Stewart, Bessie

African American

Osa 1981

1980

Perkins, Ellen

African American

Osa 1981

1981

Thomas, Doris

European American

Osa 1981

1981

Buckner, Dorothy

African American

Osa 1981

1981

Tigner, Rosa

African American

Osa 1981

2014

Terrell III, Warner

African American

White 2014



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Year Recorded

Name

Race/ethnicity

Interviewer

2014

Madry, Dick

African American

White 2014

2014

Bertram, John

European American

White 2014

2014

Rice II, Lee

African American

White 2014

2015

Stevens, Gigi

European American

White et al. 2015

2015

Kennedy, LaVaun

European American

White et al. 2015

2015

Wheeler, Lois

European American

White et al. 2015

2015

Wheeler, Jack E.

European American

White et al. 2015

2015

Hill, Sharon Diane

European American

White et al. 2015

2015

Thomas, Kenneth W.

European American

White et al. 2015

Oral histories clearly indicate River Street was a place where normative American racial mores were contested. Former residents describe that, in the neighborhood, the community transcended the hardened segregation experienced in the outside world. Structural racism remained a reality of daily life in Boise, Idaho, but neighborliness and cooperation characterized life in River Street. It is this neighborliness that is best remembered by the descendant community, both Black and white, and it was this attribute that helped the community stay cohesive in the face of discrimination outside the neighborhood. The European Americans who stayed in River Street were those who were most willing to live alongside African Americans regardless of the stigma that came with living in the Black neighborhood. Interviews with European Americans suggest that their experiences living next door to African Americans subdued their white fragility and made them more aware of how structural racism held back their Black neighbors. White River Street residents did not experience virulent discrimination like Black residents did, but they did suffer from stigmatization and were more aware of how they had been racialized themselves by the same racialization process. Oral histories explain that the way this place is described today was not always the way things were. In Boise an unstated, cryptic sort of racism formed an undercurrent that deeply affected the lives of Black and white people. Overt acts of violence like lynching, bombings, and/or collective antiblack pogroms never took place in Boise as they did in other cities in the United States. Yet antiblack 78

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sentiments ran deep among the white community who used several overt and subdued actions to let Blacks in Boise know they were not welcome in white spaces. Notable events were recorded among all the oral history interviews with Black River Street residents. A few were found in interviews with white residents, but these were most frequent among the memories of Black elders who moved to Boise during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Black elders interviewed in the 2010s were children in the mid-­twentieth century, but those interviewed in the 1980s were adults at this time and frequently recalled antiblack actions perpetrated by white Boiseans. White people in Boise relentlessly worked to make Black Boiseans uncomfortable in white spaces, which required the mobilization of a range of different nonviolent tactics commonly used elsewhere in the United States. For example refusing to serve or occupy the same space as Black people was a common form of overt but nonviolent racism. Black elder Bessie Stewart (1981) recalled how cashiers in stores in downtown Boise routinely ignored Black customers, refusing to even acknowledge their presence. Black streetcar and city bus passengers were expected to sit at the back of the bus even though it was not posted. Oftentimes tellers at the bus station refused to even sell tickets to Black passengers or serve them food and other refreshments on the bus. Doris Thomas recalls, during the 1940s, one of the restaurants she worked at refused to serve Black people. Her restaurant was like most others in town. Black soldiers who arrived in Boise as part of the war effort could buy from these restaurants, but they could not eat inside. Thomas recalls feeling sorry for them as she watched them having to sit on the curb in front of the restaurant to drink their beer and eat their meal. She also remembers this persisted for a time after desegregation laws had been passed: “If you served to colored people in a restaurant, they’d call you a ‘n—-­lover’ just like they did down south. And the white people wouldn’t come in and eat with you” (D. Thomas 1980, 18). White customers would also refuse to dine in the same room as Black customers, preferring to leave the restaurant rather than occupy the same space as Black people. Economic development, or the lack thereof, has been a central element of urban ethnic subgroups analyses in industrial societies. Those living in ethnic enclaves frequently reside in economically stagnant communities defined by poverty, a dearth of social mobility, and a lack of integration into the wider economy (Hall 1983). While they are frequently located in urban cores, landscapes of segregation create social, political, and economic

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peripheries that become stigmatized because of the subaltern status of the individuals who reside there (Wacquant 2010). Geographic stigmatization is part of the racialization process because, as was the case in Boise, it helped actualize the stereotypes ascribed to nonwhite people. Controlling the narratives associated with persons living in these landscapes is important to both those who want to maintain geographic boundaries and those who seek to escape stigmatization. Segregated neighborhoods became the skene for the poverty, criminality, and unconformity affixed to the African Americans’ identities by European Americans. Activities conducted in stigmatized spaces contribute to the associated stigma. “The Black Neighborhood” became a physical demonstration of the Black otherness that was integral for the existence of whiteness. White people had a material example of the negative connotations associated with Blackness and, through structural racism, could use these neighborhoods to compartmentalize and actualize them. Significant efforts were also taken to make sure African Americans did not make economic gains. As was commonplace across the country, Black people in Boise were relegated to low-­wage service jobs like housecleaner, landscaper, barber, shoe shiner, farm laborer, restaurant server, or railroad section hand (Buckner 1980; Perkins 1980; Stewart 1981). These jobs attracted and kept Boise’s Black community in place. Doris Thomas (1980) recalls her husband, Jack, made about three dollars a day for twelve-­hour days working in a railroad freight yard in the 1930s. Doris was a waitress. Their rent was sixteen dollars a month. Employers paid Blacks less than whites, but some employers even tried to cheat Black people out of their meager wages. Bessie Stewart (1981) recalled working as a housekeeper for a newly arrived, upper-­class white family from North Carolina in the 1930s. The man worked as a superintendent for Morrison-­Knudson Construction Company, and his wife was in charge of maintaining their large home. Stewart got the job because she was already employed for three other families on that street, and she was being paid a dollar a day for her services. Always looking to increase her income, Stewart took on the new house, but after the first day on the job, the housewife said, “I haven’t gotten any money. You know I’d pay you if I did but you can go ahead and fix yourself some lunch as payment.” Stewart worked unpaid for a few days until Stewart refused to work there, even after preparing one final, massive lunch out of their stocked refrigerator. Stewart even refused after the woman offered fifteen cents a day as payment; she never offered to 80

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pay for the days Stewart had already worked. Stewart continued to work for the other white families on the street, even though they docked pay fifteen cents for every day she ate lunch on the clock, even if she brought it herself (Stewart 1981). Segregated landscapes like River Street went beyond geography to a deeper cultural space that made it easier to keep social groups apart. While many of the activities Black people were undertaking on a daily basis (going to work, school, and church, shopping, cooking, eating, and practicing habitus) were very similar to what other Americans of the same economic status were doing, these activities took place in a space maligned by structural racism. Everyday activities were imbued with racial overtones because it was hard to make Black people less American unless American society created and cultivated a means of differentiation. Geographic segregation was one of those means. For Boise’s white people living outside the neighborhood, River Street was where those who were not like them did things that were different than what they were doing. Geographic separation supported social and economic divisions and prevented the white community from gaining first-­hand experience with nonwhites. Anthropological discussions of regions of refuge are associated with the treatment of ethnic societies that had been absorbed into nation-­states within the framework of world-­systems theory. Beltrán (1979) described modern regions of refuge as places buffered from full integration into national and supranational economies to the point that their development remains frozen. Social scientists have since recognized that structural inequality, specifically the systems that create ethnic and racial differences, play an integral role in the economic stratification that helps create and maintain regions of refuge. The cultural, ethnic, and racial definitions behind a minoritized group’s identities aid the creation of spatially segregated enclaves that can be defined as regions of refuge. Because they are inhabited by minorities not considered part of mainstream society, residents of these places are denied full participation in national society that could improve their economic and political status (Vélez-­Ibáñez 2004). Similar conditions have been described while researching informal economies in African American neighborhoods in the United States. Work by the sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh (1994) describes how the loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States severely affected minority and working-­class communities in Chicago, Illinois. The loss of outlets for legitimate work that pays livable wages forces adults in this community to

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use public assistance programs supplemented by jobs in the formal economy as well as to generate income from the informal economy through “under-­the-­table” work. Many individuals also supplement these revenue streams with illegal activities like selling drugs, gambling, and prostitution (Venkatesh 1994, 158). Life in these neighborhoods is marked by poverty and stigmatization placing residents at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. Upward mobility is difficult: few businesses operate in these neighborhoods; residents have difficulties gaining the education and credentials necessary; menial labor does not provide enough income to improve their standard of living; and employers discriminate against residents because of the reputation of the neighborhood where they live (Wacquant and Wilson 1989; Venkatesh 1994; Wacquant 2010). The economic benefits of living in mainstream society bypass ethnic neighborhoods, creating dichotomies that are important to maintaining social power hierarchies. Segregated neighborhoods are areas where the logics that prevail elsewhere contrast with those where members of the dominant demographic reside. In the case of River Street, European American residents of Boise, Idaho, used political and economic power to cast the neighborhood as the home of nonwhites. Property ownership and rental restrictions from the 1890s until the 1960s made River Street the place where African Americans and Japanese, eastern European, and Basque immigrants were forced to live and create businesses (Demo 2006). This multiracial and multiethnic neighborhood was considered an undesirable place to live, work, or visit by European Americans. It inadvertently created a place where non-­European American Boiseans could temporarily subvert discrimination. Segregated neighborhoods were places of othering but also refugia from overt discrimination, places where resistance, resilience, and reification of Blackness and ethnic identity were positive attributes. Low wages and low household incomes prevented residents from fully accessing the mainstream market economy. Frugality, resource pooling, and employment in the informal economy supplemented wage work. It also prevented poor white residents from leaving. During the twentieth century, River Street residents were precariously employed in service industries where they served at the whim of managers and owners. Work and income could not be guaranteed, so residents tended to pool resources and work collaboratively. Discrimination motivated residents to shop at local stores rather than outside the neighborhood, a phenomenon characteristic to other Black neighborhoods (Mullins 1999a). A few 82

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neighborhood businesses served local residents. Descendants interviewed for this project also said that while they did not mind shopping in other stores in other areas, shopping outside the neighborhood could only happen during times of prosperity. The neighborhood became a microcosm of American society but with a twist. Separated from the rest of the town, River Street had to rely on its residents for sufficiency. Informal economies were necessary. Residents knew this was not optimal, but social and economic forces also prevented them from leaving. Prior to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, racist rental and home ownership restrictions prevented minorities from living outside certain areas. These mobility restrictions prevented minorities from leaving stigmatized neighborhoods and concentrated minority poverty (Wiese 2004). Despite the negative consequences, discrimination allowed a communal character to develop in these neighborhoods and the creation of a parallel social, economic, and political system to emerge. Minority entrepreneurs, scholars, and leaders established an organizational structure that helped these communities function alongside the national systems dominated by European Americans (Wacquant and Wilson 1989; Venkatesh 1994). The same racism that kept European Americans out of minority neighborhoods, physically and economically, helped these ostracized members of society cultivate close-­knit communities where they could raise their children (see fig. 6). This geographic segregation also played an important role in the economy of Boise, especially with regard to real estate values and government spending. Structural racism strongly influenced the character and perceived value of real estate. Neighborhoods with African American and other non-­European American residents were considered less desirable places to live. Properties in these places were valued at a lower price. White homeowners in the rest of Boise had a strong motivation to keep African Americans in a discrete geographic area in order to prevent the racist devaluation of their own homes due to the presence of African American neighbors (Stewart 1980; Demo 2006). Similarly structural racism provided landlords and city officials with less motivation for landlords to maintain their properties. Blacks and poor whites had few other housing choices, so landlords knew they could reap higher rents than their properties were worth. They also knew their tenants did not have the political power to push for repairs to substandard housing. City officials saw little reason why they should invest scarce resources in an area where property values

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Fig. 6. Warner L. Terrell Jr. seated in a child’s goat cart. p1981-­19-­9. “Children. Warner L. Terrell, Jr. seated in a child’s goat cart.” Terrell family photo collection. Idaho State Archives. Undated.

were so low. As a result property owners were disincentivized to maintain their properties. This phenomenon was common in Black neighborhoods across the United States (Wiese 2004). Preventing Black people from renting or buying homes outside the neighborhood was the primary way white people were able to concentrate the Black population in a specific district. Sometimes this was accomplished by restrictive housing covenants that prohibited home sales or home loans to Black people. Unlike Chinese immigrants in the nineteenth century, keeping Black people out of white spaces was not codified in law. Segregation was largely powered by an unstated expectation that white property owners would not sell or rent to Black people outside the River Street Neighborhood; white solidarity was the primary mechanism for maintaining segregated landscapes in Boise. Most neighborhood residents were renters. While white people were free to rent throughout the city, Black and other minoritized Boiseans were forced to live in River Street because landlords outside the neighborhood refused to rent to them. The pressure not to rent to Blacks came from the rest of white society more than economic reasons since landlords routinely charged Black renters more than whites (Buckner 1980). Dorothy Buckner described how the 84

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decision to rent to Blacks depended on individual landlords. Even within the neighborhood, there were streets where property owners refused to rent to Blacks. For example Blacks could not rent on Lee Street, which runs perpendicular to where the archaeological project was conducted, but they could on Ash Street, particularly the 600 block of Ash where the archaeological fieldwork took place. Blacks might have been able to rent on this street because the African American Haymans owned property on this block, and several Basque families had lived there since the early 1900s. Several property owners in River Street were notorious for refusing to rent to Black people. Buckner (1980, 4) said they would say, “No n—­­s. Very politely tell all the darkies and what-­have-­you that kind of stuff.” Despite being relegated to low-­wage jobs, several African Americans were able to cobble together the money to buy property; however, unspoken racist mores against selling to Blacks in Boise limited their ability to invest in real estate. Elders interviewed in the 1980s had firsthand experience with the way white people continued to hamper their economic development and were particularly frustrated by the ways whites had prevented them from buying properties with higher values elsewhere in the city. This had long hampered Black economic development, particularly among the enterprising Black people who were only allowed to buy in the River Street Neighborhood. Erma Hayman had tried to buy in more affluent parts of the town before settling in River Street. Proud of her modest home, she had watched the neighborhood deteriorate through disinvestment and decay since 1946. She described the situation eloquently, explaining how Black property ownership was constrained by racism: They won’t talk about it, but it’s the truth. Because I have tried to buy property other places a long time ago, before I bought here, and when they found out I was black, the first thing they’d say is that it was sold. I know they don’t want us to believe that, but it’s really been done. That’s why we had to live down here. . . . They just wouldn’t rent you any house in any other part of town. If you did it was something that . . . was kind of a run-­down house. I know they don’t like to hear you say that, but it’s the truth. It’s the truth. That’s why we’re in this part of town. (Hayman 1980, 5) Ellen Perkins ran into the same conundrum about twenty years after Erma Hayman. In 1965 Perkins sold her property to the county highway district because the realignment of River Street was projected to go right

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through her home. Perkins’s husband saw a house that he loved outside the neighborhood, and the owners seemed ready to sell to him. He went to get Ellen to show her the house, but, by the time he had gotten back, the neighbors had convinced the owner not to sell to the Black family. The Perkinses eventually found a house elsewhere in Boise, but their neighbors objected to their presence even though they were buying a run-­down home from owners who had a long history of neglecting the property. There was trash all over the yard, and the home was in disrepair. Complaining about the Perkinses moving in, a white neighbor said, “If you can stand that woman that’s been living in here now, how come you can’t stand these colored people?” Perkins reported living in that new home for decades with no problems from her white neighbors (Perkins 1980, 16). African Americans continued to have trouble buying homes outside the River Street Neighborhood into the 1970s (Stewart 1981). Living with Segregation in Boise Oral history interviews with neighborhood residents describe how this unspoken antiblack racism sent a clear message: Blacks were not welcome in white spaces. This was accomplished by several nonviolent mechanisms. The same discrimination that kept nonwhites and poor whites in the neighborhood simultaneously established a community that, in many ways, transcended racial and ethnic mores valued by outsiders. This phenomenon of working across racial boundaries is told by both African American and European American neighborhood residents in interviews taken in the 1980s and 2010s respectively. Residents actively combated the negative stigmatization of their neighborhood through behaviors and activism. Oral histories explain illicit activities were confined to a segment of Pioneer Street, an east-­west trending alley that passed behind the Erma Hayman House. Illegal activity along Pioneer peaked in the 1970s, prior to the recording of oral histories with neighborhood residents. Longtime residents retained memories of the goings-­on along Pioneer. One African American resident clarified that, despite the presence of illicit activities along Pioneer Street, the neighborhood was not a ghetto: “Don’t call this a ghetto over here because we don’t like it. It’s not a ghetto. Now when Pioneer was over there, it was horrible. . . . Everything went on over there on Pioneer. You couldn’t even drive through there, which I didn’t want to” (Stewart 1980, 32). Interviews with European American residents firmly state River Street was a working-­class neighborhood but also acknowl 86

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edged crime existed along Pioneer Street. Residents were fully aware of the fact that vice had been driven into the neighborhood because a law enforcement campaign had eliminated the notorious red-­light district in downtown Boise. These activities simply moved to River Street, which was an area where unscrupulous landlords asked few questions about what their tenants were doing, and law enforcement cared little about stamping out vice in an already stigmatized area (Buckner 1981). Residents responded by taking efforts to restrict vice activities to a small portion of their neighborhood. Unaware of the neighborhood’s geographies, European Americans living outside the neighborhood believed illicit activity was rampant throughout River Street. Outsiders attributed vice to all River Street residents even though only a few were behind these activities. Illicit activities served as additional proof of their immoral character, which created a positive feedback loop of stigma that further fueled discrimination. River Street was also a space where racial mores could be bent or broken. Oral histories with former residents, both European American and African American, recall this was a place where the racial categories that prevailed throughout the rest of Boise and American society were temporarily overlooked. Familiarity and knowledge of their place in the social hierarchy allowed residents to judge each other based on individual characteristics more readily than racial identity (Hayman 1980; D. Thomas 1981). A European American descendant recalled that each resident recognized their identity was strongly influenced by realities of living on the south side of the tracks more than being a resident of Boise or Idaho. Length of residency in the neighborhood could overpower ethnicity and race in personal relationships with other neighborhood residents. Being from “the neighborhood” was enough for other residents to overlook skin color when asking for financial assistance, looking out for children, finding work, or locating housing. Both European American and African American residents describe how River Street folks helped each other and looked out for each other’s welfare. Discrimination came from the outside (Loralee Badgett, personal communication, 2013). It was understood that the neighborhood was a social, cultural, economic, and political boundary: “They weren’t the ones that come from the outside. Those from the outside were different. They’re the ones you had the trouble with” (D. Thomas 1981, 8; Demo 2006, 99). Cooperation between neighborhood residents of all races helped them overcome tough times (Hayman 1980; D. Thomas 1981; Demo 2006, 97–­

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109). Multiple stories of interracial collaboration were collected in the seven oral histories conducted with former African American residents in the 1980s and 2014 and six European American interviewees who recorded in 2015. Ellen Perkins Stevens lived in the neighborhood from the 1930s until 1965, and she was matriarch of the only Black family on her block. Despite being African American, she recalls cordial relations with her neighbors. Food, clothing, and labor was shared in times of need. Descendants wanted to explain that African American and European American relations in the neighborhood were generally cordial and marked by equanimity. While Black and white residents remember equanimity between races, a small number of white residents discriminated against their Black neighbors. These folks usually left River Street as soon as they could. LaVaun Kennedy, whose family occupied the Hayman House in 1943 before Erma Hayman purchased it, described an event when her mother forbade her from playing with neighboring Black children. She was about five years old when she allowed a Black friend into their house to use the restroom. Her mother scolded her and sent the Black child home, explaining that African Americans were never allowed in their house. Additionally she was not allowed to play with that child again. Confused, LaVaun agreed and did not realize what had happened until she was an adult. The family sold the home soon after this event (Kennedy 2015). Structural racism in the rest of Boise made sure neighborhood residents never forgot their place in the racial and social hierarchy. African American descendant Warner Terrell III lived in the neighborhood between the 1940s and 1970s. In his 2014 interview, he stated that open discrimination against Boise’s small African American community was not as bad as parts of the United States with larger Black populations; the few Blacks in Boise were familiar to law enforcement and most of the white community. The small number of nonwhites meant Boise schools were never segregated. Terrell III became class president at North Junior High School and never recalls being refused service in any Boise business including those outside the neighborhood. At that time, however, African Americans were not allowed to live outside the neighborhood and were only allowed to have service jobs or do menial labor (Terrell III 2014). Miscegenation between Black and white Boiseans was also a major concern for white moralists. While subversively accepted within the neighborhood, interracial dating was strictly taboo outside River Street. In his 88

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interview Terrell III conveyed a story about an interaction between a female schoolmate and a Boise police officer when he was in middle school. While walking in downtown Boise, Terrell saw a white girl he knew from school and started up a casual conversation. A police officer passing by noticed the young Black boy talking to the white girl. The officer forced the girl to get into the police car, took her to the station, and made her call her parents and explain what she was seen doing in public (Terrell III 2014). The message was clear: interracial romantic relationships were not tolerated. Tales of discrimination like this demonstrate how African Americans, no matter how accepted outside the neighborhood, were always reminded of their social status. Oral histories also describe how personal relationships built from years of familiarity with other residents internalized a common understanding of the neighborhood’s class status, which became a source of solidarity. This solidarity helped Black neighborhood residents withstand economic and racial discrimination that pervaded greater Boise. White residents made friends with people who were in similar economic straits, even though they did not face overt discrimination outside the neighborhood (Hayman 1980; Demo 2006). Recorded stories revealed several nonviolent efforts designed to “keep them in their place,” but in some cases, the racial hierarchy in Boise was maintained through terror. The burning of a cross in the yard of an African American family is a widely remembered event that scars the memory of the first African American family to leave the River Street Neighborhood. This event was recalled in several oral histories (Buckner 1981; Madry 2014; Rice 2014; Terrell III 2014). While police records of the event have yet to be found, several Boise residents recall that Aurelius and Dorothy Buckner sold their River Street home in the 1950s and moved to the all-­white North End Neighborhood. Shocked by the arrival of this Black family, the Buckners’ neighbors burned a cross in their front yard. The message was clear: African Americans who attempted to subvert white supremacy would be punished. The Buckners also wanted to send a message: they would not be cowed back into River Street. Matriarch Dorothy Buckner brought the burned cross into her house and used it as a centerpiece over her mantle. It remained prominently displayed for years afterward. After a while racial tensions subsided, but the message was clearly understood by other Black people in Boise. African Americans were not welcomed outside River Street (Buckner 1981). The Buckners remained

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the only Black family outside the neighborhood until the 1960s as most Black people were afraid to leave. Greatly outnumbered, Black people in Boise understood the potential consequences for crossing the unspoken color line. Boise was a much smaller place in the first half of the twentieth century, and most citizens knew the town’s few Black residents. Occasionally unfamiliar Black people arrived in town through work or simply passing through. This became increasingly common after the 1940s when the town experienced an influx of Black residents as part of the war effort. The Boise City Police helped maintain racial mores in the event an errant Black person came to town. Dorothy Buckner (1980, 23) describes how if they saw a “rough” looking African American, especially a man, the police would “float him out of town”: “They’d just say ‘N—­, there’s the highway. Give you 24 hours to get out of town.’ That’s what they called floating folks out of town.” Anyone who did not heed that warning was placed in jail for a long time. Elders interviewed in 1980–­1981 recall Boise’s Blacks avoided violence because they “kept their heads down,” refusing to contest their treatment by whites. This acquiescence helped Black people from getting physically harmed, but it did little to push for equity and desegregation. Buckner recalled how most of the activism through the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People came from outside organizers. Boise’s Blacks were reluctant to participate because they were afraid of “rocking the boat.” This did not sit well with Buckner, who was an antiracism and desegregation activist in Boise. Despite living in Idaho and River Street for much of her childhood, Buckner spent her youth in larger cities like Portland and New York City. When she returned she understood that things could be better in Boise. Despite opposition from pioneering Black families, Buckner spent her adulthood fighting racism in Boise. When local Blacks reminded her that things were not as bad in Boise as they were elsewhere in the United States, Buckner responded, “Just because it’s better than wherever you came from doesn’t mean it’s okay. . . . I mean it’s like saying this pig pen is a little cleaner than that pig pen—­that doesn’t make it okay” (Buckner 1981). Interpreting Segregation from a Landscape Structural racism, stigmatization, and a perceived lack of economic value all prevented Boiseans from investing in the River Street Neighborhood, which created an economically depressed zone. Neighborhood residents 90

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understood their economic position in Boise’s society and that they were at a political and economic disadvantage. By the 1910s the River Street Neighborhood was viewed as a separate entity from the European American sphere of greater Boise. It was geographically separated from the rest of the town by the Oregon Short Line’s spur track into the city on the north and the Boise River on the south. Industrial warehouses and a power plant flanked the western and eastern edges of the neighborhood. Geographically isolated and on undesirable property, the residents of this neighborhood could see that they were visibly separated from the rest of town. These dwellings were conveniently located next to downtown Boise, the commercial hub of the community, but its vicinity to industry and the flood-­prone floodplain deterred most European Americans who could afford to live elsewhere. European immigrants at this time, most specifically the Basque, did not yet express the cultural attributes necessary to claim whiteness. By the 1940s African American Boiseans were forced through structural racism to make their homes there, which further increased the undesirability of this district for “upstanding” European Americans. While the Basque and European American residents could become white by leaving the neighborhood and giving up their language, beliefs, and traditional ways, African Americans did not have this luxury. River Street was a known place for Boiseans. As a geographical space, the neighborhood was separated from the landscape intended to reinforce whiteness, both materially and culturally. This geographic separation was important for the formation of whiteness because it was positioned as a separate landscape that embodied the opposite of whiteness—­“the others.” As a segregated geographic place, the neighborhood’s identity was inscribed in the physical and social landscape of Boise, Idaho. Its buildings came to represent poverty, misfortune, and “otherness.” Its inhabitants were living representatives. Oral histories with the descendant community contradict the negative conception of this place, but aside from those who lived in the neighborhood, River Street was viewed negatively. To the rest of the city, River Street was Boise’s ghetto. Learning to live in landscapes is an iterative process taught by community members with deep understandings augmented by experiential knowledge gained from individual life events. If landscapes are created by cultures through social processes, learning to live in these spaces is done by each individual from within. Each resident must learn how to obtain resources, avoid taboos, and provide for our basic needs while

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living in a material world that is constantly changing. The process of learning how to live in landscapes is a human activity, and successfully knowing how to navigate cultural landscapes can be a matter of survival. Marcy Rockman (2013, 99) asks, “How do you learn an environment? What skills does it take? What information do you need? In what situations is it best to learn for yourself, and when is it best to be instructed by others?” These questions are paramount for African Americans navigating racialized landscapes like Boise. Archaeologists explain the transmission of this knowledge happens through a form of apprenticeship where cultural knowledge is conveyed through several mediums—­play, observation, imitation, experiment, oral histories, and informal interactions every day—­and, in the case of recent societies, through the formal education system and other state apparatuses (Wendrich 2013). Repetition is key to this process because the boundaries, resources, and cultural meanings of landscapes are constantly changing and subject to reinterpretation. As segregated and racialized landscapes like River Street are both a source of identity and meaning, a parallel reality exists where hybrid identities are created. The ambiguity and situatedness of racialized landscapes are intrinsically linked to the fuzziness of concepts like race, ethnicity, and class (Tilley 2006). Collective identities of who is and is not part of the neighborhood are bound up with shared traditions, cultural knowledge, economic status, and a unique consciousness of one’s own status that allow a person to claim group belonging. Only those with double consciousness—­coming from knowing how to navigate the European American-­dominated landscape outside River Street and the personalized landscape in the neighborhood—­have the cultural knowledge to both interpret racialized spaces and teach others how to navigate landscapes carved out through segregation. This experiential knowledge can only be taught to those who have the cultural knowledge needed to interpret these landscapes, as properly learning landscapes also requires reification that comes from experiential learning by the individual. Landscape knowledge is also specific. For Boise’s African Americans and immigrants, learning how to identify who can be trusted, the intent of white people, the rules of racialized society, and how to deal with racism takes place in spaces outside the gaze of white people, which is of paramount importance. This knowledge is secreted from those who do not need to know Black ways of survival. Because of centuries of cultural demolition borne through colonization, slavery, and racism, Afri 92

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can American cultural knowledge is not meant for European American people to know. This sensitive information could be used against Black people. European immigrants also cultivated their own cultural landscape knowledge, a hybrid of knowledge brought from Europe mixed with new ways of knowing cultivated after arrival in the United States. For Basque residents in River Street, this meant knowing when to continue cultural practices and when to conceal them. Whiteness was a possibility for Boise’s Basque people but only if Basqueness became a secret identity. The Basque were forced to tack between identities when outside the neighborhood, but in order to access the privilege afforded through whiteness, most Basque residents left River Street to escape a stigmatized landscape. It was not until the late twentieth century that Boise’s Basque would be able to openly claim their heritage without fear of repercussions from European American society. In the case of River Street, a small group of white people were able to gain some insight into the parallel African American and hybrid Basque cultural knowledge, but, because of their own racial identity, they were never privy to all of it. Poor white residents were aware of the way upstanding whites saw the white people living in River Street. They understood they were white people with a caveat. River Street’s poor whites knew they lived in a landscape that stigmatized them, and that leaving this place was the only way they could fully access white privilege. Those whites who stayed in the neighborhood for decades were unwilling to leave their homeplace to satisfy the fickle whims of white people who did not accept them without prejudgment. River Street was their home regardless of how outsiders viewed it.



