A new history of Iowa

Jeff Bremer

Book - 2023

"Iowa is largely unappreciated and often misunderstood. It has a small population and sits in the middle of a huge country. Historian Frank I. Herriott asked "Is Iowa's History Worth While?" in The Annals of Iowa in 1903. It didn't have large cities, rugged mountainous regions, or the "rough and boisterous" history of Western mining camps. If you needed "seismic convulsions" you had to study somewhere else. But Herriott argued that all residents "declare with vehemence that Iowa is a magnificent State." A New History of Iowa features well-known individuals in its narrative, such as the Sauk leader Black Hawk, the artist Grant Wood, botanist George Washington Carver, suffragist Carrie Ch...apman Catt, and President Herbert Hoover. But it seeks to broaden the state's story, including the stories of previously unknown farmwomen, laborers, immigrants, and refugees. This narrative adds new voices: runaway slaves who joined Iowa's 60th Colored Regiment in the Civil War; young female pearl button factory workers in the late nineteenth century; and Latino railroad workers who migrated to the state in the early twentieth century. Past histories do not include Iowa's black regiment from the Civil War or Edna Griffin, who helped desegregate Des Moines in the 1940s. Also missing are the histories of recent refugees from Sudan and the Balkans and other racial, cultural, and religious minorities. The most recent state history for adults, Iowa: The Middle Land by Dorothy Schwieder, was published in 1996. Schweider's book has been the standard Iowa history text for a generation and it has many strengths, but it is very out of date"-- more