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4 The River Street Public Archaeology Project I became involved in the River Street Public Archaeology Project in late 2013 when preservationists and former city officials told me that this block was slated for development. I was applying to PhD programs at the time and wondered if I could do my doctoral research in my hometown. As an African American who was born and raised in Boise, I wanted to help the neighborhood that is the historical heart of Boise’s Black community. I had been doing cultural resource management archaeology since 2004, so I was familiar with historic preservation legislation as it pertains to documenting sites in the United States and calling for archaeological data recovery. I decided to put these skills to the test in River Street once it became clear that the Erma Hayman House would be moved by the city. The project’s goals were to identify the integrity and extent of archaeological remains on the 600 block of Ash Street. Redevelopment has been the goal for the entire River Street Neighborhood for decades, and public/ private ventures at the city level facilitated development into this part of the city. This block, shown in figure 7, was chosen because it was owned by the Boise Department of Parks and Recreation (Boise Parks) and the Capital City Development Corporation (ccdc), a public/private land management organization for the City of Boise. At the time when the project was in its planning phase, Boise Parks had no plan to disturb their parcels, but the ccdc was planning on developing their entire property on the 600 block of Ash Street. Private developers proposed several multiunit residential buildings. Preservation projects in the River Street Neighborhood used city or private funding so there was no historic preservation nexus. The City of Boise has no historic or environmental preservation policies that would require an environmental review for privately funded projects. Proposed development could proceed without having to account for adverse effects to historical properties. While there was no legal mandate, several preservation advocacy groups were keenly interested in doing whatever they could to learn more about the 600 block’s history, including the Boise 94

Fig. 7. Land ownership in River Street Public Archaeology Project area, 2015. Courtesy of Danielle Phelps, 2016.

Department of Arts and History, Preservation Idaho (an architectural heritage preservation organization), and Planmakers, Inc. (a planning and urban design company owned by John Bertram, who had led preservation activities in River Street during the 1970s). Preservationists were particularly interested in saving the Erma Hayman House because of its unique The River Street Project

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architectural attributes, it was the only surviving historical building on the block, and it had been donated to the city to be preserved as a historical property connected to Boise’s Black community. Without a regulatory nexus, saving the house in place was proving difficult. It was hoped that media coverage for the archaeology project would bring the public’s attention to this corner of the city and that the archaeology would show that there was significant historical data on large portions of the property. A dedicated crew of scholars from the University of Arizona, University of Idaho, and College of Western Idaho launched the River Street Public Archaeology Project on May 25, 2015, and completed it on July 5 of that same year. Archaeologists at the Idaho Transportation Department solicited volunteers, many of whom had participated in the U.S. Forest Service’s Passport in Time project before it was disbanded in the Boise area. Initially a few passersby inquired about what was going on, but most visitors to the ongoing archaeological investigation were inquisitive residents and commuters. Visitors increased dramatically after local news crews visited the site later that week, creating the first round of “local interest” pieces featuring the archaeology project. This catapulted the project into the minds of metropolitan Boise area residents. News coverage maintained public interest, boosting the number of project volunteers. Fifty-­four volunteers donated 1,174 hours working on the project by digging, washing artifacts, and helping to catalog collected artifacts. By the end of the six-­week project, more than five hundred people had signed the visitor’s log. Once archaeologists found the deposits and communicated this on the news, clearly connecting this place to Boise’s unacknowledged past, it became unpopular for city officials to defend moving the house. Local participation made the archaeology project happen, but it was also made possible through permission granted by land-­owning agencies. While Boise Parks and the Department of Arts and History have a mandate to improve the quality of life for the citizens of Boise, the ccdc’s focus is on economic development and careful planning and promoting real estate development in the downtown district. The city of Boise is one of the fastest growing communities in the United States, and many longtime residents are unhappy with the pace of development, especially in historical central-­city districts like River Street. The ccdc is viewed by many as the handmaiden of industry. There is some validity to that perspective. The organization was born from urban renewal efforts in the 1950s through 1970s that destroyed much of the historical architectural fabric of down 96

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town Boise. Folks who remember are reluctant to forget these origins. It was only through grassroots activism that Boise citizens were able to stop bulldozers from rolling through the River Street Neighborhood. The same energy behind the movement to save Boise’s historical architecture provided momentum to the 2015 archaeology project. From that view this project was a continuation of this movement to save the neighborhood. The archaeological component of the River Street Project was conducted with a spirit of collaboration and inclusion. It was a community-­ based project that sought input from former neighborhood residents, cultural resource management companies, local preservationists, and the descendant community. The project was also to provide an opportunity for students, volunteers, and neighborhood descendants to participate in a heritage conservation project designed to make a significant contribution to local history. Archaeological excavation methods, digital maps, and the memories of those who used to live in the area were used to position excavation units and help interpret the results. This chapter explores the impetus for community-­based collaboration, the data recovery process employed in 2015, and how the outcome of the River Street Public Archaeology Project connects with and expands local knowledge of the neighborhood’s history. Community Collaboration Movement in American Archaeology Since the establishment of the National Historic Preservation Act (nhpa) in 1966, university-­trained archaeologists, architectural historians, and anthropologists have become the handmaidens of preservation; their knowledge is used to determine which archaeological sites are eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places (the National Register), which is a major pathway toward saving historical sites in the United States (King 2003, 2013; Anfinson 2019). Amendments to the nhpa mandated consultation with federally acknowledged Native American tribes and other affected communities, but these laws do not call for true collaboration with descendant communities—­that is, they do not call for researchers to incorporate Indigenous and other culturally appropriate input into all aspects of the preservation process. Aside from federally recognized Native American tribes, consultation requirements do not directly apply to other community groups in the United States and its territories despite the fact that historic properties associated with EuroThe River Street Project

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pean Americans are disproportionately protected by historic preservation regulations even though the environmental impacts of federal undertakings affect the resources of minority communities more than European American ones (Barile 2004; King 2013; Anfinson 2019). Consultation with affected communities is recommended but not required, which means consulting with non-­Native communities is uncommon. Reflexivity within the field of archaeology contributed to the call for increased collaboration with non-­Native descendant communities, which has led to a growing ethos within the field that prompts archaeologists to use their research for social justice and to transcend discrimination in our society. This movement for increased community input combined with the reflexive response among some archaeologists is central to making antiracism archaeology a force for change.

Motivations for Collaborative Archaeology Projects Archaeologists in several parts of the United States have increased collaboration with descendant communities over the last twenty years (Singleton 2007; Atalay 2012; Atalay et al. 2014). The movement in archaeology toward becoming a more inclusive, collaborative field can only exist where there is trust and respect between archaeologists and descendant communities. The goal of this movement is to improve the quality of archaeology while also building capacity for heritage activism within descendant communities. Archaeology conducted without input from Indigenous and other descendant communities falls short of truly explaining the past because it does not provide space for alternate explanations aside from the ones yielded by traditional archaeology. What archaeologists see, count, and measure does not provide the same information as traditional cultural knowledge conveyed by descendants (Ferguson 2009). Only by cultivating trust can archaeologists access traditional knowledge from communities. Before they can expect cooperation, archaeologists should be attentive to the needs of descendants who want to use traditional knowledge for the betterment of their communities (Kuwanwisiwama 2008; Ferguson 2009). A growing number of archaeologists continue working toward using archaeology to help the communities with whom they work. Rather than fearing questions from descendants, these scholars are using their skills to question the validity of work that is not collaborative. Archaeology designed and conducted in the best interest of descendant communities is a form of activism focused on decolonizing society, empowering future 98

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Fig. 8. Collaboration continuum in archaeology. Atalay 2012, 47–­51; Colwell-­Chanthaphonh and Ferguson 2008, 1–­32; Ferguson 2009, 88.

generations to reclaim their heritage, and increasing what is known about the past for the benefit of all (Watkins and Ferguson 2005; Atalay 2006, 2012; Little and Zimmerman 2010; Atalay et al. 2014). This is the spirit from which the River Street Project was conceived. Figure 8 shows my version of what some archaeologists call the “collaborative continuum.” I derived this model by combining other scholars’ work (Colwell-­Chanthaphonh and Ferguson 2008; Atalay 2012, 49–­50; Ferguson 2009) with my own experience. My hope is that projects like the one in River Street help to provide a model of inclusivity, cooperation, and collaboration, leading to better understanding of the past. In turn, of course, the hope is better understanding for the future. Collaborative archaeology requires a different mindset because it requires archaeologists to think beyond the confines of the field as it has been traditionally practiced. Collaborative work requires archaeologists to connect with communities in ways that are not directly related to the systematic collection and analysis of archaeological materials. It also forces archaeologists to admit we do not have all the answers. Collaborative archaeology is rooted in the concept of community-­based participatory research (cbpr), which entails all scientific research that includes members of the local community in all aspects of the project including planning, research design, execution, and data dissemination (Atalay The River Street Project

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2012). According to Atalay (2012, 63–­75) cbpr has five main principles: (1) community-­based partnerships, (2) wide participation, (3) capacity-­ building, (4) reciprocity, and (5) recognition of multiple forms of knowledge. This work between archaeologists and descendant communities falls along a spectrum of inclusiveness, and although collaborative ventures are increasing, a large amount of archaeological work continues to be conducted with minimal input from descendant communities. In the United States, collaborative archaeology initially started with Native American tribes, but an increasing number of archaeological projects at various locations along the collaborative continuum have made substantial efforts to include non-­Native communities. The majority of these are public archaeology projects with a specific goal of public outreach and education (Stottman 2014). While some of these public archaeology projects have collaborated with local and descendant communities in order to fashion research designs that address the questions that matter to local residents, the majority of these projects were designed by archaeologists. Local people were only invited to participate in the excavations and comment on interpretations. They had little input into the research goals and research design. Public archaeology is a positive step toward collaboration and community-­based participatory research, but it has not always been truly collaborative. Including local people in the reclamation of their own heritage is an important step, but both archaeologists and descendants reap more benefits from true collaboration. Archaeology in the River Street Neighborhood falls firmly within the rubric of community-­based participatory archaeology because it seeks to: maximize inclusivity; aid in the preservation and interpretation of the Hayman House and the rest of the neighborhood; provide for a more accurate understanding of the past based on archaeological, historical, and anthropological data; and help local preservation-­minded citizens advocate on behalf of other properties in the city. People from throughout the community were invited to participate, and hundreds of Boiseans did. African Americans have largely been omitted from Boise’s history. There are few memorials or sites commemorating their presence on the landscape. The reasons for this are rooted in systematic, structural racism. The archaeology project in this neighborhood was an attempt to address a small portion of this problem, which is common across the United States.

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Collaborative Archaeology in African American Communities Collaborative projects with African American communities in the United States build upon the extensive work conducted with Native Americans and other ethnicities to help reclaim heritage through archaeology. African American activism has long forced historical archaeologists to reevaluate the artificial dichotomies between racialized groups that helped create this country (LaRoche and Blakey 1997). Archaeology projects on African American sites have also pushed archaeologists toward collaboration. This was not always by choice. Events like those surrounding the African Burial Ground (summarized in chapter 2) galvanized African American communities to advocate on behalf of their archaeological heritage. These calls for social activism through the archaeology of African Americans coincided with the expansion of collaborative archaeology during the 2000s. Archaeology as a form of social justice through the rewriting of history has been central to inclusive collaboration with African American communities. It can also be a form of therapy for traumatized Black communities (Schaepe et al. 2017). Another example of the movement toward a more inclusive practice with African American communities is exemplified through Carol McDavid’s work in Texas. Her 1990s work at the Levi-­Jordan Plantation was, from its conception, dedicated to including the local community in the data collection and dissemination process (McDavid 1997, 115–­16). Because this work took place in a racially polarized area, McDavid sought to bring together the descendants of African American slaves and European American slave owners in order to provide a holistic view of the plantation’s past and craft a narrative that emphasized the multivalence of the site. A pragmatic approach was required to position this work as part of a much wider “historically situated, contingent, and pluralistic conversation” (McDavid 2002, 305). McDavid’s subsequent work in Freedman’s Town in Houston saw her role as an archaeologist expanded into other arenas. She realized her professional expertise and status as a European American archaeologist could be used to further community historic preservation goals (McDavid 2011a). Not only was her work aimed to combat the negative stigmatization of this African American historic district, it was also central to the campaign Black preservationists were waging against development that threatened the district’s integrity (McDavid 2011a, 2011b).

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Collaborative, public archaeology also forced McDavid to confront her white privilege, which is an important self-­reflexive exercise and component of antiracism archaeology. This is a step that is rarely conducted by European American archaeologists. McDavid discussed how whiteness teaches European Americans to “think of their lives as normative, neutral, and ideal”—­an identity that is expected to go uncontested by the rest of society. Furthermore as an academician, McDavid has an additional layer of authority that makes her ideas more easily accepted (McDavid 2007, 68–­69). McDavid’s work and self-­awareness demonstrates that archaeology can do much to address racism, decolonization, and white privilege. The benefits of this process reach a much wider audience when conducted in collaboration with communities. Work at the New Philadelphia National Historic Landmark in west central Illinois is another example of how historical archaeology has sought to include local communities, including African American descendants, in public archaeology projects. Launched in 2004 the New Philadelphia Archaeology Project was a National Science Foundation-­Research Experiences for Undergraduates project that sought to provide field opportunities for undergraduates through a community archaeology project. Excavations centered on the historical settlement of New Philadelphia, which was platted in 1836 by Frank McWhorter, an African American born in slavery who purchased his own freedom and that of his wife and children. New Philadelphia is the first town platted and subdivided by an African American in the United States (Walker 1983). The town reached a peak population of 160 individuals in 1860. Between the 1850s and 1920s, the town’s African American population fluctuated between 25 and 30 percent before it was depopulated in the early 1900s (Shackel 2010). The town was uninhabited by the time archaeology took place. Archaeology at New Philadelphia sought the input of local residents from its conception. Oral history interviews were conducted with former town residents, including several African Americans (Christman 2010). Information gleaned from these interviews was used to guide interpretations and research questions. As a multiracial town started by African Americans but largely inhabited by European Americans, New Philadelphia forced archaeologists to go beyond the quest to differentiate Black and white households through material culture. They instead focused on how the town was a form of resistance against racist norms in the surrounding countryside. The mere existence of New Philadelphia—­a 102

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community where Blacks and whites were neighbors—­defied segregationist efforts that predominated throughout rural Illinois. Material culture showed that African American and European American households had access to the same products, had similar foodways, and sent their children to an integrated school (Martin and Martin 2010; Shackel 2010; Agbe-­Davies and Martin 2013). Archaeologists at New Philadelphia wove local memories and narratives into the ways the archaeological data was interpreted (Shackel 2010, 2011). Commemorating the site as a National Historic Landmark, one of the few related to African Americans, provided protection to the site but also made it more visible to the rest of the country. This project can be viewed as a fruitful example of collaboration and activist archaeology that resulted in the creation of a national heritage property (Shackel 2011). Collaborative Archaeology in the River Street Neighborhood From the River Street Project’s beginnings, I knew that archaeological deposits were likely to exist throughout the neighborhood. I considered this project to be a rare chance to save a small piece of the material remains of the neighborhood and to be part of advocating for the neighborhood’s continued preservation. It was also a chance for city government organizations to participate in a truly collaborative venture with a group, a means of proactively mitigating impacts for a group that viewed this as an important piece for addressing social justice. The disinvestment caused by segregation added to the perception that the River Street Neighborhood was a blighted place, fitting for demolition, renewal, or redevelopment. Former residents and preservationists believe this is a central reason why it has taken such significant effort to create a historical property in the neighborhood, while historic properties have been created elsewhere in Boise. Previous researchers in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s have attempted to conserve some of this heritage and advocated for preserving buildings, but this did not happen in River Street until the 2010s. Since the 1970s older single-­family dwellings have been demolished to make way for a range of different multifamily housing complexes, multistory townhouses, and commercial buildings leaving few detached, single-­family structures remaining. I viewed the River Street Archaeology Project from the understanding that human behavior in the past cannot be adequately understood without first understanding the role of material culture and landscapes in a specific social and historical context. Artifacts, buildings, and other material items The River Street Project

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are a tangible record of human behaviors and a window into the nuanced meaning behind those behaviors in the past. Because material items are the result of meaningful actions executed by cognizant individuals, material culture can be actively used to create and reproduce society (Shackel and Little 1992, 8). These meanings created through the consumption of material culture are constantly in flux. In the late nineteenth-­and early twentieth-­century American West, where people from a wide spectrum of backgrounds and motives converged, “The changing meaning of consumption practices [was] fundamentally an issue of the changing organization and significance of material culture itself ” (Purser 1992, 106). Understanding the symbolic use of material culture and the active role it has played in the past is important for the interpretation of social relations and the reasons they have evolved in certain ways (Van Bueren 2002, 26–­27). The material culture recovered from the excavations at River Street should also be seen from the perspective of life in Boise and the greater United States at the time. The early twentieth century was when Americans adjusted to the industrialization and urbanization that had spread across the country in the previous century. It was a period full of complex patterns of human mobility that revolutionized the nature and function of all social units in American society (Purser 1991, 7). Cities like Boise illustrate that by the early twentieth century, the West was an integral, modern, and urban place (Taylor 1998; Allmendinger 2005; Taylor 2012). The transplanted urbanism and modernity in the American West are well documented and supplemented by archaeological assemblages (Purser 1992; Van Bueren 2002; Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2004; Dixon 2014; Warner 2017). The changing manifestation and meaning of race were other aspects of life in the early twentieth century. Concepts in the archaeology of colonies can be applied to more recent historical contexts to reveal the ways racial categories play a defining role in society. Panich (2013) notes that groups living in oppression (such as the racial discrimination and segregation experienced by River Street residents) should be evaluated through archaeology by highlighting their persistence. He goes on to state that identity, practice, and context are essential avenues of investigation for the study of archaeologies of persistence. Aspects of this identity and practice can be seen through the material signature of artifacts, the built environment, and oral history (Osa 1981; Orser 2004; Silliman 2010). Interrogating these aspects was central to the use of archaeology to study the River Street Neighborhood between the 1890s and 1960s. 104

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A dialectic between European Americans and nonwhites has always shaped what it means to be American in the United States. Segregated places like River Street were central to the maintenance of whiteness as a racial category because they provided a contrast to the European American identity, which was conveyed as the normative value of American society. In order to reveal whiteness, the archaeological project focused “on the identities, ideologies, and norms that are not always understood or even explicitly realized by those who benefit from them, and on the ways these taken-­for-­granted assumptions can mystify, legitimate, and ultimately perpetuate systems of racial inequality” (Hartmann, Gerteis, and Croll 2009, 404). European American racial identity was conferred upon those that exemplified an unwritten social code of proper behavior that included relative wealth, political power, and moral authority. While porous and constantly subject to change, the preeminence of European American identity had long been intact in American society by the time European Americans arrived in Boise (Roediger 1991; Jacobson 1998, 31–­ 38; Hartigan 2005). Another principal research goal of the River Street Project is to demonstrate how European American identity evolved through constantly changing relationships with other races and with subgroups of the European American race. With these things in mind, table 2 lists the research domains that were used to guide questions and hypotheses developed in order to address the larger question of race, racialization, and ethnicity in Boise, Idaho. Table 2. Research domains of the River Street Public Archaeology Project Site formation

How was this site created? How has it changed in the last hundred years?

Social and economic identity

Artifact assemblages with status-­diagnostic materials (e.g., ceramics, bottle makers’ marks, personal adornment items, etc.) Faunal assemblages Artifacts or building characteristics reflecting gender, age of occupants, or length of occupation

Household foodways

Food containers Faunal bone Concentrated disposal areas Historical record The River Street Project

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Gender roles

Gender-­related artifacts (clothing, personal adornment, etc.) Health and beauty aides Evidence of gender-­based decision-­making as seen through artifacts, oral histories, and the historical record

Urban life and (re)development

Building materials and features Building locations and occupancy Demographics Street location and orientation over time Census, tax, and city directory information

Archaeology in the River Street Neighborhood focused on the 600 block of Ash Street; the project area was half of this irregularly shaped city block in downtown Boise. The parcels in figure 7 show the project area for excavations. Permission was granted to conduct archaeological excavations on this block in the summer of 2015. This was a prime location to conduct a project like this because it was believed to contain intact archaeological remains, was largely void of existing structures, and the only remaining building, a house at 617 Ash Street, was known to have been occupied by an African American family for more than sixty years, shown in figure 9 as it was in 2015. The Erma Hayman House was built in 1897 and had been historically occupied by a number of working-­class families of various races before the Hayman family purchased the house (Demo 2006; Madry 2014). From the late 1940s until 2006, the house was occupied by the African American Hayman family whose matriarch, Erma Hayman, lived at this location until her death in 2006. She raised her children and several grandchildren there, including her grandson Dick Madry, who was interviewed for the project in 2014 and continued to help identify the location of former structures during the archaeological excavations in 2015. The fieldwork intended to include as many constituencies as possible and sought to build capacity among Boise residents so that they could partner on future projects. Training volunteers and university students in archaeological method and theory was an important aspect of this work. Universities, cultural resource management companies, historic preservation agencies, governmental organizations, volunteers, and descendant community members were invited to participate. Through local news and print media, the entire city of Boise was asked to visit and, if desired, take part in the excavations. Figure 10 shows scenes from the 2015 fieldwork. 106

The River Street Project

Fig. 9. The Erma Hayman House at 617 Ash Street, 2015. Courtesy of the author.

In addition to excavations, fieldwork also included an ethnographic component where descendants were invited to record oral history interviews on-­site. Local volunteers were integrated into an archaeological and ethnography field school administered by two Idaho universities. Field school credits for the excavation component could be issued from the University of Idaho, while the ethnography field school credits came from the College of Western Idaho. Undergraduates could earn college credit from both institutions for their participation. Based on archival research, oral histories, and historical maps of the project area, archaeologists expected to find artifacts and archaeological features dating to more than one hundred years of human activity in this location. It was unlikely that Native American archaeological materials would exist at this location as the project area was on the active floodplain and had been subjected to numerous floods, including several serious floods during the historical period. Furthermore this location had been altered by urban development for more than 120 years; however maps show at least six dwellings and associated outbuildings (e.g., privies, garages, stables, and sheds) have existed in the project area (see fig. 3). Many of these structures were gone, but their archaeological footprints remained. Oral history interviews collected memories of the neighborhood’s landscape and how living in River Street shaped the lives of the descenThe River Street Project

107

Fig. 10. A scene from the River Street Public Archaeology Project, 2015. Photo by the author.

dant community. Former neighborhood residents were invited to visit the archaeology project area to speak about their recollections of life in this location. During the 2015 excavations, elders were invited to come to the site and record interviews in the neighborhood. It was hoped that returning to the neighborhood would amplify the powerful relationship between memory and places. As the entire project focused on racial dynamics in Boise, oral history informants were given the opportunity to comment on how race relations within the neighborhood compared with relations in the wider community. These interviews, along with four previously recorded interviews conducted in 2014 prior to the excavations, were added to five interviews recorded in 1980 and 1981 as part of Mateo Osa’s historic preservation survey of the River Street Neighborhood (see table 1 in chapter 2) to provide a robust understanding of how Black and white residents forged lives during the twentieth century. Transcripts of the 1980–­1981 interviews were obtained from the Idaho State Historical Archives in Boise. Oral histories added texture to the archaeological research because their memories helped archaeologists infer meaning 108

The River Street Project

from mundane, mass-­produced material culture as is described in subsequent chapters. These interviews also helped us understand that the way this place is described today was not always the way things were (see discussions in chapters 2 and 3). A Community Contributes to Heritage and Confronts Racism The River Street Public Archaeology Project came after more than twenty years of African American and other nonwhite groups’ advocacy for inclusion, collaboration, and, at the least, participation in American archaeological projects conducted on their heritage sites. By the 2010s pockets of nonwhite people across the United States had become intimately familiar with the ways their heritage was: actively erased by construction or development (Barile 2004); trivialized or not considered significant enough for protection (Blakey and LaRoche 1997; Babiarz 2011; Gorsline 2015; Matthews and McGovern 2015); or used to complement white history (Shackel 1995; Flewellen 2017). In many communities archaeology was viewed as a way nonwhite people could demonstrate their existence in the past and vindicate their own narratives of the past (Colwell-­Chanthaphonh and Ferguson 2008). Some archaeologists continue to fight against collaboration, transparency, and an antiracism agenda, although an increasing number of archaeologists have welcomed such practices with open arms. Archaeology is currently undergoing a transformation where new forms of research, with varying levels of community participation, are rapidly evolving (Atalay 2012; Mills and Kawelu 2013; Atalay et al. 2014). In these paradigms archaeologists are part of the equation, and community members are setting agendas. This was the spirit in which the River Street Archaeology Project was conducted. Local news media visited the site twice during fieldwork—­once to cover the project’s launch and a few weeks later after archaeologists confirmed the location of the first Basque handball court in Boise—­and have continued to cover the preservation of the Erma Hayman House since then. The handball court, called a fronton in the Basque language, was believed to have been lost to development. Since its discovery the fronton became a major element in the campaign to save the Erma Hayman House from development. Most of the more than five hundred visitors heard about the site from news media or from other acquaintances and family members who suggested they stop by and see archaeology in action. Some of these visitors signed up to volunteer at the site. The River Street Project

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Few of those who live in the neighborhood today grew up there. Few of the Black and white neighborhood residents who remember how it used to be are alive today. From conversations with the few descendants who were able to record interviews, archaeologists got a glimpse at how poverty, frugality, and racism converged in this multiracial space. The descendants all agreed that the archaeology and digital heritage conservation project was welcome as most of the neighborhood they had known had been lost to development. They were also surprised to see so many other folks who had never known River Street as a segregated space willing to devote so much effort to commemorating a place that had played such a formative role in their lives. Collaborative archaeology with descendant communities requires adjusting archaeological practice so it can contribute to local communities. In addition to soliciting input from local people to help design research questions, archaeologists had to explain how archaeology would contribute to the goals of community collaborators. In Boise collaborating with descendant communities and local preservationists was a continuation of social activism directed toward preserving one of the city’s few African American heritage sites. It was also a point of departure for thinking about race relations in the United States and how racialization continues to affect Americans, particularly people living in an overwhelmingly white space like Boise, Idaho. The project addressed the way nonwhites were discriminated against in the past and how these adverse conditions were partially mitigated through amenity within the neighborhood. Because of its location, there was no way for participants to avoid thinking about how the “othering” process is essential for the maintenance of whiteness as a racial identity. This was a public archaeology project designed with input from the descendant community to bring together a diverse crew of European Americans, African Americans, and people of other races and ethnicities through their common love for archaeology. In the process project participants were provided an opportunity to evaluate how racism affected people in the past and how it continues to shape society. The discussions at this site went beyond artifacts and excavations; they delved into one of the most durable aspects of American life: race and racism.

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5 Archaeological Evidence of Life in a Stigmatized Landscape, 1890s–­1960s

Results from the River Street Public Archaeology Project combine artifacts, historic documents, and oral histories to delve into a better understanding of life in this neighborhood during the first half of the twentieth century. The material culture shows River Street residents used material culture to demonstrate that they were respectable Boiseans. Despite being relegated to low-­paying, laborious service work, residents bought items like tableware and clothing that projected respectability. Oral histories and artifacts such as food remain, and canning jars tell archaeologists that life was also shaped by pragmatic strategies designed to conserve household income and provide other means of subsistence. Families grew gardens and raised chickens. They put some of this fruit and these vegetables up for long-­term storage. Food was shared between households in times of need but could be obtained from neighborhood markets in times of plenty. Both material culture and oral histories explain how Basque residents continued cultural practices like playing traditional handball games and speaking their native language. Black residents continued strategies of survivance like sharing domestic spaces, renting rooms to boarders, and crowdsourcing funds for travel and rent, techniques honed through centuries of slavery and Jim Crow in the United States. All of this took place in a neighborhood that was constantly changing. By 2015 it could only be seen through memories, maps, and archaeological deposits. By the time of the archaeology project, the built environment had been dramatically altered as lots initially dedicated to detached, single-­family dwellings were joined by detached buildings at the rear of properties that were rented as dwellings. Garages and stables had been converted to rental units and then, in following decades, had been torn down or turned back into garages. This temporary increase in dwellings made the 600 block of Ash Street a densely populated place during the mid-­twentieth century. Household demographics also changed over time as tenants joined owner-­ 111

occupied households, and the neighborhood shifted from a place inhabited by working-­class white people with Basque immigrants interspersed to one where African Americans lived alongside whites. Archaeological excavation units recovered intact material culture deposited by historical residents along with sediments disturbed by demolition and construction. The project also recorded old memories. The field effort would go on to contribute to the preservation of the Erma Hayman House as the second eligible African American National Register historic property in Boise. It also resulted in the discovery of Boise’s earliest Basque handball court, which will also be preserved for future generations. Expressing Identity in a Changing Landscape The built environment of the River Street Neighborhood has always been in flux. Between the 1890s and 1960s, the buildings on residential lots and the alignment of streets changed. These changes were designed to increase density but have given way to development that promotes gentrification. Remembering this landscape as it once was involved sifting through sediments to recover artifacts that could fill in some of the spaces between memories and documents. Artifacts recovered from this site are rooted in culture, community, and a pragmatic, working-­class ethos with middle-­class aspirations. This information tells us that neighborhood residents used material culture to craft public identities that, they hoped, would help convey dignity to their friends, family, and neighbors. Archaeology on the 600 block of Ash Street had to consider the frequent construction and demolition events that affected sediments and archaeological deposits as well as frequent demographic changes. While there were several longtime residents, many who lived on this block were renters who had no obligation to stay in the neighborhood after their leases were up. Property mismanagement and a desire to access white privilege prompted many European Americans and European immigrants to leave the neighborhood within a few years. Historic maps and demographic information gleaned from public records like city directories and the county tax assessor’s office provided a glimpse into who was living in River Street and the kind of environment they inhabited. It also shed light into the type of employment residents had and, in some cases, the residents’ racial or ethnic identity, which is complemented by the broader understanding of what life was like materially. Historic maps and documents show that temporariness was part of 112

Archaeological Evidence

River Street’s social environment; permanence was only known by some families. Archaeological analysis centered on a small number of longtime families who owned their own homes because, in the case of rental properties, it was difficult to directly attribute artifacts with specific families that only lived there for a few years. As will be explained, there is not an exact correlation between sediments, artifacts, and archival data across much of the project area. The orientation and location of buildings on the 600 block of Ash Street changed between 1912 and 1949. Buildings on the parcels in this area changed even more dramatically after the 1980s when most structures in this area were demolished to make way for new construction, which had also been demolished by the time archaeology was conducted. Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps published in 1912, 1922, and 1949 provide the most accurate visualization of how buildings changed in this area of the neighborhood. Figure 3 in chapter 1 provides an overview of how buildings changed between 1912 and 1949 with relation to the archaeological project area. The maps in figure 3 show the density increase that took place in the first half of the twentieth century. The number of buildings increased on many of the lots in the project area, a fact that is also reflected in city directory information associated with this place and these dwellings that were occupied by working-­class Boiseans (Demo 2006; White 2017). For example the parcels at 509 and 511 Ash Street had one dwelling and one outbuilding each in 1912. This building configuration remained the same at these addresses in 1922. Between 1909 and 1925, William Anthony and Melissa Helen lived at 509 Ash Street. William was a bookbinder and storekeeper while Melissa worked at The Mode, a Boise department store. By 1927 this property was owned by Chas. Martin and Ray Short, who built a new building and subdivided the property by adding two more dwellings (509½ and 509¹/³ Ash Street). Boarders with a number of different occupations lived in these smaller dwellings during the 1930s, including a tobacconist and general laborers (R. L. Polk & Company 1909–­10, 1911, 1912–­13, 1914, 1915, 1917, 1918–­19, 1921, 1923, 1925). Densification was more pronounced for the property at 511 Ash Street. This parcel contained a single-­family detached dwelling with a small outbuilding in 1912 and 1922. By 1949 an apartment building had replaced the original house along with two newer, small dwellings. The parcel became a five-­unit apartment complex that housed dozens of tenants between the 1940s and 1990s (Sanborn Map Company 1912, 1922,

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113

1949; White 2017). Shovel probes excavated in disturbed sediments on these parcels yielded artifacts dating to the early twentieth century. City directories, oral histories, and other sources explain that the 600 block of Ash Street was historically occupied by a racially diverse population of working-­class families and individuals (Demo 2006; Madry, personal communication, 2015; Stevens 2015; K. Thomas 2015; White 2017). Oral histories and documents show European immigrants on the block were among the first River Street residents who were considered not white. Before the Ray, Hayman, and Thomas families arrived between 1909 and 1917, Basque families lived in the houses at 631 Lovers Lane, which was across an alley behind the Hayman house that had been subdivided into three dwellings: 631, 631½, and 631¹/³ Lovers Lane. Domingo Szabala and Manuel Aberasturi lived at 631 Lovers Lane between 1909 and 1916. It is believed that Szabala and Aberasturi constructed Boise’s first fronton, a concrete court where traditional Basque handball games could be played, in 1909 (Alegria 1987; Demo 2006). By 1917 Marcellano and Maria Arana owned this house and operated a bakery from this location (R. L. Polk & Company 1908, 1909–­10, 1911, 1912–­13, 1914, 1915, 1917). The Aranas likely integrated the fronton into their bakery’s architecture, but it was a concrete slab overgrown with weeds in the 1950s (Madry, personal communication, 2015). The fronton is marked on the 1912 Sanborn Map (see fig. 3) as “handball court” at 631½ Lovers Lane but is not depicted in Sanborn Maps from 1922 or 1949 (Sanborn Map Company 1912, 1922, 1949). Densification accelerated during the 1940s to accommodate the influx of Black people as part of the World War II effort, but maps show this continued into the 1950s. Former residents recall Black families occupying small outbuildings that had been converted to dwellings (Stewart 1980; Osa 1981; Demo 2006). There were also incentives for absentee property owners to increase the revenue from their properties by adding new “dwellings.” Landlords could pack more people on existing lots by renting out outbuildings like garages, which was done throughout the neighborhood, but this did not happen on every lot on the 600 block of Ash. For example the house at 633 Ash Street remained in the same configuration until it was demolished to make way for the realignment of River Street in 1965 (Sanborn Map Company 1912, 1922, 1949). Beginning in the 1940s and 1950s, demolishing original buildings to make way for larger, multifamily apartment buildings added to population density in the project area. This trend continues into the present and was the demise of the houses 114

Archaeological Evidence

at 609 and 611 Ash Street. After remaining relatively intact between 1912 and 1949, these houses were demolished in 1981 to be replaced with two larger apartment buildings at 621 and 651 Ash Street. The new apartments were damaged by fire in the 2000s and demolished soon afterward. Archaeological testing found no trace of architectural remains on these lots, and the sediments had been entirely disturbed. Families that moved to the neighborhood during the 1930s and 1940s arrived at their homes after they had already been occupied by several different tenants and owners. Houses in this area were built around the turn of the twentieth century and were decades old by the time nonwhite families arrived in the neighborhood. Longtime Black residents Erma and Lawrence Hayman bought the two-­bedroom sandstone home at 617 Ash Street in 1949 shown in figure 9. The Haymans bought the property from the Robertsons, a white family that lived there during World War II. Erma lived there until her death in 2006 (Madry 2014). Several individuals occupied 617 Ash between 1909 and 1944, when Harry Robertson and his family moved in. Previous residents before the Haymans, all of whom were white, included police officers, a barber, a salesman, and laborers (R. L. Polk & Company 1912–­13, 1914, 1915, 1917, 1918–­19, 1921, 1923). In 1912 and 1922, there were three dwellings on this parcel: 617, 617½, and 617¹/³ Ash Street, but city directories only list the resident of the main dwelling at this address (Sanborn Map Company 1912, 1922). Harry Robertson’s daughter LaVaun Kennedy stated in an oral history interview that she lived there with her parents as a little girl until the end of World War II (Kennedy 2015). It is unknown if the Robertson family rented the other dwellings, but it is known that the Haymans did not rent to boarders and used one of the former dwellings as a garage in the 1950s (Dick Madry, personal communication, 2015). The Hayman family lived at 617 Ash Street for more than fifty years alongside white and Black neighbors. The only other longtime Black residents on the block, the Ray family, moved into a house at 503 Ash Street in 1983 and resided there until the building was demolished in 2006 (Demo 2006). Both the Hayman and Ray families had children that attended Boise public schools and had good relationships with other families living in the neighborhood (Madry 2014). Doris and Jackson Thomas and their children lived next door to the Haymans at 633 Ash Street, beginning in 1944. The Thomas family was white and chose this location because it was close to downtown Boise where they worked and thought it was a good place to raise a family (K.

Archaeological Evidence

115

Thomas 2015). Doris and Jackson ran a café in downtown Boise, raising their children, who were friends with other children in the neighborhood including African Americans, until their house was demolished in 1965 as part of the realignment of River Street (K. Thomas 2015). The Thomas family amicably lived next door to the Haymans for decades. Their children attended the same public schools, and children of similar ages played together along the Boise River’s riparian zone, in backyards, and at school. Interviews with Doris and Kenneth Thomas and Dick Madry recorded in 2014 and 2015 recall friendly relations between both families for the entire time they were neighbors. Sediments that Chronicle Change Artifacts and features discovered through the 2015 excavations were deposited by residents who lived on the 600 block of Ash Street from the 1890s until the 1960s. While disturbed sediments were identified across much of the block, pockets of intact historical strata concentrated in Kristen’s Park (formerly 631 Lover’s Lane) and at 617 and 633 Ash Streets demonstrated the existence of undisturbed archaeology despite more than a hundred years of development. Figure 11 shows how the excavation area spanned nine parcels that had once been privately owned by different individuals. Each parcel had a unique construction, demolition, and redevelopment history that continues into the present, but all were administered by the Capital City Development Corporation or Boise Parks in 2015. All the original buildings in the project area had been demolished at least once in the past, except for the Erma Hayman House. On some lots these buildings were replaced, oftentimes more than once. Documents provided limited information as to when construction and remodel events occurred, so the exact date of ground-­disturbing events remains unknown for most lots. It is likely this happened several times on each lot. In addition to building construction and demolition, landscaping had been installed across the entire project area, an activity that had largely disturbed the upper fifteen to twenty centimeters of sediment, even in places where historic sediments were present. In disturbed sediments historical artifacts were out of context, which made it difficult to attribute them to specific residents. The archaeological excavations incorporated a variety of different excavation units including forty-­centimeter (sixteen-­inch) diameter circular shovel probes, rectangular test pits, and a rectangular hand trench. Shovel probes were placed at twenty-­meter intervals and were used to quickly 116

Archaeological Evidence

Fig. 11. Distribution of 2015 excavations. Created by the author, 2021.

collect stratigraphic information about sediments across the block. Rectangular test units were placed to investigate strata in a more controlled manner. A total of thirty-­four shovel probes, eleven test units, and one hand trench were excavated. Artifact density was not uniform across the project area, as shown in table 3. A total of 12,048 artifacts were recovered

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from all units, but 88 percent (n=10,612) of the assemblage came from the rectangular test units. Table 3. Artifact distribution from controlled excavation units

Volume

No. of artifacts

Artifact density

Historical strata density

1.92

794

413.54

581.25

0.54

2.16

680

314.81

669.32

2×2

0.54

2.16

1907

882.87

1263.64

2×2

0.63

2.52

714

283.33

505.88

27

1×1

0.47

0.47

250

531.91

553.85

40

2×2

0.49

1.96

1320

673.47

1047.41

82

1×1

0.48

0.48

526

1095.83

1706.90

83

1×1

0.47

0.47

542

1153.19

1462.16

107

4 × 0.5

0.35

0.7

107

152.86

265.79

118

1×1

0.58

0.58

984

1696.55

2006.25

127

2×2

0.48

1.92

1031

536.98

591.07

130

2×2

0.42

1.68

1086

646.43

725.93

142

1×1

0.8

0.8

671

838.75

1069.49

Test pit

Dimension (M) Depth

6

2×2

0.48

7

2×2

16/22 19

Total

10612

Wherever undisturbed, sediments across the project area reflected a similar stratigraphic sequence. Excavations penetrated through the upper sediments, which had been impacted by landscaping, until reaching a stratigraphic layer characterized by intact historical artifacts before terminating in naturally occurring, fluvial sediments. The term “disturbed” is used for sediments that have been displaced in the last fifty years. “Natural” sediments are characterized by yellowish-­brown fluvial sands, silts, and clays that are indicative of terrain conditions prior to the construction of an urban landscape in this location. These natural sediments are laminated lenses or pockets of brown silt or clay alternating with yellowish-­brown, medium sand and are indicative of the seasonal flood events that dominated the neighborhood’s geomorphology prior to its development and the construction of flood control dams on the Boise River. The depth of these natural sediments in relation to the ground surface varied because historical construction, demolition, filling for architectural purposes, and other deposition processes affected the ground surface to varying degrees and did not uniformly impact the ground surface across the project area, 118

Archaeological Evidence

which had been leveled for construction or landscaping in many locations. Figure 12 illustrates the general distribution of sedimentary layers across the project area from north to south, showing that these layers are not congruous or contiguous across the site. Rectangular excavation units were positioned in locations where intact, historic artifact-­bearing sediments were identified based on shovel probe results or had a high likelihood to reveal historical deposits as inferred from archival maps. These sediments were characterized by a dark brown silty or sandy loam containing artifacts made prior to the 1960s and oftentimes contained refuse from household stoves and ovens like coal, charcoal, slag, or cinder as shown in figure 13. The historic strata were sandwiched between overlying modern matrix and underlying natural fluvial sediments. Like sediments, historic artifacts were not uniformly encountered across the project area (see table 3). Historic artifacts were generally encountered between ten and fifty centimeters below the ground surface (cmbs). Wherever present this intact historical lens was between twenty and sixty centimeters thick. Rectangular excavation units encountered both artifacts and archaeological features. Except for the fronton found at 631 Lover’s Lane, all features were identified at 617 and 633 Ash Street. Insights from Material Culture Artifacts and sediments provided a medium chronicling the processes behind material culture use and discard. Given the myriad ways mass-­ produced commodities can be used to convey social messages and reproduce society, it is through these mass-­produced and locally procured items that archaeologists can get a glimpse of what everyday life was like for River Street residents. In conjunction with stratigraphic data and oral histories, these items can be used to address archaeological research domains and to investigate aspects of race, racialization, and stigmatization. These threads of inquiry have been used to craft a narrative of the River Street Neighborhood as a region of refuge for its historical residents. Appendix 1 summarizes the recovered artifacts. Metal artifacts, primarily nails and miscellaneous metal fragments, comprised the largest percentage of the assemblage. Glass fragments including bottle, window, and miscellaneous vessel glass was the second most common artifact material type. Most of the remaining artifacts were ceramic fragments from tableware vessels and decorative items as well as organic items like

Archaeological Evidence

119

Fig. 12. Shovel probe stratigraphy along the east edge of the project area. Created by the author, 2021.

Fig. 13. Archaeological evidence of coal oven clean out (left side). West wall profile of tp 40 at 617 Ash Street, view west, 2015. Photo by the author.

marine shell, faunal bone, and fruit pits. The remaining artifacts were plastic, rubber, and leather. Five prehistoric lithic artifacts were also recovered, including one chert secondary flake, a piece of chert shatter, a basalt secondary flake, one obsidian secondary flake, and one piece of obsidian shatter. No lithic tools or Native American bone artifacts or faunal remains were found. Sanitation, Sediments, and Deposition Most of the glass and ceramic artifacts had been broken into pieces smaller than one centimeter in diameter, which made determination of a minimum number of individual artifacts as well as details on many artifacts very problematic. Additionally the bulk of these fragments were recovered from non-­stratified archaeological contexts—­things dropped in backyards by happenstance over many years—­which made it difficult to attribute artifacts with specific families or individuals. These small fragments also yielded very few datable makers’ marks. The few identifiable marks, a range of items from tableware vessels to bottles to ammunition summarized in appendix 2, are associated with large, nationally distributed products that were widely available in the United States. Nearly all these items were made in the United States. Very few artifacts could be dated based on manufacturing marks or manufacturing technique. Rather than relying solely on makers’ marks,

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121

approximate dates were assessed using manufacturing techniques. While most metal artifacts were nondiagnostic, bottle glass includes items made with manufacturing processes that were common during the early twentieth century, which was a transitional period in the American glass manufacturing industry. Glass bottles had been handblown for centuries until the first semiautomatic bottle machine was introduced in 1892. The proliferation of the fully automatic Owens Bottle Machine after 1903 greatly expanded the number of bottles made in the United States. Semiautomatic bottles remained useful for small and specialty orders for decades after the Owens Machine’s introduction. Semiautomatic bottle machines could make the base, body, and neck of the vessel automatically, but the finish and lip were still tooled by hand (Jones and Sullivan 1989, 38–­39). By 1924–­1925 90 percent of bottles were made using automatic machines, but a few manufacturers were still using semiautomatic machines (Scoville 1948; Busch 1987). At River Street a few fragments from semiautomatic machine-­made bottles were identified alongside a greater number of fully automatic machine-­made bottles. Based on these proportions, archeologists deduced that most of the glass bottles used by neighborhood residents were made by fully automatic machines. The small number of semiautomatic bottles suggests the glass assemblage was deposited before near total automation of the industry. Decoloring additives in glass were also important for providing approximate dates to archaeological strata, particularly sun-­colored amethyst glass fragments. Beginning in 1865 manganese was an economic substance added to glass flux to help make it colorless. In the United States, this additive reached its peak production between 1880 and the 1920s. By the 1920s selenium had replaced manganese as a major glass decolorant. Manganese is an important dating tool because, when exposed to sunlight for an extended period, glass containing manganese will turn various shades of purple or amethyst (Lockhart 2006). Solarized glass indicates the historical period sediments were most likely deposited between the 1880s and 1920s, which coincides with documentary data. While archaeologists did not encounter deep, stratified archaeological features like refuse piles, privies, or cesspits, an intact lens of historical sediments layers containing artifacts was found in several locations across the block. These historical strata were most commonly identified in the yard spaces between buildings. In River Street yards, residents maintained gardens and tended chickens and children played. These activities were 122

Archaeological Evidence

common across races (Madry 2014; Terrell III 2014). Yards were important spaces because they were outdoor extensions of domestic habitus and thus contributed to household identity, self-­sufficiency, and home economics. Artifacts recovered from these sediments reflect domestic activities and occasional disposal activities that took place in the extramural spaces surrounding dwellings in this neighborhood. Yards have been recognized as important activity areas by archaeologists, especially those studying African Americans. As Heath and Bennett (2000, 38) explain, the yard is a bounded, sometimes enclosed, area of land that immediately surrounds a dwelling and is considered an extension of that dwelling. The yard is: the site of domestic activities; the care and maintenance of domesticated animals and plants; a recreation area; and a source of aesthetic enjoyment. Artifact deposition in the stratigraphic “yard” lens included items deposited through coincidence. A series of coal stove or furnace clean-­ out areas at the back of the lot at 617 Ash Street were the only discrete garbage disposal-­related archaeological features identified (see fig. 13). As a concentration of ash, cinder, and clinkers characterized these features, they yielded few artifacts. Items sporadically dropped on yard surfaces were impacted by activities like children playing and gardening that took place after original deposition. Most ceramic and metal artifacts had largely been broken into pieces smaller than two centimeters in diameter. While more than twelve thousand artifacts were collected, not a single complete vessel was recovered because the various bottles, tableware vessels, and metal objects discarded in these yard areas were likely broken at the time they were discarded and were trampled for years after deposition. Aside from the coal oven or stove clean-­out, the lack of stratified refuse deposits suggests it was not common for River Street Neighborhood residents to discard rubbish in their yards. There is a major reason for this. Most inorganic refuse from River Street was discarded through the city’s trash collection service. The houses in the project area were part of water, sewer, and trash systems by the mid-­twentieth century, and historical documents suggest River Street residents patronized Boise’s trash disposal service much sooner than other parts of the city (Valentine 2016). After 1902 garbage collectors in Boise used a series of official open dumps, which was where licensed trash collectors deposited the trash. Using newspaper directories, archaeologist David Valentine (2016) created a chronology of dump locations in the city of Boise from 1902 until 2016. From 1902 until 1926, garbage was deposited in an open dump that

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flanked the north bank of the Boise River about a half-­mile southeast of the River Street Neighborhood. Between 1919 and 1939, refuse disposal shifted to another open dump on the south side of the river across from the previous dump. Official city dumping grounds expanded to a location along the Boise River about a mile north of River Street from 1922 until 1943 as well as a jointly operated city-­county dump on a terrace overlooking the Boise River about six miles southeast of River Street from 1939 until 1959. By the 1950s the City of Boise created its first sanitary landfills, the largest of which opened in 1972 and remains in operation today (Valentine 2016). Rubbish and household garbage generated by River Street residents after 1902 were collected and removed to one of these dumps or landfills. These facilities were in operation when historic sediments were deposited in the project area and are the most likely repositories for most of the neighborhood’s trash at that time. Trash collection extended to the River Street Neighborhood sometime during the early twentieth century. Late nineteenth-­century sanitation czars disproportionately targeted nonwhite Boiseans for rubbish disposal violations. Fines for improper disposal were quickly levied on Chinese residents during the late nineteenth century; these fines dogged African American, Japanese, and Basque residents in the twentieth century (Valentine 2016). Additionally unkempt yards were a primary complaint of non-­neighborhood residents who sought to characterize River Street as a blighted area. Nonwhite property owners had incentives to keep their yards clean to not add to the identity of their homes as negative spaces. African Americans and immigrants were also motivated to use the trash collection system because they knew they were more likely to be given sanitation violations during the twentieth century (Valentine 2016). So property owners, who would be fined directly, and renters in River Street, who would have to pay their landlord’s fines, had a powerful motivator to pay for trash collection. The efficiency of Boise’s municipal trash collection system, combined with discrimination against immigrants and nonwhite Boiseans, prevented River Street residents from wantonly discarding rubbish in yard areas, which affected the yield of archaeological investigations in the neighborhood. Houses in River Street were also connected to the public water and sewer system, despite the fact outhouses and privies were illustrated on several Sanborn Maps. The outhouse marked on the 1912 Sanborn Map of 617 Ash Street (see fig. 3) was a main target of the 2015 archaeologi 124

Archaeological Evidence

cal excavations. This feature was not relocated and likely remains on the property. Privies were common throughout the United States until running water was introduced. The introduction of water quickly led to the transition to indoor water closets that were plumbed to the household privy pit. This essentially created a cesspit or cesspool although the use of water to transport the waste greatly increased the amount of effluent (Tarr et al. 1984). Cesspits generally had to be deeper than privy pits, which would have been difficult in the River Street Neighborhood because it was built in the Boise River’s historical floodplain and seasonally had a high-­water table. By the 1920s there was a growing cesspool elimination movement across the United States as it was believed that, “Except under the most favorable conditions the construction and use of a cesspool cannot be condemned too strongly. . . . Leaching cesspools especially are open to . . . serious objections” (Barlow 1992, 125). While the exact date when municipal water and sewer were extended to the River Street Neighborhood is unknown, it appears as if the houses on the 600 block of Ash Street had indoor plumbing and sewer systems sometime between 1912 and 1922. Fragments of ceramic sewer pipes and drainage tiles are testament to sanitation and dewatering efforts undertaken by River Street residents. Ceramic pipe fragments and drainage tiles were common finds. Intact remains of a ceramic sewer pipe encountered in Shovel Probe 3 suggested additional ceramic pipes likely remain throughout the project area. Even though it was connected to the city’s water system, the Erma Hayman House still had a functional well located in the basement into the 1950s (Dick Madry, personal communication, 2015). It is unknown when this feature was filled in but suggests modern utilities did not mean older infrastructure was immediately removed. Garbage collection and sewage treatment in the neighborhood were part of a much larger sanitation campaign executed in the United States that improved healthfulness in American cities. The development of a trash collection system in Boise was the result of a long sanitation campaign that waged across the country for decades. Until the mid-­nineteenth century, urban Americans routinely dumped garbage in streets and back alleys, including large livestock and horses. Organic waste was fed to animals while inorganic rubbish was left to fester. In some communities scavengers and collectors were tasked with removing waste and dead animals (Melosi 2000; Sullivan and Griffith 2005). Sanitation developments coalesced in urban areas after the Civil War and were motivated by rapid

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urban growth and progressive groups who pressured lawmakers to use sanitation experts to solve the problem of increasing waste. Responsive municipal governments addressed the problem while others lagged behind (Melosi 2000, 103). As a result the population served by wastewater and sewer treatment in urban areas of the United States rose from 50 percent in 1870 to 87 percent by 1920 (Melosi 2000, 152). Because disease epidemics were commonplace, the sanitation movement of the late nineteenth century created pressure to clean up cities, arguably doing more to curb contagious diseases and lower mortality rates than advances in medicine (Leavitt and Numbers 1978). By the early 1900s, waste management systems in urban areas included a system for collecting garbage and disposing of it in open dumps, incinerators, or bodies of water (Sullivan and Griffith 2005). River Street residents benefitted from this, but it diminished discard activities that would have created richer archaeological deposits. Social and Economic Identities As previously noted artifacts in the archaeological excavation area were found after they had been haphazardly discarded in backyards where they were trampled and broken even further. This meant the vast majority of glass and ceramic artifacts in the excavation area were smaller than one centimeter in diameter. Decorative and exotic items recovered during excavation provide a glimpse into the ways River Street residents displayed their class affiliation. For example Asian porcelain tableware vessel fragments and pieces of broken ceramic figurines recovered from several different excavation units across the River Street project area exemplify this process. A total of 145 porcelain artifacts were recovered from the project area, 140 of which were from decorative figurines, bisque dolls, or tableware vessels. Decorative porcelain fragments were obtained from all fourteen of the test excavation units and six of the shovel probes, which suggests most households had at least some porcelain items. Most of these artifacts (n=137) were recovered from units excavated at 617 Ash Street, but units at 633 Ash (n=23) and 511 Ash (n=13) also had fragments from several different porcelain tableware vessels. Within these units most porcelain tableware items come from stratigraphic levels associated with intact historic sediments that contain artifacts primarily made between the 1920s and 1950s. At River Street small fragments of painted ceramic vessels, porcelain figurines, Asian porcelain vessels, and colored press-­molded glass items were household furniture. These stylish items 126

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reflected household aesthetics. They were items that improved an interior space’s ambiance but were also conspicuous consumption displays that conveyed the social and financial status of household occupants to neighbors and visitors. These items were supposed to be seen by household visitors and were intended to demonstrate the residents’ commitment to American consumer culture, class affiliation, and middle-­class mores (Mullins 2017). Records indicate that River Street residents were solidly working class, but the artifacts suggest commodities like bric-­a-­brac were readily available and attainable for those with middle-­class aspirations. Most of the professions noted in the directories are jobs in the service industry or labor-­related positions (Demo 2006; White 2017). In the United States, class differentiations are difficult to separate from other social identifiers because aspects of class, economic status, and social statuses (categories like racial and ethnic affiliation) are intrinsically enmeshed (Walker 2008, 117). Since this country’s conception, Americans have sought to dispel hardened, caste-­like class divisions like those in Europe (Isenberg 2016). During the twentieth century, most Americans sought to classify themselves as members of the middle class, which can be postulated from certain classes of artifacts. For example archaeologists have used the value and frequency of ceramic fragments and decorative bric-­a-­brac to infer middle-­class status among African American households (Mullins 1999a, 1999b), while others have used the conspicuous act of shopping (Cook, Yamin, and McCarthy 1996). Categorization of the middle class in the United States is difficult, but estimates from the early twentieth century suggest that between 20 and 40 percent of United States households earned enough money and had stable enough incomes to statistically be in this socioeconomic group (Cowan 1983). This suggests that a moderate level of financial stability and success was an important determinate of middle-­class citizenship that can be reflected in the material culture purchased by households. In archaeology souvenirs and bric-­a-­brac refer to decorative materials that do not fulfill a functional purpose except to display the desired knowledge, personalities, and characteristics of the owner. In this sense this artifact category has a high esteem value that is not causally related to its monetary value. Displaying bric-­a-­brac became popular during the 1850s and continues into the twenty-­first century, presenting materials associated with social status (or desired social status) that have little to do

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with the cost of these objects (Mullins 1999a, 159). By the twentieth century, these mass-­produced items were generic and affordable but were still important household markers that had the potential to display worldliness, sophistication, and adherence to social mores. According to archaeologist Paul Mullins (1999a, 164), “In any context, bric-­a-­brac’s symbolism was a situationally distinct fusion reflecting who its consumers consciously understood themselves to be, their objective position in social and class structure, and who they wished to be. Symbolically, bric-­a-­brac was a daydreaming commodity form which consumers mused over, idealizing who they were by dreaming about who they and their society could be.” For African Americans bric-­a-­brac was more than simply commodifying an ideal lifestyle or membership in a social group. Decorative display items not only confirmed citizenship and affiliation with American social groups like class and nationality, but they also played a role in a consumer politics that reaffirmed the existence of African Americans as a people in their own right. African Americans were distinctive from the overarching “Americanness” that was idealized as a prerequisite for belonging to middle-­class America (Mullins 1999a, 2017), yet they were American enough to deserve a place in the middle class. Decorative porcelain vessels and bric-­a-­brac were part of a concerted campaign for neighborhood residents to assert their household socioeconomic identity. Archival documents and oral histories describe how River Street residents were hardworking and frugal. Materially these individuals wished to use decorative household items to demonstrate they were participating members of middle-­class society because of the proximity to affluence this social category conferred. For African American residents, the messages conveyed through material culture also fought dominant social memes of white supremacy and Black inferiority. Conspicuous consumption is designed to be experienced among the social groups one knows most intimately. Black displays were not designed to convince racist whites to relinquish derogatory views of Black people. Instead these items were an attempt to reaffirm their social status to other Blacks and other neighbors who were on friendly enough terms to find themselves in the same spaces where the items were displayed (Mullins 2017). In River Street this included European American neighbors but may have been explicitly designed for African American family and friends. Financial stability for working-­class Americans was the ideal that was supposed to firmly place them among the ranks of the middle class, .

128

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although this was difficult for a laborer, housecleaner, or railroad worker to achieve. By the twentieth century, working-­class Americans could obtain material culture associated with the middle class because distribution and manufacturing networks allowed formerly exotic items to be readily available to a greater number of people at cheaper prices (Cowan 1983; Riordan and Adams 1985). Many of the traditional material trappings of middle-­class status were easier to purchase and were more widely available to larger populations. Gathering for meals was a daily occurrence for River Street household members, but ceramics show different place settings for special occasions. This behavior is in alignment with what is known archaeologically in the United States. During the 1890s and early 1900s, middle-­ class dinner parties were expected to be large and diverse with tableware arrangements reflecting the creativity and economic level of the host. By the mid-­twentieth century, the proliferation of other consumer goods partially replaced the primacy of fancy tableware vessels as an indicator of class status. Expensive tableware still had higher status but was only used for special occasions like holiday dinners. Daily meals did not require special dishes, and undecorated tableware was commonly used (Wegars 1982, 4; Levenstein 2003, 61–­62). Stylish items like ceramic vessels were also important vehicles for conveying middle-­class virtues. During the nineteenth century, women from three households in New York used tableware to help construct domestic worlds that were in alignment with their class status. Women purchased decorated ceramic vessels, reserving fancier vessels for special occasions but still preferring stylistic wares for daily use. Aesthetics and purchasing power shaped the type and quality of wares that were purchased, but efforts were still made to ensure household members used vessels appropriate for the domestic sphere of their family circle (Wall 2000). Material culture was not entirely about conveying messages about status. The objects that fill our homes are also functional and serve everyday needs. Generally the ceramics used in the households on the 600 block of Ash Street are the result of the purchase of nationally distributed products like the vessel shown in figure 14. The presence of undecorated items suggests a balanced approach to tableware usage. Plain, undecorated vessels were probably used daily with more expensive vessels reserved for special occasions and visitors. When compared with undecorated fragments, the greater portion of the ceramic assemblage is decorated wares, suggesting

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Fig. 14. Undecorated ironstone bowl recovered from 633 Ash Street. Photo by the author, 2017.

that these may have been used frequently, which contradicts the trademark frugality of neighborhood residents. This fact may also be more associated with availability than wealth because by about 1900, decal decorated vessels were widely available in a range of prices that were affordable for most households. As durable items frequently found at sites, archaeologists have used ceramics as proxies for a variety of different behaviors, including identity expression. Klein (1991) emphasizes that women were the principal purchasers of ceramics in American households. During the nineteenth century, the popularization of women’s roles within the domestic sphere emphasized the use of specialized items for serving food, which required an increasingly complex and diverse assemblage of material culture. The culinary utensils that facilitated this elaboration became more decorated and relatively expensive over time. This transition toward elaboration was particularly pronounced among middle-­class households, who invested 130

Archaeological Evidence

in domestic-­related goods such as tableware (Klein 1991, 79). By the early twentieth century, household eating patterns had changed. Among working-­class families, adult women and men worked for pay, oftentimes outside the home. The way descendant communities think of themselves is a tool that can help archaeologists move beyond deductions derived from material culture. While many artifacts suggest residents were trying to project a middle-­class identity, many residents recall themselves being part of the working class characterized by hard work and frugality. The working-­ class status of River Street residents is corroborated by oral histories and archival documents related to the residents of the 600 block of Ash Street. Interviews with Gigi Stevens, Sharon Hill, and Kenneth Thomas (2015) discuss how their parents, who lived at 633 Ash Street from the 1940s to 1960s, spent much of their time operating and managing the family’s restaurant. They spent long hours at the restaurant, working late into the night, while the children were left to take care of each other. After washing up and getting ready for school, the children walked to the restaurant in downtown Boise where they would eat breakfast before heading to school. Dick Madry (2014) explains how his grandmother, Erma Hayman, worked several different service jobs to supplement his grandfather’s income. Erma Hayman worked as a seamstress, maid, typist, and other positions to bring extra income into the household. Warner Terrell III (2014) recalled that his father worked as a waiter at the Arid Club in downtown Boise for decades. For River Street residents, adulthood was characterized by work. Much effort was expended on obtaining and maintaining jobs in downtown Boise and beyond. With parents working outside the home, children had to be responsible for themselves at an early age. Children’s chores helped maintain the household and, in the case of gardens and fruit trees, contributed resources to the family. As explained in the following section, River Street residents practiced frugality and self-­provisioning not only as economic necessities but because they were part of their heritage. Household Foodways Faunal bone, fruit pits, canning jars, and other food remains are at the heart of understanding household foodways in the River Street Neighborhood as fruit pits, nutshells, marine shells, and animal bones are the remains of meals consumed in households. Along with tableware arti

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facts, meal remains provide insight into the culinary practices of household residents and food procurement strategies. Meals in River Street households included homegrown items as well as foodstuffs procured from markets, including food from hundreds of miles from Boise. Faunal bone (n=1,123) and shellfish remains (n=41) indicate household residents consumed domesticated large mammals along with marine resources most likely imported from the Pacific coast. Much of the faunal assemblage was large mammal bone that had been saw cut, which suggests it was professionally butchered. Domestic pigs (Sus scrofa) and cattle (Bos taurus) dominate the faunal bone, two domestic species that could have been procured within twenty miles of town and would have been readily available to Boise residents. Element representation of large mammals such as cattle is not consistent with home butchering; there is no evidence of slaughtering waste, as indicated through the presence of foot or skull elements from large-­bodied mammals. Instead cattle and large mammal elements represented bones and bone sections commonly associated with meat cuts prepared and sold by professional butchers (Schulz and Gust 1983). Unlike large mammals, former neighborhood residents recall several households raised chickens for meat and eggs. Bones recovered from the site corroborated those stories. The remains of a nearly complete, articulated adult chicken skeleton (Gallus gallus domesticus) were recovered from the Erma Hayman House property. These bones (n=61) support oral histories of chickens raised by the Hayman family, and former resident Dick Madry (personal communication, 2014, 2015) told archaeologists that his grandmother kept chickens in a coop located at the rear of the house lot in the exact location where the chicken skeleton was found. Erma Hayman also processed the birds for cooking in this same part of the yard. The chicken skeleton was at the same elevation as a stone building foundation, and the surrounding sediment was part of a historic stratum containing artifacts associated with the Hayman family’s tenure at 617 Ash Street. Madry believed some of the posthole features identified in this portion of the lot could have been associated with the chicken coop. While it is unusual to find a nearly complete chicken skeleton, there was no indication that it was purposefully buried (e.g., it was not in a pit feature). It is likely the chicken died by the coop, possibly underneath it, and was left there. Chickens in the Hayman household were also used for their eggs. Eggshell fragments were recovered from nearby excavation units. It is 132

Archaeological Evidence

likely the chicken skeleton and eggshells were part of self-­provisioning measures taken by the Hayman family. Fruit pits recovered across the project area are a symbol of the pragmatic household productivity. Fruit seeds and pits were recovered from several different excavation units associated with African American and European American households. Units excavated on parcels associated with the Hayman and Thomas families, 617 and 633 Ash Street respectively, yielded the greatest number of fruit pits and nutshells. These seeds were identified by species and closest subgenus. Two members of the Prunus genus were identified, Prunus amygdalus, or the common peach (n=58), and Prunus domestica, or plum (n=1). Peach pits were primarily recovered from these two houses, but several peach pits were also recovered from units on the 511 Ash Street house lot, which was a rental property with numerous occupants, and 631 Lovers Lane, which is associated with two Basque families (White 2017). Richard Madry and Warner Terrell III recall River Street residents cultivated fruit trees in their yards including plum, peach, and cherry trees. Peach trees are sensitive to frost but are grown in Idaho as a cash crop despite the possibility of a freeze that could kill the tree. Residents simply replaced the tree if it died in winter frosts (Madry 2014; Terrell III 2014). A cherry pitting tool shown in figure 15 (artifact no. 447) was recovered from Level 3 of Test Pit 19, associated with the mid-­twentieth-­century occupation of the Hayman, Robertson, Barras, or Bybee families. This item suggests the processing of fruit for canning. Fruit canning at home is an activity that requires significant quantities of produce. A canning guide written by the Ball Corporation (1986, 9) states that two to three pounds, or between six and eight peaches, can be preserved in a one-­quart jar. Based on this estimate, pits from the equivalent of seven to nine jars of peaches were recovered from the project area, which represents as much as twenty-­four pounds of peaches. Along with sixty-­nine glass canning jar fragments, forty-­six glass fragments from zinc-­lined canning jar lids, and the cherry pitting tool, the material culture from this site strongly suggests neighborhood residents made efforts to store at least some of the fruit produced in their yards. Self-­provisioning was widespread among neighborhood residents. Canning jar fragments, canning jar lid fragments, a cherry pitting tool, and fruit pits were part of self-­provisioning activities that were common in many River Street households. Fruit trees were widespread throughout

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Fig. 15. Remains of a cherry pitting tool recovered from 617 Ash Street. Photo by the author, 2017.

the neighborhood; gardening was also a common practice. Because fruit was widely available from local farms and within the neighborhood, River Street residents preserved fruit and other vegetables for consumption during the off-­season. Fruit canning was noted by Dick Madry (2014), who recalled that his grandmother, Erma Hayman, grew a variety of fruits and vegetables in their yard for household consumption. He recalled that it was the children’s chore to care for the garden, even though his grandmother and other women in the neighborhood considered the garden “theirs” (Madry 2014). Many residents grew food in whatever yard spaces they had available. Even renters and boarders grew vegetables. What was not eaten fresh was processed for canning so it could be enjoyed later (Madry 2014; Terrell III 2014). While yards were used by many, some River Street residents grew gardens in open lots to cultivate produce for sale and raise poultry, as not all house lots were developed at the same time. Former resident LaVaun Kennedy recalled how her father turned growing vegetables in an open lot into a side hustle to supplement his full-­time job. The European American Kennedy family lived at 617 Ash Street before the African American Hayman family purchased the house there. Kennedy’s father grew vegetables in the open lot near their house during summer months, arranging them into baskets that were sold door-­to-­door to select neighbors. Sometimes LaVaun could sell the baskets and keep the money. She recalls that although her father sold vegetables for years, he never sold to the neighborhood’s 134

Archaeological Evidence

Black residents. There was an understanding that LaVaun would not sell to Black people either (Kennedy 2015). LaVaun Kennedy’s story demonstrates the complexities of living in a racial landscape like River Street. Growing gardens for use within the household was commonplace, but selling the fruits of these labors was sometimes tinged by racism. Both white and Black people recall cultivating gardens, but the only tale of using undeveloped land as a truck garden came from a white resident. It is unknown if race played a factor in the ability of neighborhood residents to cultivate undeveloped lots, but the discriminatory way produce was distributed by Kennedy’s father is an example of how complicated things could be in River Street. LaVaun’s parents moved away from the neighborhood during World War II, which was a time when it became solidly known as the Black Neighborhood. The Kennedy adults’ actions demonstrate the sentiments some white people felt while living in an interracial neighborhood. When considered alongside canning jar fragments, fruit pits and seeds provide valuable insight into the frugality and self-­sufficiency that comes with storing foods grown at home. Archaeologists at other sites in the United States have taken canning jar fragments to imply dependence on frugal, agrarian economic strategies, which is easier to infer from sites at rural homesteads and farms (Van Bueren 2002). The perfection of canning jars by the 1870s allowed households across the United States to preserve a larger quantity of perishable foodstuffs. These reusable jars made seasonal foods available all year at an affordable price, especially for families who grew their own produce. The home preservation of food allowed rural families to cope with the difficult economic situation where the products of the farm or ranch were sold only a few times a year, meaning the family’s yearly income came in lump sums a few times a year. Funds were scarce the rest of the time. Home canning meant that food would be available when money and fresh produce were scarce (Stine 1995). A large number of canning manuals, directions, and cookbooks were available at the close of the nineteenth century and proliferated during the first half of the twentieth century, but the decision to make home preserves was a complicated one that was closely related to economic status (Toulouse 1972, 1977; Williams 1992, 116–­17). Archaeological research conducted on households in the Hector Backbone region of New York suggests household economics influence the household decision to can food. An analysis of twenty-­one household assemblages showed that households in Hector

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Backbone started canning after the mid-­1880s, and that it was initially a more common activity in economically secure households. By the 1920s canning jar remains increased in assemblages associated with families facing financial challenges. The proportion of affluent households that canned remained consistent (Michaels 2015). Canning saves money, but it also costs time and money to get the equipment to start canning. The initial cost of purchasing the materials to do home canning—­the glass jars, jar seals, metal screw rings, boiler rack, boiling pot, and unpreserved food items—­is more affordable for households with stable incomes. Buying canning equipment makes less economic sense for families living in precarity until household economic conditions reach a point where the benefit of using canned goods outweighs the startup costs. Urban households had access to more resources, including stores from which they could purchase food, but they were also subject to times of economic scarcity. Using canned food to multiply streams of income was one way urban Americans addressed scarcity. City dwellers lived from wages earned from work conducted outside the home, and Boise residents were no different. Interviews with former River Street residents describe how most adults, both men and women, worked outside the home in a range of professions. Archaeological data shows urban households elsewhere in the United States also consumed items sealed in canning jars, sometimes even selling canned goods as a side hustle. For example excavations conducted in the Capitol Complex Historic Neighborhood in Santa Fe, New Mexico, yielded canning jar fragments from several households. More than 13 percent of domestic artifacts from this site were canning jar fragments. This research suggests that while residents continued to purchase food from markets during the Great Depression, some people started canning goods for household use and for sale. Produce grown in yard spaces was canned and sold to diversify household income (Barbour 2012). Informants tell us that self-­provisioning through gardens and canned foods was an outgrowth of frugality rather than an effort to evade racism in local stores. While archaeologists have noted that African Americans used mail-­order catalogs to avoid discrimination in local stores (Mullins 1999), oral histories with River Street elders explain there were a couple of small stores in the neighborhood that provided dry goods and other commodities to all residents regardless of race. Former resident Doris Thomas (1981) describes how two small stores in the River Street Neighborhood were convenient and well-­visited, but this declined after a large 136

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K-­Mart was built nearby in the 1970s, taking sales away from these neighborhood stores. Additionally there is no indication that residents sold their canned goods to supplement household income. LaVaun Kennedy (2015) remembered her father selling fresh vegetables in the neighborhood, and Doris Thomas recalled Chinese vegetable vendors selling in the neighborhood in the 1930s and 1940s, but none of them mention anyone selling canned goods. However former residents did recollect giving each other food, including home preserves, when economic times were hard (Perkins 1980). Despite not being welcome in stores outside the neighborhood, former residents do not recall being deprived of options when it came to buying food. Self-­provisioning seems to have been more of a means for saving money and making sure there was enough to go around rather than another income stream. Gender Roles and Material Culture In the commodified, interconnected material world of the twentieth-­ century United States, material culture, race, and gender identities were intrinsically linked. As the primary purchasers of household products, which frequently enter the archaeological record, women were integral to the creation of archaeological assemblages from urban spaces like the River Street Neighborhood. Gendered relationships to material goods are not wholly centered on women. Items advertised specifically to men that were central to displays and assertions of masculinity were also recovered from River Street. Viewing artifacts from River Street through the lens of gender provide insight into the ways women and men expressed their gendered identities through material goods. Material culture was central to crafting an upstanding American household. Everything from appliances to furniture to clothing contributed to convey carefully constructed images of American homes and their occupants. The ceramic assemblage from River Street contains a variety of decorated wares, including imported Chinese and Japanese porcelain vessels. At other Japanese and Chinese immigrant sites in the Pacific Northwest, ceramic vessels are an extension of traditional foodways and a demonstration of cultural affiliation. Ceramic items were imported by Chinese and Japanese merchants specifically to supply immigrant communities in the American West (Sando and Felton 1993; White 2008; Ross 2011, 2013; Campbell 2017). While these cannot be attributed to specific households, they still had similar meanings and uses for Americans who were

Archaeological Evidence

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not of Japanese or Chinese descent. Asian ceramics were typically exotic tableware items used as bric-­a-­brac and rarely used for meals. Fragments of Chinese and Japanese porcelain, like the Chinese “wintergreen” fragments shown in figure 16, were recovered from excavation units associated with households where women lived. Most of these items are blue, underglaze transfer, printed vessels that bear popular chinoiserie decorative patterns. Given the small number of Asian porcelain fragments to undecorated earthenware fragments, it is likely these imported bowls, cups, and saucers were not regularly used for food consumption and were more important for their aesthetic value, to demonstrate the household’s sophistication, and to improve home aesthetics. Chinese porcelain had been a desirable commodity in Europe since the sixteenth century. Chinese porcelain aesthetics and rarity also made them valued by people in the United States (Barber 1910). As Chinese porcelains were expensive and difficult to obtain until the twentieth century, they remained a status symbol of refinement, worldliness, and affluence. By the twentieth century, Japanese porcelain vessels were gaining in reputation (Barber 1910; Gorham 1971). With the expulsion of Chinese laborers from many western communities during the nineteenth century, including Boise, Japanese workers filled the labor void. Through labor contractors, Japanese working-­class communities developed in the early twentieth century across the American West and west coast of Canada (White 2008; Ross 2011; Campbell 2017). At least one Japanese family resided in the River Street Neighborhood at this time, but Boise was home to several Japanese families outside the neighborhood (Bertram 2014). It is likely local stores or Japanese merchants catered to Japanese residents, in the process making Japanese porcelain vessels more available to all Boiseans. Ceramics were not the only means of conveying affluence. By the twentieth century, an array of new consumer products was used to craft a new identity of affluence and to ease the time constraints of housework. Products like washing machines and vacuums joined other household amenities like running water, electricity, and indoor plumbing in a way that freed women and children from onerous tasks like hauling water and coal; but these developments also increased the overall time spent on housework. Twentieth-­century demagogues and home economics specialists emphasized that cleanliness and domesticity were essential elements of American households. Through magazines and other media, women were urged to clean more often and to a higher degree, promoting a sanitary household 138

Archaeological Evidence

Fig. 16. Wintergreen (celadon) porcelain fragments from 633 Ash Street. Photo by the author, 2017.

as a prerequisite for middle-­class status (Cowan 1983; Boydston 1990; Moykr 2000). Many of these expensive, “time saving” devices were not available to working-­class American households even as cleaning standards increased. The bulk of housework was carried out by household women even while social pressure to improve hygiene and sanitation grew (Roberts 1977). Germ theory mandated that kitchens and bathrooms be not just clean but germ-­free (Cowan 1983). While the remains of cleaning utensils were not archaeologically recovered, a Clorox bottle cap found from sediments associated with the Hayman or Robertson families indicate tenets of germ theory were adhered to by household members. It is probable that Erma Hayman or members of the Robertson family used bleach to sanitize household items or whiten linens. The mobilization of germ theory and the Sanitary Movement of the nineteenth century tasked American homemakers with keeping their homes free from bacteria (Melosi 2000). By the twentieth century, homemakers spent more time on household tasks like cleaning, nursing babies,

Archaeological Evidence

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washing clothes, cooking, and tending their children. Women internalized the idea that they were responsible for the health of household members (Moykr 2000, 21). All this unpaid work shaped household roles and routines in a time when cleanliness, economics, and race were all enmeshed. In addition to more time spent on housework, the time mothers were supposed to devote to children continually increased during the twentieth century. Mothers were expected to spend time playing with their children, providing education, and nurturing. By the 1940s middle-­class women were devoting much of their time to their children’s lessons, activities, and education (Cowan 1983). By this time the movement to end child labor and increase education among American youth diminished children’s place in factories, shops, and other businesses across the country. Except for children living in poverty or on farms, American children enjoyed more leisure hours after school. Children played freely throughout neighborhoods and in nearby spaces at the turn of the twentieth century, and women were tasked with keeping them out of trouble (Moykr 2000). The story was slightly different for many working-­class women who were expected to do these tasks and work outside the home. Regardless of race American women were expected to marry, have children, and be homemakers for most of the twentieth century. Opportunities to work outside the home expanded for urban women during World War I and II. During those war years, women joined the workforce taking office and factory positions wherever available. This was empowering for young, unmarried women as married women were routinely prevented from taking these jobs (Roberts 1977; Cowan 1983). Economic realities and a desire for independence prompted many working-­class women to take jobs outside the home even after having children. Part-­time employment outside the home was common for working-­class women (Roberts 1977). Working outside the home tended to be frowned upon by moralistic men and women, but the ability to earn their own wages and make contributions to household income was oftentimes a powerful enough motivation to endure the negativity projected by others (Greenwald 1989). Women like Erma Hayman, Doris Thomas, and the other mothers who lived in River Street were forced to balance social expectations of making a significant economic contribution while simultaneously caring for their households and children. Based on who their children and grandchildren have become today, these women adeptly lived up to their expectations. Children’s chores ameliorated some of the massive household respon 140

Archaeological Evidence

sibilities American society pushed onto women. Stove cleaning events were observed in ash pit features identified at the Erma Hayman House, and the many unburned pieces of coal found throughout historical sediments indicate that coal stoves and ovens were used by most occupants. Oil or gas ranges replaced coal or wood-­burning stoves during the twentieth century, which eliminated the need for hauling fuel, carrying ashes, and blacking the stove to prevent rust (Cowan 1983). Cleaning coal stoves and ovens would have been a frequent household responsibility for children. In the Hayman and Thomas households, the children were responsible for cleaning the coal stoves and hauling coal (Madry 2014; Stevens 2015). Chores like these were added to yardwork and other cleaning tasks as children were expected to contribute to household maintenance. Toys recovered from 617 and 633 Ash Street, including marbles, ceramic doll parts, plastic airplane fragments, and cast-­iron car pieces, reflect how the concept of childhood underwent a significant change between the late nineteenth and mid-­twentieth centuries in the United States. Progressives worked to limit child labor and enforce school attendance, which meant many children who formerly worked in factories and businesses were free to attend school (Moykr 2000). Parents were encouraged to promote the intellectual stimulation derived from physical play and exploration, allowing children to learn from their mistakes. Aside from household chores, children from many families had more time for free play. Children’s clothing was designed for rough play and mobility but also for educational development and to practice gender-­specific roles that would be expected in adulthood. Child-­sized and child-­specific products of all types developed at this time and remain with us today (Calvert 1992, 81–­87). Toys also enforced gender roles. Marbles, like the ones in figure 17, could be used in adult and children’s games by both genders, but fragments from broken porcelain dolls represent items specifically made for girls. The plastic airplane and cast-­iron cars were supposed to be played with by boys. Pencil leads and erasers found at 617 Ash Street could have been used by household adults, but oral histories explain the importance of homework in African American households in the neighborhood. Dick Madry and Warner Terrell III (2014) explained that homework was equal in importance to household chores for all neighborhood children. Play could only begin after household chores and homework had been completed. Other artifacts provide insight into the materiality of masculinity among neighborhood residents. Masculinity is difficult to define and even more

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Fig. 17. Marbles recovered from 617 Ash Street. Photo by the author, 2017.

difficult to infer from archaeological materials because social definitions of masculinity focus on a constellation of specific traits, behaviors, and expectations that are associated with males by a given society. These elements of masculinity are subjective and change across space and time but are internalized by males to construct their personal and social identity. Material culture is central to gender identities because it is a medium that can convey social meanings (Alberti 2006, 405, 409). Masculine identity depends upon the interpretation of cultural symbology, which includes clothing and other items in the twentieth-­century United States. The elements of masculinity are constantly renegotiated and interpreted by “others” within society as well as the individual. While acknowledging the historical subjectivity to social definitions of masculinity (Alberti 2006, 407–­9), early twentieth-­century men sought to achieve a socially acceptable, clean-­cut outward appearance by maintaining good grooming habits and wearing socially accepted attire. A range of buttons and other clothing fasteners were recovered from across the project area and are shown in table 4. Most buttons could not 142

Archaeological Evidence

be associated with a specific gender, although several clothing-­related artifacts could be associated with men who lived in River Street. For example three brass cuff links were recovered from Excavation Test Unit 40 at 617 Ash Street—­the historic residence of the Robertson and Hayman families. A fastener used to connect the cuff of a man’s shirt, cufflinks peaked in popularity during the early twentieth century as mass production made dress shirts affordable and available to a greater number of men. The men living at 617 Ash Street had internalized the message that a man’s outward appearance was an important expression of his social status, and they used stylish cuff links.

Bead

1

1

Button

8

Clothing closure

32

Clothing

1

7

4

15

total

Unknown

Suspender

Snap

Shell

Pin

Other

Grommet

Clasp

Button

form

Table 4. Clothing-­related artifacts

4

8 2

4

68 1

Fabric

1

1

Jewelry

3

3

Other

24

24

Total

33

7

4

43

4

8

2

4

1

106

Suspender clasps recovered from 631 Lovers Lane suggest the men living at this address also adhered to social mores regarding men’s attire. Two suspender clasps recovered from this lot date to the period when the Basque Szabala and Aberasturi families lived at this address. One particular clasp from this address marked “shirley/president” (Art. No. 726) is associated with early twentieth-­century men’s fashion advertisements depicting the social conception of what a masculine man should look like. The C. A. Edgerton Manufacturing Company of Shirley, Massachusetts, produced these clasps. Advertisements for the company mention patents obtained in 1900, and the company was in operation by then (Dry Goods Reporter 1915, 18). By 1915 Shirley was advertising different suspender

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clasps to women, but it is clear from previous ads in Collier’s magazine and other periodicals that their main clientele was men. Advertisements for Shirley suspender clasps proclaimed quality while emphasizing their importance to men’s attire. The company made considerable effort to differentiate its product from other products to assert authenticity in a society filled with similar goods. Ads made during the 1910s demonstrate the role small items like this contributed to social acceptability, which was a major contributing element to masculine identities in Boise and the rest of the United States. Clothing was a way of claiming the status of an upstanding white man, but it was also important for nonwhites like Basques and Blacks. Maintaining a proper outward appearance was another salvo in the continual battle against stigmatization. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a well-­groomed man was promoted as the ideal for European American males, as disheveled white folks were equated with the newly popularized term “white trash” (Hartigan 2005, 61). Edward Bok (in Hoy 1995, 92), editor of the Ladies Home Journal from 1899 to 1919, summed up the demands on men’s appearance: “The man who makes a point of keeping himself clean, and whose clothes look neat, no matter how moderate of cost they may be, works better, feels better, and is in every sense a better business man than his fellow worker who is disregardful of both his body and dress, or either. He works at a distinct advantage. The external man unquestionably influences the internal man.” Bok understood the relationship between the internal and external man, acknowledging a symbiotic relationship between outward appearance and internalized thoughts. This passage also insinuates that a proper personal image was not only essential for social affiliation but also racial membership. White men who did not maintain a clean-­cut image may have been regarded as something lesser than upstanding white citizens. Slight variations in outward appearance, such as those intuited from clothing, were integral to differentiating social class among white people. Attire was the outward reflection of each man, and the cuff links and suspender clasps associated with River Street men were important aspects of their outward appearances. Interpreting gendered clothing items like cuff links and suspender clasps convey a small part of the message sent by small finds like buttons. Since the colonial period, buttons were a means of adorning the body while they simultaneously enclosed the body. Their deployment on 144

Archaeological Evidence

the body had multivalent meanings (Loren 2010). Personal adornment is an important performative aspect of identity formation and expression. Historically the mundane act of wearing clothes in public is a reification of internalized self-­perception as much as it is a demonstration of adherence with the complicated social rules of group belonging (White 2008). In the case of Black people, the buttons they chose to affix to their clothing were part of sartorial practices designed to express a dignified image in society’s eyes, but simply wearing clothes in public was enmeshed with racial and class identities that accompanied the concomitant potential for antiblack discrimination. Small finds like buttons were part of a toolkit of behaviors African Americans used to communicate the respectability that was at the heart of racial uplift narratives designed to fight antiblack stereotypes. The clothes Black people wore were a central part of the Black middle-­class campaign for equality and respect. As homemakers Black women were on the frontlines of this campaign (Bulger 2015), but Black men were not spared the reality that clothing could be a source of white stereotypes of Black people. Archaeologist Maria Franklin (2020, 574) notes that Victorian-­era clothing was simultaneously “raced, classed, and gendered.” Black clothing at the end of the nineteenth century was not designed to emulate wealthy whites but instead was mobilized to express aspirations of respectability. This aspect of American fashion continued into the early twentieth century. Archaeology shows that the clothes Black people wore reflected economic inequities but was a reflection of their racial and individual identities. In addition to looking respectable, Black women also had to fight hypersexualized stereotypes of the “Jezebel” or asexual “mammy”—­negative, denigrating identities that portrayed them at a lower status than white women (Flewellen 2018; Franklin 2020). Black people in the River Street Neighborhood knew the importance of projecting a positive public image; their clothing was part of this battleground against white supremacy. Like the Basque residents, River Street’s Blacks purchased clothing that challenged the way white people saw them. A Handball Court as a Marker of Identity Basque residents in the River Street Neighborhood also used the built environment to express their ethnic and cultural affiliation. Basque tenants lived at 631 Lovers Lane from 1909 until 1918 (Demo 2006). A Sanborn Map made in 1912 (see fig. 3) shows the lot had two dwellings, a stable, and a Basque handball court called a fronton. Local Basque history states

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that Domingo Szabala built the fronton around 1906 (Alegria 1987). Shovel probes excavated in 2015 as part of this project relocated the remains of the 1906 fronton. After its identification in probes, archaeologists excavated a 4-­by-­0.5-­meter trench, oriented on an east-­west axis, to reveal a larger portion of this feature (feature 125), which is illustrated in figure 18. Today the fronton only remains as a concrete slab (fig. 19). At one time this feature had a vertical wall against which players bounced a hard rubber ball with a paddle or their hands. The vertical wall of another outdoor fronton shown in figure 18 still exists in downtown Boise at 512 West Idaho Street, although the horizontal slab that formed the playing court no longer exists. It is likely the fronton in the River Street Neighborhood had a vertical brick wall like the one in downtown Boise. Sediments at the depth of this feature contained contemporaneous artifacts dating to the early twentieth century. To the Basque in River Street, the construction of a fronton was an expression of their ethnicity and continuation of an important cultural practice. After the mid-­nineteenth century, Basque frontons were L-­shaped. Pelota games were played against the short wall at the end of the court that ran at a perpendicular angle and provided a place against which rubber balls could be hurled, using a paddle or the hand. The longer wall added to freestanding frontons gave them an L-­shape. The shorter wall against which the rubber ball is bounced is called the frontis, and architecturally the longer wall is structurally important to a free-­standing fronton like the one in the River Street Neighborhood because it adds strength to the frontis, which is the structure that bears the brunt of each ball strike. Indoor frontons or ones in plazas had three or four walls. The left wall for all frontons was not only a boundary and structural feature but also an integral element in the game itself (Abrisketa 2012, 63–­64). Figure 19 shows players at the Anduiza Fronton in Boise, an example of an indoor fronton. In Boise frontons remain an important feature for members of the Basque diaspora because they help maintain a cultural connection to Basque Country in northern Spain and southwestern France (Bieter and Bieter 2003). A variety of different games can be played depending on the size of the court. Called pelota, these activities include games played with the hands, paddles, or a xistera (i.e., a wicker basket that is used to play versions of jai alai). Abrisketa (2012, 25) explains: Basque pelota is a group of games in which a varying number of players (pelotaris) are positioned in front of each other or facing a 146

Archaeological Evidence

Fig. 18. Remains of the first Basque fronton (feature 125) and second fronton (in the backlot of 512 West Idaho Street) constructed in Boise. Photos by the author, 2015.

wall (frontis), and exchange a solid ball wrapped in leather by hitting it with their hands or an instrument. The ball must always bounce within established boundaries (eskas or fault lines), and the players try to make it as difficult as possible for their opponent to return it; the objective is to win by earning points and by being the first to reach the stipulated final score. While the mechanics of these games are relatively simple, pelota is an important cultural institution. It has been documented for more than five hundred years in Basque Country before being exported to the United

Archaeological Evidence

147

Fig. 19. The playing court at the Anduiza Fronton in Boise. Photo by the author, 2015.

States, Argentina, the Philippines, and other parts of the Basque diaspora. Pelota has acquired specific ritual and aesthetic forms that have become integral in the way Basques think about themselves. Today pelota is an essential part of Basque nationalist imagery and is a major sport in northern Spain. Pelota tournaments are still played on frontons in the American West like the one shown in figure 20 (Abrisketa 2012). Pelota is also an important element of Basque masculinities as men are the primary players. Handball games played by Basque men in Boise were a demonstration of toughness, strength, and honesty. During the second half of the nineteenth century, pelota underwent key transformations in Spain that shaped the game as it is in the United States today. Pelota spread to plazas and around the world along with the Basque community. In Basque Country increasing numbers of women started playing pelota, but the game remained dominated by men, especially in isolated places like Boise (Abrisketa 2012, 65–­66). The rubber balls used in the game were made more elastic over time, which made them easier to hit. As games became faster and harder with the new elastic balls, critics considered the new game violent and without aesthetic merit (Abrisketa 2012, 63–­64). The game became a mass spectacle in Spain and in cities. Professional pelotaris crossed borders with their instruments in 148

Archaeological Evidence

Fig. 20. The massive outdoor fronton in Jordan Valley, Oregon. Photo by the author, 2016.

hand. Meanwhile hand pelota was reduced to smaller frontons. Pelotaris played the hand modality for fun and, in the Basque diaspora, for camaraderie and to demonstrate toughness as the ball was notoriously hard (Abrisketa 2012, 64–­65). The fronton at 631 Lovers Lane is the first reported in Boise, but there are two other extant frontons in the city, both located in the Basque neighborhood that coalesced at the dawn of the twentieth century. The remains of the second fronton in Boise are at 512 West Idaho Street (see fig. 18). This feature is a single wall of the L-­shaped structure that was constructed soon after the fronton in the River Street Neighborhood. In 1914 John and Juana Anduiza purchased a lot at 619 West Grove Street. The couple planned on building a boarding house for other Basque workers; they erected their business around a fronton that was built on the basement and ground floor of the building (see fig. 19). This was the third and last fronton built in the city of Boise. Today the Anduiza Fronton is a historical landmark that hosts the Boise Ko Fronton Association—­a traveling team that competes at traditional Basque games around the world (Bieter and Bieter 2003). Along with a few other frontons in the American West, including one in Jordan Valley, Oregon (see fig. 20), and an indoor one in San Francisco, the Anduiza Fronton is one of the few historical courts in the United States that is still operational. In addition to clothing items, the fronton feature was also a culturally significant element in Basque masculinity. With its large population of male laborers, pelota and frontons were elements of masculinity for Boise’s Basque communities during the early twentieth century. Players played games like pala that required paddles on larger frontons like the

Archaeological Evidence

149

one operated in Boise by the Anduiza family. Handball games were probably more common on smaller frontons like the one in the River Street Neighborhood at 631 Lovers Lane. The pelota ball is extremely hard as it is rubber covered with leather, so pelota players had to have tough hands to play the games. Pelota players were known for their toughness. Local lore describes how in the early days of pelota at the Anduiza Fronton, the players’ hands would swell up after only four or five points, approximately ten to twenty minutes of play. John Anduiza, who weighed about 240 pounds, would have the players put their hands flat on the stairway by the fronton, place a wooden board on the back of their hands, and stand on the board to take down the swelling. Despite this remedy the players’ hands would hurt for days after a single game (Bieter and O’Dell 2014, 66). Basque men congregated around places like the Anduiza Fronton at 631 Lovers Lane and other social places where they could hang out together, wearing respectable clothing and playing traditional games, all while demonstrating and practicing aspects of masculinity. Deciphering the History of a Multiracial Urban Block Narratives of what life was like in this interracial, multiethnic part of the River Street Neighborhood were inferred from pockets of intact sediments containing material culture. The collected data, combined with oral histories, tells a tale of working-­class people who called the 600 block of Ash Street home between the early 1900s and 1960s. While most of these fragments of mass-­produced items cannot be directly associated to particular households, they provide insight into life in one of Boise’s most diverse neighborhoods. River Street Neighborhood residents were part of the wider economy, but their social status prevented full participation because of racism and economic inequities. They were intimately familiar with the way material culture communicated American identity. They used income from jobs outside the neighborhood to purchase tasteful decorative items that conveyed sophistication, respectability, and modernity. Men and women wore the kind of attire that would convey their status as upstanding Boiseans because they knew how people outside the neighborhood viewed them. Clothing was an important way they presented themselves in a racist society; their bodies were part of the ongoing campaign to command respect and equality. Children played in the same yards where they tended gardens as part of their household contribution. Frugality was the norm among the residents. Foods were grown in their yards 150

Archaeological Evidence

and stored for later use, and some households raised chickens. Strong women, Black and white, worked outside the home while also maintaining respectable households. These working-­class Boiseans adeptly used a series of nuanced signals sent through material culture to fight the discrimination they faced outside the neighborhood and to establish a place among their neighbors, and they did all of this in a crowded, constantly changing landscape.



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6 Saving the Erma Hayman House In October 2016 I learned that the Capital City Development Corporation (ccdc) donated the Erma Hayman House to the Boise City Department of Arts and History. In an ironic twist of fate, the organization responsible for initiating urban renewal in Boise (i.e., the demolition of dozens of potentially historical buildings) in the 1970s had now become a contributor to historic preservation. The River Street Public Archaeology Project was well-­received by the city of Boise. It enjoyed front-­page coverage in local newspapers the Idaho Statesman and Boise Weekly and was widely covered on local news. While it is unknown how many people watched news stories about the project, more than 4,500 people have visited the River Street Digital History website; the pages about the archaeology project are the most commonly visited. My impression is that the highly visible public archaeology project that took place in Erma Hayman’s backyard did much to raise awareness of the historicity of the River Street Neighborhood and the role this place played in Boise’s past. The entire project was built upon the call of Atalay et al. (2014, 13): “Community archaeology, public archaeology, collaborative archaeology, engaged archaeology, and indigenous archaeology all recognize the moral imperatives and practical benefits of collaborations with people outside archaeology.” The Erma Hayman House is the second Boise-­acquired African American-­related historic property. The first, St. Paul Baptist Church, was the first building constructed by African Americans in Boise and currently houses the Idaho Black History Museum. This building is not at its original location. In 1998 it was moved to an area of Julia Davis Park (about a half-­mile east of the River Street Project area) for preservation alongside several other historical buildings and the Idaho State Historical Society’s museum. The Erma Hayman House is the first African American historic property in Boise that has integrity of place. This is important because archaeological excavations, oral histories, and archival data collected for this project indicate this building’s significance truly lies in its location in an ever-­changing landscape. This lot was where the Hayman family could 152

be Black in an overwhelmingly white city. The social context of segregation, racism, and racialization that forged the River Street Neighborhood became a source of solidity. It is this place and all its associated history that helped neighborhood residents persist. In September 2019 the Boise City Department of Arts and History convened a meeting of the Erma Hayman Advisory Task Force. The task force is composed of City of Boise administrators, state representative Cherie Buckner (who used to live in the River Street Neighborhood as a child), the director of the Idaho State Black History Museum, the Boise chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (naacp), and representatives of the design firms contracted to design the house’s rehabilitation. I am also on this task force, which has several objectives. One is to assist the City of Boise with planning the rehabilitation of the Erma Hayman House into a place for visiting scholars and artists as well as upgrading the house for small gatherings, meetings, and events. Another objective is to plan for long-­term possibilities for public engagement and historical interpretations that convey the Black and immigrant experience in Boise. By the time this volume is published, the roof will have been replaced, power lines upgraded, adjacent sidewalks repaired, and architects hired to design the rehabilitation. A multiunit condominium building has also been constructed, with a twelve-­feet-­tall concrete wall erected along the property boundary between the condos and the Erma Hayman House parcel. Beautifying this blank, concrete wall was one of the first goals of the task force, and we solicited a request for proposals for an art installation. In the task force’s first meeting, Boise Arts and History administrators explained how rehabilitation of the Erma Hayman House builds upon other similar projects, but that the intersection between race and history was unavoidable in this project. The Arts and History staff are also working on building a historical context for racism in the state of Idaho, and, in preparation of this task, they have undergone unconscious bias training and internal team development to better understand the issues involved with white historians interpreting nonwhite history. I have also been communicating with Arts and History staff with regard to creating interpretive signage and kiosks for the Erma Hayman House that clearly and cogently address racism and racialization. There is a sincere desire to “get this right”—­the task force intends this piece to help combat Boise’s reputation as a monoracial place. Other meeting members remarked how

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the city is having trouble attracting certain businesses, citing the lack of diversity as a major downside. Representatives from the naacp also explained how they are having trouble describing the importance of an antiracist ethos to local businesses. It appears that many businesses do not understand how nonwhite professionals and businesses with diverse employees are deterred by the lack of diversity, and they are at a loss as to what they can do about it. The Erma Hayman House is something task force members believe will improve Boise’s image. The Erma Hayman House is one of the few nonwhite historic properties in a city with about 217,000 residents, 192,740 of whom are white and only 4,200 of whom are African American. Preservation proponents are deeply invested in using this site as a keystone in improving the way nonwhite America sees the city. In the process those involved want to move closer to becoming antiracism advocates because they believe this project has the potential to make impacts outside the fields of archaeology and historic preservation. The River Street Public Archaeology Project expanded these sentiments in a good way; practicing it from an antiracist standpoint has influenced the trajectory of interpreting this site by others. Whiteness, Blackness, and Neighborliness . . . to a Certain Extent The circular dynamic used to create segregated urban landscapes has played out in numerous cities across the United States and still operates today as summarized in figure 21. This project has revealed the same processes happening here, which has deeply impacted the way Boise commemorates the history of River Street Neighborhood. In the case of River Street, the dominant narrative that pervaded Boise’s society was that this place was blighted, maligned, a place of vice, the space for “others.” This neighborhood was neglected by the city for most of the twentieth century because city officials, who were mostly white, did not believe River Street was worthy of capital investment. Its residents did not deserve social support because they were not “us.” Interviews with former residents complicate the narratives that stigmatized River Street. Children lived an interracial life where Black and white kids were in constant interaction with each other. Familiarity with how “others” truly lived impacted their lives into adulthood. In every interview descendants explain that the people who lived in the River Street Neighborhood were familiar with each other and were completely aware of how they were 154

Saving the Erma Hayman House

Fig. 21. An overview of ghettoization in the United States. Created by the author, 2017.

treated by white people living on the outside. The 2014–­2015 interviewees, all of whom were children in the 1940s and 1950s, recalled how children played together and freely roamed through the neighborhood. Adults watched out for neighborhood kids, and this constant surveillance made it difficult for them to get into trouble (Hill 2015; Thomas 2015; Jack and Lois Wheeler 2015). Growing up in the 1950s, Black and white neighborhood children played together in open lots, at a nearby gravel pit, and along the Boise River (Rice II 2014; Terrell III 2014; Thomas 2015). The interviewees (even when they were children) were aware that they lived in families that were among the working class (Hill 2015). Kenneth Thomas grew up in the working-­class, white Thomas household at 633 Ash Street, and he recalled how he knew they were not rich but lived comfortably. He recalls they always had food to eat, clothes to wear (even though the children only got new clothes once a year, when school started), and a roof over their heads. His parents worked hard managing a café in downtown Boise, but their labor was enough to provide for the whole family and own their own home, a house right next to a Black family (K. Thomas 2015). The Thomases were like most other working-­class neighborhood residents in Boise, regardless of race, but differed in their parents’ choice to stay neighbors with a Black family for twenty years. Interracial relationships in River Street, which broke social taboos, were secreted from those outside the neighborhood. As an example Black people were allowed to eat at the café managed by the Thomases, but

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the front section of the dining room was reserved for white people. The Thomases freely gave food to down-­and-­out neighbors, including Black families, and had no reservations about their kids having Black friends. Nevertheless the Thomases were also unwilling to break social conventions by allowing their Black neighbors to eat in the front section of the restaurant (Hill 2015). Similarly Lois Wheeler recalls how in the 1950s she brought an African American friend to visit her mother who was working part-­time at a bowling alley in downtown Boise. The girls stopped by just to say hello, and the mother bought them both a soda. Later that night Lois’s mother told her not to bring that friend to the bowling alley again because Blacks were not allowed there. Defiantly the twelve-­year-­old Lois said she would never enter that building again, a pledge she has kept for more than sixty years (Wheeler 2015). Segregation held sway outside the neighborhood despite the friendliness expressed within its boundaries. White River Street residents were keenly aware of this reality, which meant they could never completely free themselves from racism since whiteness, even poor whiteness, required adherence to expected norms. Class plays a powerful role in how racial stereotypes are understood among white adults. Research suggests racism can be weakened among working-­class whites if they have interactions with better-­educated, middle-­to upper-­class African Americans. Conversely there is little change in racial understanding in middle-­and upper-­class whites who have significant interactions with African Americans of the same or lower socioeconomic classes. Researchers believe that this is because working-­class whites’ misconceptions change when they see an example of a Black person who defies stereotypes when they interact with a Black person of a higher socioeconomic class. Conversely upper-­class whites who interact with Blacks of their same class are less impressed by Blacks who achieve what they themselves have achieved (McDermott 2006). This is important for understanding race relations in places like the River Street Neighborhood and addressing discrimination, stereotypes, and racism among American archaeologists. Working-­class whites in a geographic region where they interacted with all of Boise’s Black people, including middle-­and working-­class Blacks, primarily inhabited River Street. The working-­class white experiences of interacting with Black businessowners and homeowners showed them what Black people were really like during a time when antiblack stereotypes prevailed. Upper-­and middle-­class whites

156

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living throughout the rest of the city remained unimpressed by middle-­ and upper-­class Blacks as they felt like these Blacks were simply doing what was naturally expected of a proper American citizen. Relationships between white and Black River Street residents were potentially more impactful because those in the neighborhood knew they were all in similar financial straits and could see that many of the negative memes applied to Black people were a result of poverty. This can be seen in the common thread of neighborliness and interracial respect all descendants had for each other, which was captured in oral histories, both those taken in the 1980s and in 2014–­2015. Nearly universally the descendants recalled having friendships across races as children that continued into adulthood. Unlike those living elsewhere in Boise, white River Street residents showed empathy for the discrimination their Black friends and neighbors faced outside the neighborhood. Empathy for “others,” attempting to see things from the perspective of stigmatized races, is a central aspect of antiracism advocacy as it allows observers to introspectively think about how their society negatively impacts othered peoples. This empathy among white residents for African Americans continued throughout their lives. In the case of River Street, empathy from white residents came from having lifelong relationships with Black people. Familiarity with what life was really like for Black people helped them better understand what Black people were facing, which helped them occasionally speak out against racism as adults. White River Street residents were doing important work whenever they stood up for Black friends or struck back against racism. Even if this was only done occasionally, it was more than what most white Boiseans were doing to address racism or understand how racialization was affecting the community. This is even more remarkable given the fact that it was taking place in an overwhelmingly white community. In interviews most descendants made it clear that neighborliness dominated interactions in the River Street Neighborhood during the 1950s and 1960s, but race relations were not always as friendly as they seemed. An interview recorded with LaVaun Kennedy (2015) complicates the narrative of friendly neighborliness. Kennedy agreed that residents lived amicably, but she acknowledged that not every European American resident openly fraternized with the African Americans in the neighborhood. As a young child, she lived at 617 Ash Street before her parents sold this house to the



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Hayman family at the end of World War II and moved to another house in Boise on South Eleventh Street. In her interview Kennedy confirmed what Dorothy Buckner said in her 1981 interview—­that race relations in Boise were governed by what she called “Silent Segregation.” Kennedy stated that schools and other public places were not necessarily segregated. Her elementary school had a few African American and Native American students, but she recalls that these children were not accepted by the rest of the student body. Because boys valued athletic abilities, they were more open to African American boys who had sports skills. Girls formed cliques and were not receptive of nonwhite girls. Kennedy acknowledged her parents were racist against Black people, even though they lived in a multiracial neighborhood. As mentioned in chapters 3 and 5, LaVaun Kennedy described how she was not allowed to enter Black households and that her father would not sell vegetables from their neighborhood garden to Black River Street residents (Kennedy 2015). Kennedy’s memories explain that some whites lived in River Street simply because they were poor and could not afford to live elsewhere, but living near Black people did not help them overcome antiblack sentiments. Kennedy recalled that she was ashamed because she lived in that neighborhood and was relieved when, as a teenager, her family moved to California (Kennedy 2015). The stigma of living in River Street was something she had internalized as shameful. This shame only went away after she left the neighborhood. Kennedy’s parents did not like African Americans, but they were not willing to directly discriminate against them in most instances, preferring to let overt exercise of their prejudice take a back seat to maintaining the peace. When confronted about their racism, as happened with the bathroom incident, her parents pretended ignorance and settled the issue by not talking about it. Kennedy acknowledged that the silent segregation that pervaded Boise in the 1940s and 1950s was founded upon ignorance. She believes white Boiseans were racist against African Americans because most of them did not know any Black people personally and had no idea what it was like to be Black (Kennedy 2015). An ignorance of the “other” made it difficult to cross racial lines. Unless you lived in River Street, it would have been unthinkable for a white Boisean to interact with an African American and not have their reputation as an upstanding white person tarnished. This inability to cross the barriers created by segregation played a major role in the way city officials and real estate investors treated the River Street Neighborhood during the twentieth century. 158

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Keeping Your Home in the Face of It All In the short story “We’re the Only Colored People Here,” Gwendolyn Brooks writes about a Black couple who goes to see a movie in a nice theater only to discover they are the only Black people in attendance. Brooks describes how, in the company of well-­heeled white patrons, the central character Maud Martha and her companion did what they could to downplay their discomfort at being alone in an all-­white space where their simple presence brought the unwelcome attention of white people: “The people in the lobby tried to avoid looking curiously at the two shy Negroes wanting desperately not to seem shy. The white women looked at the Negro woman in her outfit with which no special fault could be found, but which made them think, somehow, of close rooms, and wee, close lives. They looked at her hair. They were always slightly surprised, but agreeably so, when they did. They supposed it was the hair that had got her that yellowish, good-­looking Negro man without a tie” (Brooks 1953). In few words Brooks relays the pressure Black people encountered when in white spaces: how white people could communicate supremacy and inspire discomfort simply through their gaze. It also describes how African Americans understood the unwritten, uncommunicated meanings from situations like these. This passage also describes aspects of the layered, intricate, rapid exchange of information between white and Black people based simply upon appearances; the clothing, hair, and overall outward appearance that triggered an unexcited reaction from the white observers but a level of satisfaction from Maud. Whites were unperturbed, unthreatened by the presence of a few Blacks, but they did not welcome them with open arms. Brooks continues to describe how the couple enjoyed themselves that night even though they were alone and marked. They wanted to commune with the other visitors, sharing in the good time the whole audience had just had together, but it was impossible because the unspoken mores at the heart of American racism discouraged even brief fraternization. It is hard not to imagine African Americans in Boise feeling this way most of the time, even in their own neighborhood. The story also shows that at least some Black people in the United States were undeterred from entering white spaces if it meant enjoying the benefits of being an American. In white spaces it was extremely important for Black people to properly employ material culture in the face of white judgement. Artifacts collected from the River Street Neighborhood

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show us how Black, Basque, and poor whites used mundane items like ceramics and clothing to craft a self-­identity that was deserving of dignity. In the case of Basque immigrants, clothing was part of a transition process that would help them move closer to whiteness. For African Americans this entire constellation of material culture—­from bric-­a-­brac to buttons—­was armor for the ongoing campaign against the antiblack stereotypes and pseudoscience behind Jim Crow and segregation. This complex interplay even permeated ordinary aspects of life. For example work for Basque and Black residents was limited to low-­paying work that hindered economic advancement. In response neighborhood residents turned to self-­provisioning and using modest items like affordable, minimally decorated ceramics in their everyday lives. Education and a solid work ethic was understood as a pathway out of the neighborhood, so Black parents pushed their kids to excel in school and help their family with chores. Free play was only allowed after work and studies had been finished. Homes were kept clean; trash was discarded properly. Regardless of race neighborhood residents understood the importance of projecting a positive outward image in the struggle for equality and respect in the rest of Boise. They also knew they were all in similar straits, which was a source of solidarity that undergirded individual relationships between neighbors. Neighborhood residents took care of themselves. They helped each other out when times were tough (Wheeler 2015). Residents helped each other find work, housing, and other resources (Oliver 1995; Terrell III 2014). Stores in the neighborhood took cash money and scrip for neighborhood residents. Children recall being able to “buy” groceries from the neighborhood stores, and the purchases were simply placed on a family credit account. Parents paid their bill when they could afford it (Hill 2015; Thomas 2015). Neighbors provided food and clothing for those in need who did not have the funds to afford these items (Wheeler 2015). Archaeological data corroborates oral history accounts of gardens and fruit trees that supplied food for households (Madry 2014; Terrell III 2014). Fresh and canned fruit and vegetables could be given to neighbors in times of need. As many residents came from rural backgrounds, raising chickens and fishing in the Boise River were other ways residents provided food. Residents would need this solidarity to fight against the urban renewal that nearly destroyed the River Street Neighborhood in the 1970s. The influx of Black residents as part of the World War II effort perma 160

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nently labeled River Street as a Black space. This moniker lowered property values because of the negative connotations associated with Black spaces while also diminishing motivations for absentee landlords to maintain their properties. Landlords who rented to Blacks knew they could overcharge for substandard dwellings because their tenants had few options. Black homeowners could not buy outside the neighborhood, so their well-­kept homes were flanked by deteriorating, crowded, substandard properties. During the 1960s investors started purchasing properties in the neighborhood for a variety of different purposes. Most of these properties remained rentals, but absentee landlords did little to maintain their investments. These houses, many of which had been constructed between 1890 and the 1920s, were sorely in need of repair, but most landlords let their properties deteriorate while they continued to rent them out to tenants (Wheeler 2015). The situation was worsened by disinvestment from the City of Boise. The city had long neglected neighborhood infrastructure. Street sections remained unpaved. Sidewalks were not complete. All of this was seen as an eyesore to Boiseans living outside the neighborhood. River Street was classified as blighted in the late 1960s, which was the first step toward its redevelopment. When the Boise Redevelopment Agency (bra), predecessor to the ccdc, started studying development options in the neighborhood in 1968, it stated that the wrecking ball was the best remedy for River Street. River Street residents resisted their neighborhood’s demise by banding together and doing what they could to demonstrate their membership in Boise’s citizenry. Using Community Development Block Grants backed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, residents repaired owner-­occupied dwellings, cleaned up their stretch of the Boise River, and created a resident-­focused urban renewal plan that was not dependent upon demolishing existing housing stock. To fight demolitions they proposed that this remain a residential place and demanded that they be allowed to stay (Bertram and Walsh 1973). This collective action was made possible only because neighborhood residents had long practiced self-­reliance. As stigmatized working-­class people, they understood that they were the only ones who could save their valued neighborhood. Decades of neglect and ostracization had led to the creation of a subculture within the city of Boise that had its own social and economic system. While the neighborhood was well-­serviced by the fire department and casually patrolled by the police, residents took care

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of disputes and small fires on their own. Descendants explain they preferred to settle misdeeds among themselves, not because they were afraid of the police, but because it was the right thing to do for a neighbor they respected (Thomas 2015). And when the wrecking ball was aiming for their homes, these folks banded together, found resources to improve their condition, and fought to save their homes. Scholars of ghettos, slums, and other informal communities within nation-­states have long recognized the existence of an informal economy that helps poor residents survive in the capitalist world. The informal economy is built upon networks of reciprocity and patron-­client relations that can be leveraged to create an informal social security system necessary for survival. Reciprocity is an outgrowth of familiarity, friendship, or familial relations. In an informal economy, material goods, intellectual properties like personal connections, or services can be dispersed without a monetary exchange. Those participating in reciprocity understand that the distribution of favors, connections, or material items will be repaid at some point in the future. Trust is essential for this system to function optimally. Transactions in the informal economy take place largely outside the surveillance or involvement of the larger bureaucracy. Most importantly they do not require money, which is necessary for all formal transactions in the formal economy (Lomnitz 1988). People living in enclaves with strong informal economies like River Street survive without reliance upon the formal economy, a force that the bra was not prepared to fight against. The same stigmatization that creates segregated landscapes like River Street is also responsible for the informal economies that support their residents. While criminal elements often dominate the informal economy in cities, a noncriminal informal economy is the system upon which more working-­class Americans use to find work, obtain services, and in some cases, create material products (Wacquant 2007; Venkatesh 2008). Venkatesh (2008) describes how public housing residents in Chicago during the 1990s and 2000s used a web of connections, favors, and obligations to obtain childcare, car repairs, food, clothing, and employment. Illicit activities like selling drugs and gang activity took place alongside sidewalk car repair businesses and unlicensed daycares. In other research from Chicago, Venkatesh and Levitt (2000) describe how most housing residents hold jobs in the formal economy while also operating in the informal economy within the neighborhood. Activities in the informal economy 162

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supplemented these low-­paying positions. The River Street Neighborhood mirrors many aspects of the communities in this body of research. Residents were ostracized from upwardly mobile jobs in the formal economy outside the neighborhood. Relegated to low-­wage, service positions, residents used other means to make ends meet. Oral histories indicate a small area of the neighborhood was used for illicit activity during the 1960s and 1970s. A small red-­light district with several entertainment houses operated along Lovers Lane at this time (Stewart 1980; Madry 2014; Terrell III 2014). Other businesses in the neighborhood, such as Blackjack’s Barbeque, supported multiple streams of income, some of which included illicit activities like loansharking (Buckner 1981). All of this was possible because of the strong social networks created by neighborhood residents. Families knew each other. Children played together, forging bonds that endured long after they moved away from the south side of the tracks. The informal economy that helped residents care for each other in times of need was harnessed in the 1960s and 1970s to prevent the River Street Neighborhood from getting demolished by urban renewal. Unfortunately these networks have weakened in the last forty years. Today potentially historic buildings are rapidly being lost in the neighborhood. Unless unchecked all the buildings and structures mentioned in oral histories will be gone in the near future. Selective, judicious, community-­based historic preservation, such as happened at the Erma Hayman House, is the best way the City of Boise can maintain the memories of this landscape before it vanishes. River Street Is Still Resisting Racism The current rehabilitation of the Erma Hayman House is a win for historic preservation as well as a continuation of the struggle Hayman and all the other River Street Neighborhood residents have been fighting to acknowledge their existence. The resulting landmark will commemorate all of those who forged lives on the 600 block of Ash Street. From Basque handball courts to Black entrepreneurs like Pistol Johnson to the community organizers like Dorothy Buckner who saved the neighborhood from redevelopment, the story of River Street is an American tale of pushing back against racism and stigmatization. What started as a place for the working class of Boise became a multiracial enclave that was a safe place for residents. This has not always been understood by upstanding whites living outside the neighborhood. Whiteness remains key to addressing

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structural racism, and creating spaces where white people can engage with the effects of their own racialization is a starting point for addressing deeply ingrained prejudices and stereotypes. Efforts at the Erma Hayman House have the intent of continuing lasting change for today’s Boiseans who are still overwhelmingly white and who will be the main visitors to the house. The simple presence of African Americans in this corner of the American West contests commonly held beliefs about western history. Archaeologists understand the West was cosmopolitan, modern, and urban, but African American experience in the West has gone understated. This is partially because there were so few Black people in the West, but it is also because small enclaves like River Street have not been prominently featured. Additionally the material culture of Blackness is difficult to discern in multiracial contexts like this neighborhood. It likely would have proven impossible to connect race with material culture in River Street without detailed, heartfelt oral history interviews with the descendant community. Combining memory with archaeological data is at the heart of community-­based projects like this. Not only does it help with archaeological interpretations, providing opportunities for descendants to contribute does much to engender a project and a site with the communities that deserve heritage conservation. Fruitful collaborations between descendants, researchers, and government administrators are rare, but the River Street Project can serve as an example for other community archaeology projects in the United States. Connecting with communities of color is especially salient for American archaeologists, especially those of European descent who have to grapple with understanding someone else’s race as well as their own. This is no easy task, but it is a necessary one if archaeology is to remain relevant with the growing nonwhite population of the United States.

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Conclusion Using Archaeology to Fight Racism

African American archaeology is clearly moving into a new realm where its public is helping to set the agenda.—­Theresa Singleton, “Facing the Challenges of a Public African American Archaeology” Cognition of racial categories, including whiteness, is situational, contextual, and dependent upon social position. Creating positive views of nonwhite races among white people depends on the context and positionality of interracial interactions. Fighting racism in archaeology also disproportionately depends on the actions of white people because more than 90 percent of archaeologists are white (Zeder 1997). It is not enough for white people to simply interact with persons of other races for these life experiences to have a positive effect on European American beliefs about other races. They must consciously fight against the social programming that underlies racial categories in the United States. Antiracist archaeology involves not only seeking to better understand how race was constructed, maintained, and manifested in the past, but also how these concepts affect people in the present, including archaeologists themselves. Archaeology can help people reveal the ways social structures have been erected in such a way that white people disproportionately benefit socially, economically, and politically. While many white people are unwilling to acknowledge this reality, it is difficult to confront even for those who have adopted an antiracist stance. Because of the centrality of whiteness in American society, it is difficult to address structural inequality without revealing how deeply these structures are ingrained in everything we do. Even the idea of antiracism is difficult to address without whiteness complicating the issue. Critical race theorist Sara Ahmed (2004) confronts how whiteness is integral to antiracist projects and how antiracism has the potential to be another piling that supports the centrality of whiteness. Ahmed (2004) warns how whiteness studies can be 165

considered “part of a broader shift towards what we could call a politics of declaration, in which institutions as well as individuals ‘admit’ to forms of bad practice, and in which the ‘admission’ itself becomes seen as good practice.” She also describes how whiteness is invested in antiracism as a means of soothing white guilt and a way white people can distance themselves from racism through memes like, “If we say we are racist, we aren’t racist because racist people don’t know they’re racist.” This reality creates a “chicken-­and-­the-­egg” situation where nonwhite people are never sure of the sincerity and dedication of their European American collaborators. It also generates anxiety among white allies who are aware of this reality. Revealing whiteness as a racial construct and locus for racialization is central to cultivating an antiracist archaeology as persons of European descent dominate the field. Because most archaeologists categorize themselves as white, understanding whiteness as a cultural and racial construct is essential to forging an antiracist archaeology. Perhaps the most comprehensive survey of Society for American Archaeology (saa) members was conducted in 1994; it covered a range of topics including educational attainment, gender, employment, research interests, economic status, and trends for the future of the field (Zeder 1997). This survey revealed a wealth of information about archaeology practitioners in the United States, some of which is relevant to discussions of race and archaeology. The reporting was based on a self-­selecting census of saa members. Eighty-­nine percent of the 1,644 respondents were of European ancestry. Only two individuals were African American. Nine percent of respondents (n=142) said they were “other,” suggesting they were uncomfortable with claiming an ethnic or racial heritage. The author of the saa profile analysis believed the majority of people who classified themselves as “other” were Canadians who were likely of European descent. Eliminating this “other” group meant a full 98 percent of respondents claimed European descent (Zeder 1997, 13). More recently the saa conducted a Member Needs Assessment in 2019. Of the 839 responses, 83.5 percent of the respondents self-­identified as white, and only four respondents were Black. Fifty-­seven individuals (about 7 percent of the respondents) preferred not to answer. Following the logic of the analyst in the 1997 survey, who believed those who considered themselves “other” were white, it is likely many of the fifty-­seven individuals who did not respond to this question are likely white as well, which means the saa remains about 90 percent white in 2021. I casually noted a saa Facebook posting that showed a 100 166

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percent increase in Black members between 1994 and 2020, although that implies that it increased from two to four Black members. Other surveys corroborate the fact that archaeology is nearly a monoracial field. A survey conducted in 2014 by the Society for Historical Archaeology resulted in 693 responses, only eight of which were from individuals who self-­ identified as Black and two from people who identified as multiracial with partial African ancestry. Eighty-­nine percent of respondents (n=617) identified as white (Barbara Heath, personal communication, 2021). Surveys of archaeologists in the United Kingdom have also come to similar conclusions: archaeology is overwhelmingly white in its demographics. A 2013 survey showed archaeology was 97 percent white in the United Kingdom, and this had not changed at all since 2002. Archaeologists in the United Kingdom were also highly educated. Forty-­five percent of those surveyed had a graduate degree (master’s or PhD), and 47 percent of the remainder had the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree (Atichison and Rocks-­Macqueen 2014, 98–­99,101). A high concentration of archaeologists of European descent means archaeology, as an industry, practice, and field of inquiry, starts from the perspective of whiteness. Additionally the educational attainment and socioeconomic status of archaeologists means, in addition to coming from a white perspective, archaeology is also strongly influenced by affluence, or at minimum, middle-­class mores. Recent research shows European Americans have a wide range of understanding when it comes to race. Working-­class white understandings of race depend on context and are locally situated, but research has shown some working-­class whites show resentment toward people of color because nonwhite people can be perceived as a threat to their whiteness (Kefalas 2003; McDermott 2006). Affluent European Americans have different life experiences than working-­ or middle-­class white families because they have access to a wider range of resources that help them engage or withdraw from the difficult situations caused by increased diversity, interaction with nonwhite people, and the costs of racial change. Spatial segregation also helps affluent whites avoid interactions with nonwhite people. Nonwhite communities are the spaces where unique racial and ethnic practices are created and reified, but few white Americans live in these places, and disinvestment has given them few reasons to move away from suburban areas which, for most of the twentieth century, have been predominately white spaces. White suburban Americans enjoyed newer infrastructure, higher quality schools, Conclusion

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and safer spaces than most nonwhite urbanites, while urban nonwhite neighborhoods were left to decay or subjected to urban renewal (Cashin 2004, 2014; Rothstein 2017). It is from these segregated landscapes that today’s archaeologists, Black, white, and otherwise, are raised, and this upbringing undoubtedly plays a significant role in the way professional archaeologists see the world and the past. Racial segregation also has significant impacts on education outcomes when it comes to thinking about historical archaeology. This is important to note because almost all professional archaeologists have an undergraduate degree, and most have a graduate degree (Zeder 1997). America’s most highly educated metropolitan areas are among its most segregated. The overwhelming majority of Latino (80 percent) and African American students (74 percent) attend nonwhite schools. The typical white student attends a school that is 77 percent white (Cashin 2014, 28–­29). Educated archaeologists are unlikely to live alongside less affluent, less educated Americans, which means there is less likelihood of fruitful interactions with folks of other classes on a daily basis. This is particularly salient when taking race into account as a higher proportion of nonwhite Americans do not have a college degree; thus they are less likely to live alongside or interact with archaeologists. Finally the education requirements of archaeology mean that the few nonwhite people archaeologists regularly work with also have a college degree and a higher income than what is the norm for their race. White archaeologists may not recognize how rare it is for a person of color to have attained that status in life and may not understand that the pathway they took to make it to that level was radically different than the path taken by an upper-­or middle-­class white archaeologist. From its conception the archaeological work in the River Street Neighborhood was designed to address structural racism by presenting a space where city residents could engage with painful pasts. Acknowledging that racism is foundational to American history is unavoidable when working on a project like this because former residents who experienced the traumas that come with living in a segregated landscape are there to tell you what happened. Former residents could share their experiences with those who were unfamiliar with what happened here and, in the process, tell visitors, volunteers, and students how racism affected their lives. Since the neighborhood’s history was little known, a second goal was to invite other residents from the city to participate in the collection of this information. As a community-­based participatory project, the excavations, oral 168

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histories, and archival research also sought to reclaim something of the heritage of this rapidly vanishing landscape while also being as inclusive as possible. Historians of Idaho have largely overlooked African Americans when writing about the state’s history because so few Black people lived there. Basque immigrants in the state are better understood primarily due to the efforts of Basque American historians who wrote their people into history. Still the way Basque immigrants were racialized remains poorly reported. Poor white people are hardly even acknowledged in Idaho’s history at all. Helping these groups craft their own historical narrative of what life was like in River Street was another major goal of the project. The final main goal was to preserve something for future generations. The tangibility of archaeological data, when combined with oral histories and documents, added durability and longevity to what is known about this place. Scholars and descendants can hold fragments of this past long after the project is over. While preserving the Erma Hayman House was not a direct result of the archaeological excavations, people can see the house is still standing, which is a precious thing in this changing landscape. While antiracism advocacy was always a centerpiece of this work in my mind, the praxis of this work was not always articulated at the time when it was conducted. As I was writing this volume, tragic events in the spring and summer of 2020 revealed, once again, the continuation of antiblack violence in the United States. Many archaeologists (including myself ) realized that despite our extensive research, efforts needed to be taken to directly address racism through our research. I participated in a series of workshops, webinars, and wrote or coauthored articles and statements that have made it clearer what an antiracist archaeology can look like. Ideas that were not fully articulated in 2014–­2015 when the River Street Project was in full swing now have a framework, which makes it easier to describe where this project is at on the antiracist archaeology spectrum. The community-­based participatory aspects of this project came firmly from frameworks established by archaeologists like Sonia Atalay (2012), T. J. Ferguson and Chip Colwell (2004, 2008), David Schaepe, Bill Angelbek, David Snook, and John Welch (2017), Joe Watkins (2001), and other archaeologists who are Native American or work closely with Indigenous people. This work seeks to involve Indigenous people in heritage production but also seeks to increase local capacity to do heritage work and to ameliorate the damage caused by historical trauma. When practiced from this position, this sort of work seeks to decolonize dominant narratives that Conclusion

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do not serve local communities by centering Indigenous concepts (Atalay 2006). This sort of work forces a paradigm shift in the way archaeologists see their main research goals and how data is produced because it centers aspects of indigeneity that LaDonna Harris and Jacqueline Wasilewski call the “Four R’s” at the heart of indigeneity—­Relationship, Responsibility, Reciprocity, and Redistribution (Harris and Wasilewski 2004). Tsim Schneider and Katherine Hayes (2020) recognize that this type of archaeology forces a consideration of how archaeology has performed as a structure of settler colonialism, arguing that an Indigenous praxis brings about a different orientation in archaeological research that is more able to serve communities. The River Street Project sought to incorporate these concepts so the people who lived there could create a new understanding of the neighborhood for their children to appreciate. The project also recognized the important role collaboration played for the long-­term preservation and commemoration of the site as the professional archaeologists involved, including me, did not live in Boise. As Patricia McAnany and Sarah Rowe state (2015, 503), “The past cannot be conserved by the expert knowledge of archaeologists alone; it can only happen through collaborative efforts with constituencies outside of archaeology that live proximate to old places, legislate land use, or otherwise make decisions in their daily practice that result in the conservation, or not, of old places and things.” Volunteers and students who participated in the project were able to connect to a part of their city in a new way, and this connection made it more difficult to accept the demolition of the Erma Hayman House and the erasure of this district’s history. In this way volunteers became activists. At the same time, it was nearly impossible for them to avoid engagements with race and Boise’s history. Most of the people doing the archaeology on the project were white and many spent very little time thinking about what racialization had done to them or to their nonwhite neighbors. Almost none of them knew that River Street had been slated for redevelopment even though they knew demolition of the building on the 600 block of Ash Street was imminent. Archaeologists on the project described the neighborhood’s history to volunteers as they dug, screened, and cleaned artifacts. We told them of the segregation and racism that had created this site. In the process we talked about the mechanisms of racialization in the United States and how this process is very much alive in the present. This was uncomfortable 170

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for many, but it forced most volunteers to think about race. The River Street Public Archaeology Project not only helped to rewrite the history of a small neighborhood in Boise, Idaho, but it also became a workshop on race, racism, and racialization for dozens of local residents. This is the historical narrative that white people in Boise strive to remember in the ongoing preservation efforts at the Erma Hayman House; it is the narrative that descendants wanted told. Engaging white archaeologists and white Americans with the pain in our shared past is one of the things antiracist archaeology in the United States seeks to accomplish because it is only by confronting this reality that our communities can move forward together. But this is not enough to turn archaeology into an antiracist endeavor. Archaeologists have noted that race and discrimination are interconnected (Godsen 2006), and some have challenged archaeologists to take social action (Singleton 1999) and called for us to engage with whiteness in our work (Orser 1998). We have also wondered why there are so few Black archaeologists (Agbe-­Davies 2002), recognized that our current practices perpetuate structural racism (Nassaney and LaRoche 2011), and called upon our archaeological organizations to do more to make archaeology inviting for nonwhite archaeologists (Agbe-­Davies 2012). As a response the Society for Historical Archaeology has conducted annual antiracism training since 2012, which has been well attended and has provided a space and tools for archaeologists to engage with race and racism. It has been a good way to get started, but archaeology cannot begin to escape the entropy of structural racism until its practitioners recognize that the monoraciality of the field and lethargic diversification efforts are rooted in the fact that the field has not yet confronted the ways whiteness affects archaeology. In the twenty years I have spent doing archaeology in the United States, I recognize that the lack of motivation to discuss whiteness in archaeology is because many white archaeologists feel uncomfortable discussing race, especially whiteness. Ruth King (2018) highlights six major hindrances to discussing race, and I have seen all of them at work in archaeology: 1. White people, good individuals: whites are socialized to think as individuals; nonwhites think of group impacts; 2. Internalized oppression: People of Color (poc) attempt to fit into dominant culture, internalizing oppression and trauma in the process; Conclusion

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3. Stars and constellations: some see sky of stars, others see constellations; 4. Intent and impact: have good intentions but do not see the impact of their actions (i.e., expecting poc to represent their entire race or do all race work); 5. Cumulative impact: weight of racial suffering; inability to understand what race is doing to them; 6. White privilege: including blindness, collusion, fragility, sameness, and silence. Ruth King explains how white solidarity is one of the mechanisms that maintain these hindrances to discussing race, while Robin DiAngelo (2018) adds how engaging with these hindrances has the potential to trigger white fragility, making it even more difficult to address the issue. All of this results in a continual retreat of white people from the discomfort caused by meaningfully engaging with race, which prevents the authentic connections across racial lines necessary to increase diversity in archaeology. Fortunately there has been a surge in efforts by Black archaeologists to collectively push for institutional change. In the past decade, Black archaeologists have partnered with Black communities to conduct collaborative work (Jones 2011; Skipper 2014; Dunnavant et al. 2018; Odewale et al. 2018; Franklin and Lee 2019). We have also launched virtual panels and workshops to address antiblack racism that have reached thousands of people from across the world (Dunnavant et al. 2020; White et al. 2020; Flewellen 2021). We have embarked upon these efforts despite our small numbers because as archaeologists we are trained in a field that was built upon settler colonialism, and we do not want to be implicated in the white supremacy at the heart of our field’s origins: “Our failure to engage in antiracist organizing not only implicates all of us in archaeology’s white supremacy, but without change bipoc [Black, Indigenous, People of Color] archaeologists will continue to bear its burden” (Franklin et al. 2020, 758). We need white archaeologists to join this work since there are so few Black archaeologists, and we lack institutional power. Without white archaeologists on our side, our voices remain muted (Franklin et al. 2020). Archaeology in the River Street Neighborhood was conducted from a position that centered antiracism. The project’s antiracist archaeological praxis is as follows: 172

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1. Seeks to reveal the complex stories behind each site, including how sites may have contributed to white supremacy; 2. Considers local communities as valuable stakeholders for whom we work; 3. Centers the personal development of all individuals involved, including archaeologists, volunteers, and especially descendant communities (e.g., seeks to build the capacity to deal with the impacts of race and racialization and engage with these topics meaningfully); 4. Strives to decolonize curriculum and pedagogy; and 5. Acknowledges the ways racism hinders archaeology and seeks to untangle these hinderances to the best of one’s ability. These practices are aligned with tenets of Indigenous and community-­ based participatory archaeology but seek to break the structures and narratives at the heart of American racism. Archaeology would become a much more antiracist practice if more of us worked from this vantage point. Boise shows the same silent segregation at play can provide insights into the ways that archaeology has failed to diversify since the passage of 1960s civil rights legislation. Addressing racism in archaeology will require white archaeologists to speak out against it. White people speaking against racism while operating in white-­dominated spaces is important for antiracism advocacy. DiAngelo (2018) explains whiteness partially relies on silence from persons racialized as white because speaking against racism causes discomfort among whites who are not emotionally or intellectually ready to address the issue. Speaking out as an antiracist can invite social sanctions from other white people even though white silence helps perpetuate prejudice among white people. Since much of the antiracist work involves reshaping white understandings of race, it is particularly important for white people to address prejudice and discrimination in all white settings because these prejudices are not likely to be expressed when nonwhite people are around. Building an antiracist platform in archaeology will require white people to speak against racism in American archaeology and to be ready to endure the backlash from their peers. Nonwhite archaeologists will recognize true allies when they start seeing them strike out against racism in their field, which will spread amenity in archaeology that will make it a more comfortable space for archaeologists of color. This will require the field to override its cultural Conclusion

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programming to provide new spaces for antiracism advocacy and make room for archaeologists of color. I am optimistic about archaeology’s future. I hope that the presence of a few more nonwhite archaeologists does not fracture the practice of archaeology in the United States but rather that diversity proves to be an asset for the richer development of American archaeology.

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6

5

936

Lighting

Other

Porcelain

Stoneware

Toy

ceramic Total

Lighting

31

147

1

1

Decorative

Machine-­made bottle

Bead

Clothing closure

Other

Nail

Miscellaneous

Jewelry

Hardware

Clothing closure

Can

Bottle closure

Ammunition

metal

glass

7.77

767

Refined earthenware

lithics Total

Debitage

1

Artifact Material

Clothing closure

% lithics

N=

ceramic

Artifact Material

Artifact Tables

Appendix 1

47

2069

1444

1

4

1002

50

62

51

8

5

5

N=

0.04

%

Artifact Material

Toy

Tool

Other

Miscellaneous

Clothing

Clothing closure

Bottle closure

plastic

other Total

Tool

Other

Fabric

Clothing closure

other

162

1

18

2

1

7

2

25

1

21

2

1

N=

0.21

%

176

Appendix 1

2513

505

228

4314

Toy

Unknown bottle

Unknown

Unknown vessel

glass Total

Other

1365

1

9

174

1124

5

9

43

5093

340

4

11

N=

11.33

42.27

%

Artifact Material

Grand Total

unknown Total

Unknown

unknown

rubber Total

Toy

Other

rubber

plastic Total

Unknown

An accurate minimum number of vessels (mni) could not be calculated for this assemblage because the majority of artifacts were broken into very small fragments and found in mixed sediments.

0.18

35.8

Floral

Faunal

Clothing closure

Button

Marine shell

22

16

Semiautomatic bottle

organic

leather Total

15

Other

metal Total

organic Total

13

Lighting

Unknown

Toy

22

186

Canning jar lid

Artifact Material Tool

Other

46

Canning jar

%

Unknown

69

Flatware

leather

N=

543

Artifact Material

12048

5

5

68

2

66

215

22

N=

99.98

0.04

0.56

1.78

%

177

284

317

369

523

534

30

30

35

35

44

44

tp-­40

tp-­40

tp-­16

tp-­16

tp-­16/22

tp-­16/22

Art. No. Unit

268

Provenience Designation

Makers’ Marks Summary

Appendix 2

2

2

4

4

3

3

Level

Manufacturer

Location

“clorox” plastic cap

The Clorox Company, Inc.

1896–­1922

1919–­26+

1936–­73

1866–­present

United States 1940–­60

Baden and Berlin, Germany

Knowles, Taylor, East LiverKnowles pool, Ohio

“dwm/K/K” carDeutsche tridge, centerfire 0.39 Waffen-­und in/9.9 mm Munitionsfabriken Aktien-­ Gesellschaft

. . . T&K

Date

Sand Springs, 1915–­present Oklahoma

Winchester New Haven, Repeating Arms Connecticut Company

Kerr Glass Manufacturing Company

. . . “laughlin/  Homer Laughlin Homer . . . blic” FiestaWare FiestaWare Laughlin China Company

wra co./.32 . . . W

kerr glass mfg corp/sand springs ok/11

Mark

Reference

The Clorox Company 2017

Barnes 2006, 601

Lehner 1988, 238

Lehner 1988, 246

White and Munhall 1963, 26–­27

Toulouse 1972, 42; Toulouse 1977, 307–­8

178

Appendix 2

726

906

966

1005

1006

1046

1055

1165

94

88

85

85

87

77

128

tp-­127

sp-­12

sp-­13

tp-­82

tp-­82

tp-­82

tp-­83

sp-­9

Art. No. Unit

71

Provenience Designation

1

1

1

2

2

Level

“cap23/genuine porcelain lined” nearly complete

Rim-­fire; .22 regular “U”

Suspender clasp; “crown make [in cursive]/pat june 7, 1881”

1909 Liberty Head dime

1910 Lincoln wheat penny

Mason jar lid liner; “genuine boyd cap/for mason jars”

Centerfire “W. R. A. Co/38 S&W spl”

“shirley president” suspenders clasp

Mark

1902–­present

Possibly Alton Alton, Illinois 1873–­1929 Glass Company

1857–­present

1881+

United States 1892–­1916

United States 1909–­42

Alton, Illinois 1873–­1929

Union Metallic Bridgeport, Cartridge Com- Connecticut pany

United States Treasury

United States Treasury

Alton Glass Company

Date

Shirley, Mas- c. 1902–­15+ sachusetts

Location

Winchester New Haven, Repeating Arms Connecticut Company

C. A. Edgerton Manufacturing Company

Manufacturer

Toulouse 1977, 92, 116

Barnes 2006, 467; Goodman 1998

Yeoman 2005, 147–­49

Yeoman 2005, 113–­14

Toulouse 1977, 92, 116

Barnes 2006, 298

Collier’s 1909, 27; Dry Goods Reporter 1915

Reference



Appendix 2

179

1237

1305

1355

1443

1452

1518

1569

1635

1647

131

134

135

140

146

149

154

160

158

tp-­127

sp-­31

tp-­142

tp-­142

tp-­127

tp-­127

tp-­130

tp-­127

tp-­130

Chester, W. Virginia

Winchester New Haven, Repeating Arms Connecticut Company

Taylor, Smith, and Taylor Company

Kerr Glass Manufacturing Company

Owens-­Illinois Company

corelle/by corn- Corning Glass ing Works

1909–­12

c. 1900

c. 1900

1933

1857–­present

1938–­50s

United States 1930s+

United States 1970s

United States 1940+

Chicago, Illinois

Homer Laughlin East LiverCompany pool, Ohio

Homer Laughlin East LiverCompany pool, Ohio

Bottle base, “durag- Owens-­Illinois las” cursive Company

kerr glass mfg co./chicago il

Homer Laughlin

Homer Laughlin

amb; Owens-­ Owens-­Illinois Streator, Illinois “20/o-­i -­ Glass Company Illinois in-­Diamond/3 [on bottom]/5 [on right]”

Rim-­fire, .22 short; “H”

T. S. & T./Lu-­Ray Pastels, USA

clean-­up Owens Illinois mark “o-­i -­in-­diamond” mark “4441-­g /3” below

5

3

6

5

2

3

1

Toulouse 1972, 403

Corning Museum of Glass 2017

Toulouse 1972, 403

Toulouse 1972, 307

Lehner 1988, 247

Lehner 1988, 247

Lockhart 2004, 27

Barnes 2006, 467

Lehner 1988, 461–­62

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Index Page numbers in italics indicate illustrations.

Abdulle, Ayan, 11 Aberasturi, Manuel, 114 Aberasturi family, 143 abg. See African Burial Ground (abg) Project Abrisketa, Olatiz González: on pelota, 146–­47 accountability, archaeology of, 57 acculturation, 53, 54, 73 activism: grassroots, 97; heritage, 98; social, 56, 101, 110 advertisements, 143–­44 aesthetics, 123, 129, 138; Chinese, 138; household, 127 African American community, 26, 33, 55, 172; churches and, 27–­28; collaborative work and, 101–­3, 173; formation of, 18; maintaining, 25 African Americans, 13, 14, 21, 35, 49, 68, 91, 92, 116, 123, 124; archeological traces of, 57; Basques and, 35; Civil War and, 59; colonies of, 38; departure of, 18; discrimination and, 20, 25–­28, 47; European Americans and, 43, 80, 83, 86, 87, 133, 157; inferiority of, 18, 42, 50; material culture and, 54, 128; middle-­/upper-­class, 156; Native Americans and, 158; overlooking, 100, 169; poor whites and, 8; population of, 18–­19, 26, 102, 154; presence of, 3, 37, 83; saa and, 166; slavery and, 51, 58; status for, 144; tensions with, 17; treatment of, 58; white spaces and, 19 African Burial Ground (abg) Project, 54—­ 55, 101 African community, 55 Africanisms, 51–­52, 53, 54

Agbe-­Davies, Anna, 56 agriculture, 28, 29, 30, 57; Black, 26, 61 Ahmed, Sara: whiteness and, 165–­66 Allensworth, Allen, 61 Allensworth Hotel, archaeology at, 61 Allmendinger, Blake, 25 American-­ness, 48, 49, 128 Anduiza, John, 149, 150 Anduiza, Juana, 149 Anduiza Fronton, 146, 149, 150; photo of, 148 Angelbek, Bill, 169 Anthony, William, 113 anti-­Blackness, 11, 26, 158 antiracism, 90, 157, 172–­73; advocacy of, 9, 11, 12, 165, 169, 174; crafting, 9–­12; fighting, 109; proponents of, 154 apartment complex, 39, 113, 114, 115 Arana, Marcello, 114 Arana, Maria, 114 Archaeological Perspectives on Ethnicity in America: Afro-­American and Asian American Culture History (Schuyler), 51 archaeological projects, 96, 100, 102, 113, 115; participation in, 109. See also River Street Public Archaeology Project archaeological sites, African American, 14, 25, 26, 49, 57, 58, 164 archaeologists, 135; historical, 57; professional, 168 archaeologists of color, 171, 172, 173–­74 archaeology: African American, 49, 50, 51, 53, 54, 56, 57–­61; African diaspora, 48–­57; antiracist, 9–­10, 11, 13–­15, 98, 165, 169, 171; collaborative, 4, 98–­100, 101–­3, 103–­9, 110, 152; community, 9, 98, 99, 152, 164, 173;

201

archaeology (cont.) development of, 10, 57, 98, 109, 174; diversity in, 172; educational requirements for, 168; heritage and, 101; historical, 10, 47, 48, 51, 53, 55, 61, 66, 102, 168; indigenous, 152; nonwhite people and, 109; public, 13, 82, 100, 102, 152; race and, 166; racism and, 173; settler colonialism and, 170; whiteness and, 167, 171 The Archaeology of Slavery and Plantation Life (Singleton), 51 architecture, 32, 114, 153; historical, 97; landscape, 75; residential, 62; urban, 76 Arid Club, 131 Arrowrock Dam, 29 artifacts, 15, 103, 110, 113, 137, 159–­ 60, 175–­76; ceramic, 121, 124, 126; clothing-­related, 143; collecting, 96, 119, 121, 170; density of, 117; distribution of, 118, 123; domestic, 136; glass, 121, 126; historic, 116, 119; metal, 119, 124, 136; oral, 111; prehistoric lithic, 121; recovery of, 71, 117–­18, 119; working-­class, 127 Aryan Nations, 13 Asher, Robert, 50 Ash Street, 34, 62, 63, 85, 94, 111, 112, 114, 115, 119, 121, 123, 124, 125, 131, 132, 133, 134, 139; archaeology of, 39, 106; buildings on, 113; ceramics on, 129–­ 30; changes for, 116; demolition on, 170; excavation on, 143; front elevations from, 64; photo of, 107 Asians, 19, 57 Atalay, Sonia, 152, 169 Babiarz, Jennifer, 57 Badgett, Loralee, 47 Ball Corporation, 133 Bannock, 21, 22–­23; hunting for, 27; reservation for, 23; timber resources and, 22 Barras family, 133 Barth, Fredrik, 42 basalt secondary flakes, 121 202

Index

baseball, 32 Basque Country, 15, 33, 65; cultural connection to, 146; frontons and, 147–­48; pelota and, 148 Basque immigrants, 34, 56, 65, 67, 112, 160, 169 Basqueness, 72 Basques, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 36, 64, 65, 91, 111, 114, 124, 133, 145–­46, 148, 149, 150, 160; African Americans and, 35; cultural practices of, 33; discrimination against, 34; European phenotype and, 39; interaction with, 69; material culture of, 39; status for, 144; understanding, 169; whiteness and, 33, 93 Basso, Keith: Western Apache and, 76 Battle-­Baptiste, Whitney, 56 Baudrillard, Jean, 71 behavior, 11, 36, 41, 58, 86, 103–­4, 129, 142, 145; ceramics and, 130; code of, 105; discriminatory, 7, 9; investigating, 53, 71; traditional, 73–­74 Bennett, Amber, 123 Bertram, John, 95 bisque dolls, 126 Black, Indigenous, People of Color (bipoc), 172 Black community, 3, 37, 55, 60, 64, 80, 155, 156; collaboration with, 56; formation of, 70; historical properties and, 94, 96; marginality of, 49 Blackjack’s Barbeque, 163 Black Lucy’s Garden, 53 Black neighborhoods, 4–­5, 15, 35, 38, 67, 70, 78, 80, 84, 135; disinvesting from, 39; safety/familiarity and, 1 Blackness, 43, 70, 72, 82; development of, 51; material culture and, 164; neighborliness and, 154–­58; stereotypes of, 59, 67; stigma of, 34–­35; understandings of, 12, 15; whiteness and, 26, 37–­ 38, 41, 42, 43 Black Panther Party, 60 Black people: arrival of, 89–­90, 160–­61; concentration of, 84; cultural knowledge and, 93; discrimination against, 88, 128; experience of, 67, 153; mid-

dle-­/working-­class, 156; otherness of, 50; poverty and, 157; racism and, 78; renting/buying and, 84; segregation of, 67 Black villages, 37–­38, 39 Black women, 59; clothing and, 145; white women and, 159 Blakey, Michael, 54 boarding houses, Basque, 34 Boas, Franz, 71 Boise Basin, 20, 39; Chinese in, 23, 24; gold in, 28, 65 Boise City Community Development Block Grants, 63 Boise City Department of Arts and History, 94–­95, 96; Erma Hayman House and, 152, 153 Boise City Historic Preservation Commission, 62 Boise City Police, racial mores and, 90 Boise Department of Parks and Recreation, 94 Boise id: African Americans in, 27, 35, 36, 37, 39, 41, 70, 80, 94, 156; Basques in, 34, 65; Chinese in, 25, 65; disinvestment from, 161; founding of, 17, 20; growth of, 28–­29, 30, 32; Japanese in, 138; map of, 6; memories of, 163; racial dynamics in, 17, 77; racism in, 158; segregation in, 84, 86–­90 Boise Junior College, 3 Boise Ko Fronton Association, 149 Boise Parks, 94, 96, 116 Boise Redevelopment Agency (bra), 161 Boise Redevelopment Project, 64 Boise River, 20, 23, 29, 30, 41, 75, 91, 124, 125, 155, 161; dams on, 118; fishing in, 160; Native peoples and, 21; trading posts along, 22 Boise’s River Street Neighborhood: Lee, Ash, and Lover’s Lane/Pioneer Streets, the South Side of the Tracks (Demo), 63 Boise State University, 3 Boise Weekly, 152 Bok, Edward, 144 bones, 76; faunal, 64–­65, 121, 131, 132 Bonilla-­Silva, Eduardo, 45

Boston Saloon, clientele at, 59 bottle machines, 122 bottles, glass, 122 Bourdieu, Pierre, 72–­73 Boyd, Michele, 38 Brandon, Jamie, 56 bric-­a-­brac, 127, 128, 138 Brooks, Gwendolyn, 159 Bruneau Treaty (1866), 22 Buckner, Aurelius, 89 Buckner, Carol, 3 Buckner, Charles, 3 Buckner, Dorothy, 1, 89, 163; graduation of, 3; on racial mores/police, 90; racism and, 90; recollection of, 2; River Street and, 3 Buckner, Pepper, 3 Buckner family, 4, 85; North End Neighborhood and, 89–­90 Buckner-­Webb, Cherie, 3, 153 buffalo soldiers, 25, 59 buttons, 142–­43, 144, 145, 160 Bybee family, 133 C. A. Edgerton Manufacturing Company, 143 California Supreme Court, Chinese and, 24 canned goods, selling, 137 canning, 133, 134, 135, 136 Cannon’s Point Plantation, 50–­51 Capital City Development Corporation (ccdc), 94, 96, 116, 161; Erma Hayman House and, 152 capitalism, 10, 43, 46, 48, 66, 67, 162; cultural constructs and, 74; industrial, 19 Capitol Boulevard, 32 Capitol Complex Historic Neighborhood, 136 carbon dating, 21 cbpr. See community-­based participatory research (cbpr) ccdc. See Capital City Development Corporation (ccdc) ceramics, 119, 121, 124, 125, 126, 127, 129–­ 30, 137; Asian, 138; behavior and, 130; Chinese, 64; Native American, 52

Index

203

cesspools, elimination of, 125 cherry pitting tool, 133, 134 chert secondary flakes, 121 Chicago, 162; Black population of, 38; Great Migration and, 38 chickens, raising, 111, 122, 132–­33, 151, 160 children: bonds among, 163; chores for, 40–­41, 131, 140–­41; expectations of, 40–­41, 140–­41 Chinatowns, 25, 64 Chinese, 13, 17, 18, 20, 27, 29, 37, 58, 84, 124, 137, 138; arrival of, 39; gold strikes and, 23; immigration of, 23, 33; killing of, 24, 39; mining by, 24–­ 25; population of, 24, 25, 26; violence against, 24–­25 Chinese communities, 23, 25, 64, 65 Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), 23, 24 Chocolate Cities, 3, 35, 38 chores, children’s, 40–­41, 131, 140–­41 churches, African American, 27–­28, 41 citizenship, middle-­class, 127, 128 city directories, 113, 114 City Park Addition, 30 civil rights legislation, 173 Civil Rights Movement, 47, 72, 83 Civil War, 18, 53, 58, 125; Black soldiers and, 59 Clack, Timothy, 73 class, 9, 10, 43, 45, 48; affiliation, 126, 127; differences, 4; formation/race-­ based, 53; social, 47, 144; status, 69, 89; structure, 128 clothing, 44, 150, 160; Black, 145; children’s, 141; gendered, 144–­45; status and, 144 coal, hauling, 141 coal oven clean out, archaeological evidence of, 121 collaboration, 10, 55, 56, 98–­100, 101, 102, 103, 161, 164, 170; community, 11, 97; fighting, 109; goals of, 110; interracial, 88 collaborative continuum, 99, 99 College of Western Idaho, 92, 107 Collier’s, advertisements in, 144 204

Index

Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park, 61 colonialism, 5, 8, 9, 58, 66; genesis/legacy of, 10; race and, 45; settler, 170, 172 colonization, 14, 34, 38, 92, 104 Colono-­Indian wares, 52 colonoware, 52, 54 color line, crossing, 89–­90 Colwell, Chip, 169 communities of color, connecting with, 164 community: archaeology and, 98; building, 17, 98; informal, 162; nonwhite, 48, 167 community-­based participatory research (cbpr), 99, 100 Community Development Block Grants, 161 Comstock Mining District, 59 conservation, 170; heritage, 15, 55, 97, 110, 164 constellations, stars and, 172 construction, 109, 112, 119; building, 116; historical, 118 consumption, 53, 104; conspicuous, 20, 125, 128; food, 134, 138 cooperation, 87–­88, 98, 99 cowboys, African American, 25 Criado-­Boado, Felipe, 11 crime, 86–­87 critical antiracist theory (cart), elements of, 11–­12 crm. See cultural resource management (crm) cuff links, 143, 144 cultural affiliation, 137, 145 cultural demolition, 92–­93 cultural knowledge, 72, 75, 92, 93; historical events and, 74; transforming, 76 cultural resource management (crm), 49, 55, 58, 60, 61, 97 cultural studies, bioarcheological/material, 58 culture, 5, 17, 50, 71, 91, 92; activities and, 72; African, 53, 54; African American, 35, 51–­52; dominant, 171; European, 54; European American, 20; lens of, 70; local, 72; material, 15, 39, 45, 49, 53, 54, 58, 59, 60, 65, 66, 102, 103,

104, 109, 111, 112, 119, 121, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 133, 137–­45, 160, 164; society and, 56 Cumberland Island, slave cabin on, 50 Cyrus Jacobs-­Uberuaga House, excavations at, 65 dams, building, 28, 29, 118 data, 66; anthropological, 100; archaeological, 50, 94, 164; archival, 113; dissemination of, 99, 101; documentary, 122; historical, 96; memory and, 164; stratigraphic, 119 decolonization, 101 decorative items, 119, 126, 127, 128, 138, 150 de França, Xavier: research by, 7 Demo, Pam, 32, 63 demography, 167; household, 111–­12; racial, 69 demolition, 103, 112, 116; historical, 118 deposits, 111, 121–­26; historical, 119; slave, 52; stratified, 124 desegregation, 79, 90 development, 109, 112; commercial, 29; economic, 79, 85; preservationists and, 101; sanitation, 125–­26 DiAngelo, Robin, 172, 173 diaspora, 58; African, 48–­57; Basque, 148, 149 dinner parties, middle-­class, 129 discrimination, 5, 9, 34, 35, 36, 46–­47, 54, 56, 58, 59, 76, 78, 82, 83, 86, 87, 88, 98, 104, 110, 124, 128; acts of, 3, 20; African American, 3, 7, 20, 25–­28, 145; anti-­Basque, 33; avoiding, 136; codified, 21; cryptic type of, 3; economic, 89; employment, 38; fighting, 4, 38, 60, 156; housing, 18, 37, 38; intra-­ white, 47; manifestations of, 8; racial, 12, 20, 39, 45, 89, 171; real estate, 37; structural, 70; underground, 7 diseases, contagious, 126 domestic sphere, 136, 138; sediments and, 123; women’s roles within, 130 Drucker, Leslie, 52 dumps, 126; location of, 123, 124

earthenware, 51, 52, 138 economics, 8, 45, 46, 59, 67, 82, 83, 89, 90, 129, 131, 140, 161; household, 135–­36 economic status, 44, 47, 81, 127, 135, 166 education, 45, 92, 140, 160, 166, 167 Edwards-­Ingram, Ywone, 54 Elizafield Plantation, 50 employment, 166; African American, 85; outside home, 140; part-­time, 140 entrepreneurs, minority, 18, 20, 34, 83, 163 Erma Hayman Advisory Task Force, 153 Erma Hayman House, 15, 62, 63, 88, 94, 95–­96, 112, 114, 116, 125, 132, 154; chores at, 141; condominiums and, 153; as historic property, 152; history of, 106; photo of, 107; preservation of, 109, 153, 163, 164, 169, 170, 171 Estevanico (Esteban), 58 ethnicity, 9, 11, 20, 42, 43, 69, 86, 105, 110, 127, 145, 167; personal relationships and, 87 European Americans, 20, 33, 42, 47, 48, 59, 78, 88, 91, 112, 128; African Americans and, 43, 80, 83, 86, 87, 133, 157; experiences of, 18, 167; nonwhites and, 105; supremacist strategy and, 21 Europe and the People without History (Wolf ), 44 European immigrants, 13, 14, 20, 25, 57, 58, 66, 91, 112; cultural landscape and, 93 Euskal Herria, 33–­34 excavations, 15, 65, 97, 106, 107, 108, 110, 116, 118, 126, 168; distribution of, 117 Excavation Test Unit 40, 143 excavation units, 112, 126, 133, 143; artifact distribution from, 118; rectangular, 119 Exodusters, 26 exotic items, recovering, 126 expression: cultural, 37, 39, 42, 43; identity, 130, 143, 145; phenotypic, 4, 42 “Facing the Challenges of a Public African American Archaeology” (Singleton), 165

Index

205

Fairbanks, Charles, 50, 51, 52 Fair Housing Act (1968), 37 Fennell, Chris, 56 Ferguson, Leland, 52, 54 Ferguson, T. J., 169 figurines, ceramic, 126 flooding, 29, 30 food, 44, 160; perishable, 135; purchasing, 136; rationed, 2 foodways, 103, 131–­37 Ford, James A., 50 formal economy, 162, 163 Fort Boise, 20, 22, 29; Black soldiers at, 27; settlement around, 28; Snake War and, 23 Fort Davis, 59 Fort Hall Reservation, 23 Fort Missoula, 59 Foucault, Michel, 71 Franklin, Maria, 54, 145 Freedman’s Cemetery, 58 Freedman’s Town, 58, 101 frontis, 146, 147 frontons, 114, 147–­48, 149–­50; free-­ standing, 146; photo of, 147, 148, 149 frugality, 82, 110, 130, 131, 135, 150–­51 fruits/vegetables: canning, 133; growing, 137; preserving, 134 furniture, 126, 137 fur trading, fortified, 22 Gadsden Purchase, 19 garbage: collecting, 125, 126; deposits of, 123–­24 gardens, cultivating, 135 gas ranges, 141 Geertz, Clifford, 75 gender, 9, 15, 43, 45, 48, 137–­45, 166; material culture and, 142 geography, 71, 75, 81; cultural, 72; neighborhood, 87 germ theory, 139 ghettoization, overview of, 155 ghettos, 91, 162 Giddens, Anthony, 71 Girl Scout camp, 32 glass, 121, 133, 135, 136; fragments, 119; 206

Index

manufacturing, 122; molded, 126; solarized, 122 goat cart, photo of, 84 gold, 22, 28, 39 González, Pablo Alonso, 11 González-­Ruibal, Alfredo, 11 Gowen Field, expansion of, 36 Great Depression, 1, 40, 136 Great Migration, 38 Guangdong Province, 23 Guernica (Gernika), 34 habitus, 73, 81, 123 handball court, 109, 112, 114; as marker of identity, 145–­50 handball games, 114, 148, 150 Hardy, William Riley: preaching by, 27 Harris, LaDonna, 170 Harrison, Nate, 61 Harvaqtuurmiut, 75 Hayes, Katherine: archaeology/settler colonialism and, 170 Hayman, Erma, 106, 131, 132, 139, 140, 152; fruits/vegetables and, 134; house of, 115; River Street and, 85 Hayman, Lawrence: house of, 115 Hayman family, 69, 106, 114, 115, 116, 132, 133, 134, 139, 143, 152–­53, 158; property ownership by, 85 Heath, Barbara J., 123 Hector Backbone region, 135–­36 Helen, Melissa, 113 heritage, 15, 97, 98, 101, 131; Black, 49, 55; contributing to, 109–­10; cultural, 70; digital, 110; European, 33; national, 103 Hill, Sharon, 131 Historical Archaeology (journal), 52, 54 historic preservation, 49, 94, 98, 101, 152, 154; community-­based, 163 historic property, 94, 96; African American, 13, 15; nonwhite, 154 history: American West, 15; Basque, 145–­ 46; Black, 44, 55; white, 44, 109 home-­building companies, 32 home economics, 123, 138 homemakers, 139

homeowners, 32; Black, 35, 156, 161; white, 83 homesteading, 19, 20, 25, 26 hooks, bell, 69 households, 131, 132; African American, 127; economically secure, 136; maintaining respectable, 151; urban, 136 housework, 138, 139, 140, 160 housing, 2, 25, 160; African American, 54, 83; architectural plans for, 32; discrimination in, 18, 37, 38; military base, 36; multifamily, 103; quality, 32; ready-­ built, 32; renting, 36; single-­family, 32–­33, 102; substandard, 83 housing covenants, prohibiting, 38 Hudson’s Bay Company, 22 Hunter, Marcus, 37, 38 I–­880 Cypress Freeway Replacement Project, 60 Idaho Central Railway, 30 Idaho City, 24 Idaho House of Representatives, 3 Idaho State Black History Museum, 28, 152, 153 Idaho State Historical Society, 62, 77, 108, 152 Idaho State Historic Preservation Office (shpo), 62, 63 Idaho Statesman, 152 Idaho Street, 146; fronton on, 149 Idaho Territory: Black population of, 26; establishment of, 22 Idaho Transportation Department, 92 identity, 58, 69–­70, 93, 160; African American, 41, 51, 66; Basque, 33; collective, 14, 92; economic, 126–­31; ethnic, 43, 53, 82, 112; European American, 105, 150; formation/expression, 130, 145; gender, 137, 142; household, 123; intersection of, 44; masculine, 142; Mexican American, 59; minoritized, 81; racial, 4, 9, 11–­12, 13, 41, 43, 48, 67, 105, 110, 112; social, 9, 14, 43, 66, 126–­31, 127 immigrants, 12, 21, 67, 92; discrimination against, 46, 124; experience of, 153;

labor companies and, 23; tensions with, 17. See also Basque immigrants; European immigrants; Irish immigrants immigration policy, discriminatory, 25 indigeneity, Four R’s of, 170 individualism, competitive, 44, 46 industrialization, 79, 104 inequality, 5; economic, 145; material, 4; racial, 105; structural, 81 informal economy, 2, 162–­63 information: city directory, 113; collection of, 168; demographic, 112; stratigraphic, 116–­17 infrastructure, 125; white urban American, 167–­68 integration, 38, 79 interpretation, 71, 100; archaeological, 53; historical, 153 Interstate 184, construction of, 61, 62 Inuits, 75 Irish immigrants: treatment of, 56 ironstone bowl, 130 irrigation, 20, 28, 29 “I, Too, Am America” Archaeological Studies of African-­American Life (Singleton), 54 Jacobs house, 65 jai alai, 146 Japanese, 58, 124, 137, 138 jars: canning, 133, 135, 136; glass, 133, 135, 136 Jim Crow, 21, 37, 75, 111, 160 Johnson, Andrew, 23 Johnson, Luther “Pistol,” 1, 2 Johnson, Pearl, 1 Johnson-­Reed Immigration Act, 65 Jones, Siân, 43 Jordan Valley, 149; fronton at, 149 Kennedy, LaVaun, 88, 115, 135; African Americans and, 158; fruits/vegetables and, 134; memories of, 137; narrative of, 157 King, Ruth, 171, 172 Kingsley Plantation, 50 K-­Mart, 137

Index

207

knowledge, 127; cultural, 72, 74, 75, 76, 92, 93; ethnocentric, 72; experiential, 92; hybrid, 93; landscape, 92; local, 4, 73; social, 7, 11; transmission of, 92 Kristen’s Park, 116 Kroeber, Alfred, 71 Krugler, Paul, 21 Ku Klux Klan, 8, 21 labor companies, immigrants and, 23 Ladies Home Journal, 144 landfills, 124 landlords, 2, 36, 84–­85, 87, 114; absentee, 39, 161; fines for, 124; racism and, 83 landscapes, 103, 118; archaeological, 70–­ 76; changing, 112–­16, 151; creation of, 10, 70–­76; cultural, 71, 74, 76; documentation of, 76; emotional support from, 76; ethnic, 66; geographic, 14, 74; living in, 92; physical, 76; as place, 72–­75; racial, 92, 135; segregated, 5, 76–­86, 90–­93, 168; as space, 71–­72; as texts, 75–­76; translating, 73; urban, 66; white-­dominated, 1 LaRoche, Cheryl, 54 Larsen, Eric L., 66 law enforcement, 1, 87 Lee Street, 34, 62, 63, 85 Lee Street Historic District, 63 Levi-­Jordan Plantation, 58, 101 Levitt, Steven D., 162 Limerick, Patricia Nelson, 19 Limerick Plantation, colonoware at, 52 lithic tools, 121 Los Angeles ca: Black community in, 26, 35 Lovers Lane, 34, 116, 119, 133, 143, 145, 163; fronton on, 149, 150; handball court on, 114 lynchings, 21, 24, 78 Madry, Richard “Dick”, 40, 106, 116, 131, 132, 133, 134, 141 manufacturing, 121, 122, 129 maps, 22, 30, 33, 75, 111, 114, 115, 124, 125; archival, 119; chocolate, 38; digital, 97; historical, 63, 107, 112–­13 208

Index

marbles, recovered, 142 Martha, Maud, 159 Martin, Chas., 113 masculinity, 15, 137, 150; Basque, 148, 149; defining, 141–­42 massacres, 21, 24 mass production, 119, 128, 143 material culture, 15, 39, 45, 49, 53, 58, 59, 60, 65, 66, 102, 103, 104, 109, 111, 112, 127, 133; African Americans and, 128; Blackness and, 164; deductions from, 129, 131; gender identity and, 142; insights from, 119, 121; working class and, 129 materials: archaeological, 99, 107; orientation/observation/understanding of, 73; place and, 73; social status and, 127–­28 McAnany, Patricia, 170 McClellan, John, 30 McDavid, Carol, 101, 102 McWhorter, Frank, 102 meals, 131–­32, 138; gathering for, 129 Member Needs Assessment (saa), African American responses to, 166–­67 memories, 79, 89, 97, 103, 111; archaeological data and, 164; interpretation of, 74; places and, 77, 108; race relations and, 75; social, 74; spaces and, 112 Mexicans, 19, 58, 59 middle class, 139; categorization of, 127; experiences of, 156–­57, 167; financial stability for, 128–­29; mores of, 127; trappings of, 129 migration, 74; region-­to-­region, 34; westward, 19 Miller, Daniel, 71 Miller Addition, 30 mining, 23, 26, 28, 60 miscegenation, 88 mobility, 21, 104, 141; restrictions on, 83; social, 79; upward, 60, 82 The Mode, 113 modernity, 104, 150 Montiero, Maria Benedicta, 7 moral authority, 105, 127 Mormons, 25

Morris, Annelise: homeplace and, 69 Morrison-­Knudson Construction Company, 80 Mountain Home Air Force Base, 36 Mullings, Leith, 45 Mullins, Paul, 54, 128 naacp. See National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (naacp) narratives, 14, 80, 103; creators of, 10; cultural, 74; dominant, 169–­70; historical, 11, 19 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (naacp), 4, 90, 153, 154 National Historic Landmarks, 57, 102, 103 National Historic Preservation Act (nhpa), 63, 97 National Park Service (nps), 63 National Register of Historic Places, 28, 63, 97; African American property on, 112 National Science Foundation-­Research Experiences for Undergraduates, 102 Native Americans, 20, 21, 37, 57, 58, 76, 98, 169; African Americans and, 158; colonoware by, 52; consulting with, 97; dispossession of, 5; encounters with, 18; poor whites and, 8; tensions with, 17; violence against, 25 natural environment, 46, 72, 73 neighborhoods, 83, 86, 163; African American, 81; Basque, 149; Black, 82; ethnic, 56; fragmentation of, 64; interracial, 15, 135; nonwhite, 168; relationships in, 88; segregated, 4, 82; working-­class, 86–­87, 155 neighborliness, whiteness/Blackness and, 154–­58 neo-­Nazis, 8 New Philadelphia, 57, 102, 103 New Philadelphia Archaeology Project, 102 New Philadelphia National Historic Landmark, 102 New Western History, Boise and, 18–­20 New York City, 55, 90

Ninth Street, 30 nonwhiteness, 14, 48, 72 nonwhite people, 1, 15, 48, 67, 144, 164, 166, 171; archaeology and, 109; college degrees and, 168; community for, 35; discrimination against, 46–­47; economic resources and, 14; European Americans and, 105; infrastructure for, 168; interaction with, 167; segregation of, 14; supremacy over, 7, 18; whites and, 14, 66 North End Neighborhood, 89–­90 Northern Shoshone, 17, 21, 39 North Junior High School, 88 nps. See National Park Service (nps) Oakland ca: Black people in, 35, 60 Obeyesekere, Anne Nelun, 11 obsidian secondary flakes, 121 oil ranges, 141 Oliver, Mamie O., 36 oral history, 4, 14, 15, 49, 69, 79, 86, 87, 88, 89, 92, 104, 111, 119, 128, 131, 132, 141, 157, 160, 163, 164, 168–­69; interviews for, 77–­78, 107–­8; River Street, 77–­78, 91 Oregon Short Line (osl), 91; route for, 29–­30 Oregon Trail, 20, 22, 27 Organic Act (1863), 22 Oro Grande, massacre at, 24 Orser, Charles, 54, 56 Osa, Mateo, 63, 77, 108; interviews by, 61–­62 osl. See Oregon Short Line (osl) other, 5, 12, 18, 66, 67, 110, 158; treatment of, 4, 7 otherness, 48, 50, 80, 91 Otto, John, 50–­51, 52 Owens Bottle Machine, 122 Owyhee Mountains, 24, 30 Panich, Lee M., 104 participatory projects, community-­based, 168–­69 Parting Ways, 53 Passport in Time project, 92

Index

209

pedagogy, 11; decolonizing, 173 pelota, 146–­47, 147–­48, 149, 150 pelotaris, 146–­47, 148–­49 People of Color (poc): dominant culture and, 171; race work and, 172 Perkins, Ellen, 41, 69, 85, 86 persistence, archaeology of, 104 phenotype, 4, 8, 39, 42 Pierce id: lynchings in, 24 pigs, domestic, 132 Pioneer Street, crime on, 86–­87 pipes, ceramic, 125 place, 71, 74; geographic, 76; materials and, 73; memory and, 77, 108. See also urban place placemaking, spaces/identity and, 72–­73 Planmakers, Inc., 95 plantations, 50–­51, 52, 58, 101 poc. See People of Color (poc) Pocatello id, 27 pogroms, antiblack, 78 political power, 8, 12, 43, 48, 56, 105; Black, 38; white, 18 political status, 5, 81 poor whites, 8, 42, 47, 64, 66, 68, 160; nonwhites and, 14; portrayal of, 67 porcelain, 126; Wintergreen (celadon), 138, 139 poverty, 5, 12, 79, 110, 157 power, 10, 11; cultural, 43; economic, 18, 38, 43, 46, 48, 56; political, 18, 38, 43, 48, 56, 105; social, 45, 46 prejudice, 4, 7, 8, 9, 158, 164; race-­based, 45; white people and, 173 preservation, 49, 64, 94, 97, 100, 103, 110; environmental, 94; historic, 49, 94, 98, 101, 152, 154, 163; long-­term, 170 Preservation Idaho, 95 preservationists, 95, 97, 101, 110 privies, 125 property owners, 85–­86, 112; African American, 33, 37, 85; segregation and, 84 Prunus amygdalus, 133 Prunus domestica, 133 public/private ventures, 94 210

Index

race, 18, 43, 46, 48, 105, 110, 119, 127, 137, 140; archaeology and, 166; colonialism and, 45; discrimination and, 171; engaging with, 12, 172; manifestation/ meaning of, 104; materiality of, 56; memories and, 75; narratives of, 4; personal relationships and, 87; racialization and, 56, 173; racism and, 44, 171; salience/centrality of, 11; thinking about, 171; white solidarity and, 172; white understandings of, 173 racial boundaries, 70, 86, 158 racial categories, 9, 42, 43, 44, 45, 48, 57, 58, 67; cognition of, 165; formalization of, 5 racial hierarchy, 9, 20, 48, 88, 89 racialization, 4, 5, 11, 13, 39–­40, 43, 45, 46, 47, 48, 57, 67, 69, 78, 92, 101, 105, 110, 119; American, 14; impact of, 15; mechanisms of, 170–­71; process, 14, 42; race and, 56, 173; social context of, 153; white community and, 157; white supremacy and, 8 racial mores, 39, 78, 86, 90 racism, 13, 17, 26, 27, 34, 35, 43, 53, 61, 66–­68, 69, 75, 92, 101, 102, 135, 136, 159; antiblack, 54, 86, 172; anti-­ Chinese, 24; Black/white people and, 78; confronting, 109–­10, 158; constraints of, 85; cultural, 49; escaping, 59; fighting, 7, 10, 15, 55, 56, 90, 156, 157, 163–­64, 165, 169, 173; historical context of, 10; impact of, 57; manifestation of, 45; nonviolent, 79; persistence of, 5, 7–­9; property ownership and, 85; race and, 171; social context of, 10, 153; structural, 7, 10, 41, 45, 46–­47, 67, 70, 78, 80, 81, 83, 90, 91, 100, 163–­64, 168, 171; urban place and, 20–­25; whiteness and, 163–­64; white people and, 165, 166; white supremacy and, 8 Railroad Reserve, 30 railroads, 28, 29–­30, 40 railroad workers, African American, 25 Ray family, 114, 115 Rayfield Plantation, 50

real estate development, planning/promoting, 96 Reconstruction, 18, 21 recreation, 32, 123 redevelopment, 62, 94, 103, 116, 161, 170 red-­light district, 1, 87, 163 relationships, 116, 162, 170; cordial, 88; gendered, 137; interracial, 7, 67, 89, 165; patron-­client, 162; social, 48, 76 religion, 9, 43, 45, 73 renters, Black, 36, 37, 39, 84 research, 94, 166; archaeological, 135; archival, 107, 169; community-­based participatory, 56–­57; design, 99, 100, 110; orientation in, 170; participatory, 100 Riverside Addition, 30 Riverside Park, 32 River Street, 4, 13, 62, 63, 67, 72, 87, 88, 89, 90, 94, 96, 99, 105, 107–­8, 114, 119, 125, 127, 129, 131, 132, 133–­34, 136, 140, 143, 144; archaeology of, 39, 64, 126; Basques and, 35, 36, 93, 145; Black population of, 5, 35, 37, 41, 79, 158; as Black space, 18, 35–­39, 42, 68, 161; buildings on, 39; capital investment for, 154; ceramics from, 137; discrimination on, 104, 124; empathy on, 157; European Americans on, 78, 128; as ghetto, 91; heyday of, 2–­3; interracial relationships on, 154–­58; living on, 32–­33, 40, 41, 112; material culture from, 104, 111, 164; nonwhites on, 66; oral history and, 79; other and, 5; preservation of, 95; property ownership on, 85; racial landscape of, 135; racism and, 158, 163–­64; redevelopment for, 116, 161, 170; segregation on, 76–­86, 104, 110, 162; story of, 163; white–­ Black relationships on, 157; whiteness on, 41; white residents of, 46, 47, 93, 156, 157 River Street Digital History, 152 River Street Neighborhood, 1–­4, 12, 14, 40, 61, 63, 72, 89, 90, 119, 123, 124, 125, 136, 137, 153, 163; African Americans in, 35, 36, 62, 70, 145; antiracism and,

172–­73; archaeology in, 13, 15, 100, 106, 172–­73; Basques in, 33, 34, 145; boundaries of, 67; building, 28, 29, 77, 112; collaborative architecture in, 103–­9; foodways in, 131; fronton in, 146, 149; heritage conservation in, 15; history of, 152, 154; as homeplace, 69; housing stock in, 32; interracial/ multiethnic part of, 150; Japanese in, 138; maintenance of, 76; map of, 6, 31; memories and, 75; oral history from, 69, 74–­75; others in, 18, 70; preservation of, 94, 97; property ownership in, 85, 86; racism and, 5, 66–­68, 168; Railroad Reserve and, 30; recognition for, 163; segregation and, 4, 45, 70, 84, 158; solidity in, 153; stigmatization of, 18; trash collection in, 124; urban renewal and, 163; white residents of, 41; white supremacy in, 39 River Street Public Archaeology Project, 61, 65, 92, 94, 99, 103, 105, 109, 126, 152, 154, 169, 170; antiracist archaeology and, 13–­15; collaboration/inclusion and, 97; community archaeology and, 164; impact of, 171; land ownership in, 95; photo of, 108; research domains of, 105–­6; results from, 111 River Street Reconnaissance Survey, 62 Rivière Bois, 22 Robertson, Harry, 115 Robertson family, 115, 133, 139, 143 Robinson, Zandria, 37–­38 Rockman, Marcy, 92 Rodrigues, Ricardo, 7 Roediger, David: whiteness and, 8 Rowe, Sarah, 170 saa. See Society for American Archaeology (saa) Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, 113, 114, 124–­25, 145 Sandy Ground, 53 San Francisco ca, 149; Black community in, 26, 35; Chinese in, 25 San Francisco earthquake (1906), 32 San Francisco Opera Company, 32

Index

211

sanitation, 121–­26, 138–­39 San Jacinto Hills, 61 Sauer, Carl, 70–­71 Schaepe, David, 169 Schneider, Tsim: archaeology/settler colonialism and, 170 Scott Act (1888), 24, 25 Seattle: Chinese in, 25 sediments, 113, 121–­26; artifact-­bearing, 119; change and, 116–­19; domestic activities and, 123; stratigraphic information about, 116–­17 segregation, 1, 4, 5, 9, 18, 35, 37, 39, 45, 66, 67, 68, 75, 76–­86, 105, 160, 168, 173; acts of, 20; de facto, 13; defying, 103, 158; geographic, 70, 81, 83; influence of, 156; interpreting, 90–­93; landscapes of, 4, 79–­80; living with, 86–­90; racial, 70, 168; on River Street, 76–­86, 104, 110, 162; social context of, 153; spatial, 167; urban landscape enclaves of, 14; white property owners and, 84 self-­provisioning, 131, 133, 136, 137 service industry, 80, 127 sewage treatment, 124, 125, 126 Shackel, Paul, 54 Shirley suspender clasps, advertisement for, 143–­44 Short, Ray, 113 Shoshone, 17, 18, 21, 22–­23, 33, 39; hunting for, 27; reservation for, 23; timber resources and, 22 shovel probes, 114, 116, 120, 125, 146 shpo. See Idaho State Historic Preservation Office (shpo) Singleton, Theresa, 54, 165 slave cabin, excavation of, 50 slave owners, 52, 101 slavery, 5, 41, 52, 53, 58, 92, 111; African diasporic peoples and, 49 slaves, 51, 52, 101; excavations and, 50 slums, 2, 162 Snake River, 21, 22, 23 Snake War (1866–­1867), 23 Snook, David, 16 social dogma, anthropological pseudoscience and, 21 212

Index

social groups, 43, 45, 46, 67, 73, 128; boundaries between, 44 social hierarchy, 5, 19, 51, 88 social interactions, 10, 43, 73 social justice, 42, 53, 56, 98, 103 social networks, 47, 60, 163 social process, 48, 91 social security system, 162 social status, 47, 143, 150; African Americans and, 89; materials and, 127–­28 social structures, 45, 67, 128 social systems, 9, 43, 46, 161; power and, 45; racialized, 45 Society for American Archaeology (saa), 166, 167 Society for Historical Archaeology, 167, 171 soldiers: African American, 2, 27, 36, 37, 59, 79; buffalo, 25, 59 South Eleventh Street, 158 spaces: abstract, 71; Black, 18, 26, 35–­39, 42, 161; conceptualization of, 72; culture, 71; extramural, 123; geographic, 14, 91; memories and, 112; racialized, 72, 110; social, 72, 73; urban, 39, 137; white, 19, 72, 79, 159 Spiers Landing, 52 Stacy, Susan, 62, 63 stars, constellations and, 172 stereotypes, 7–­8, 14, 156, 164; anti-­ Basque, 33; antiblack, 145; Blackness, 59, 67; hypersexualized, 145; racial, 42, 59, 156 Stevens, Ellen Perkins, 88 Stevens, Gigi, 131 Stewart, Bessie, 37, 41, 79, 80–­81 stigmatization, 5, 60, 78, 90, 119, 144, 162; geographic, 80; negative, 101 stoves, 40, 119, 123; coal/wood-­burning, 141 St. Paul Baptist Church, 27, 28, 41; as historic property, 152; photo of, 28 stratigraphy, 122; shovel probe, 120 surveillance, 41, 155, 162 Survey of Lee Neighborhood (report), 62 suspender clasps, 143–­44 symbolism, 72, 76, 128, 142

Szabala, Domingo, 114, 146 Szabala family, 143 tableware, 126, 129, 131, 138 Terrell, Warner L., III, 40, 88, 89, 131, 133, 141 Terrell, Warner L., Jr.: photo of, 84 Test Pit 19, 133 test units, 118, 133, 143 Texas Department of Transportation, 58 theaters, 32, 159 Thomas, Doris, 69, 79, 80, 115, 116, 136; memories of, 137 Thomas, Erma, 140 Thomas, Jackson, 80, 115, 116 Thomas, Kenneth, 40, 69, 131, 155 Thomas family, 114, 115, 133, 155–­56 “time saving” devices, 139 Transforming Archaeology (Atalay et al.), 10 trash collectors, 123, 125 Treasury Valley Branch (naacp), 3 Treaty of Fort Boise, 22 truck farms, 29 Turner, Frederick Jackson, 19 Uberuaga family, 65 Uncommon Ground: Archaeology and Early African America, 1650–­1800 (Ferguson), 54 University of Arizona, 92 University of Idaho, 64, 92, 107 upper class, experience of, 156–­57 urban place; forging, 20–­25; racism and, 20–­25 urban renewal, 39, 62, 152, 160, 163, 168 U.S. Army: Idaho Territory and, 20; Shoshone and, 22 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 60, 161 U.S. Forest Service, Passport in Time project of, 92 U.S. Reclamation Service, 29 U.S. Supreme Court, housing covenants and, 38 utilities, 29, 125 Valentine, David, 123

Venkatesh, Sudhir, 81, 162 Vernon, Richard, 52 vessels, 52; ceramic, 129; decorated, 130; printed, 138 violence, 3, 20, 39, 90; antiblack, 21, 78–­ 79, 169; anti-­Chinese, 24–­25; anti-­ Native, 25 Virginia City nv, 59 Walla Walla wa, 28 warehouse district, 62, 91 Warner, Mark, 20, 54 Wasilewski, Jacqueline, 170 waste, 126; organic, 125 waste management systems, 126 water closets, 125 water/sewer system, connection to, 124 Watkins, Joe, 169 Weeksville ny, 53 Welch, John, 169 “We’re the Only Colored People Here” (Brooks), 159 Western Apache, 76 West Grove Street, 65 West Oakland ca, 60 Wheeler, Jack, 41 Wheeler, Lois, 41, 156 white, as racial construct, 11 White, Richard, 19 white community, 48, 67; archaeology and, 13; discrimination by, 26; racialization and, 157; racism and, 157 white flight, 4 Whiteman, Mrs., 41 whiteness, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 80, 110, 160, 165–­66, 173; African diaspora archaeology and, 48–­57; archaeology and, 57, 167, 171; Basques and, 93; Blackness and, 26, 37–­38, 41, 42, 43; formation of, 91; nature of, 33–­35; neighborliness and, 154–­58; perspective of, 167; political power and, 48; poor, 72, 156; as racial category, 8, 42, 48; racism and, 163–­64; revealing, 105; as social category, 66; as social identity, 66 white people: Blackness and, 41;

Index

213

white people (cont.) discrimination by, 88; as force for creation, 17; infrastructure for, 167–­68; middle-­class/upper-­class, 14; nonwhite people and, 1, 66; prejudice and, 173; racializing, 42–­47; racism and, 78, 165, 166; social class and, 144 white privilege, 5, 39, 101, 172 white solidarity, 84; race and, 172 white supremacy, 66, 67, 89, 128, 172, 173; demonstration of, 39; racism/racialization and, 8 white trash, term, 144 Wiek, Terry, 54 Wilkie, Laurie, 54 Wissler, Clark, 71 Wolf, Eric, 44

214

Index

women: Black, 59, 145, 159; expectations of, 140; working-­class, 140 Wood River, 22 working class, 42, 86–­87, 112, 127, 155, 161, 162; African American, 156; eating patterns of, 131; female, 140; financial stability for, 128–­29; material culture and, 129; white, 37, 156, 167 world-­systems theory, 81 World War II, 2, 18, 20, 35, 36, 37, 41, 114, 115, 135, 140, 158; African Americans and, 60, 160–­61 Worster, Donald, 19 yards, 62, 86, 89, 116, 121, 124, 126, 132, 133, 134, 136, 150, 152; activities in, 122–­23

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