Book Birthdays celebrate one year of a book’s life in tweets, reviews, and more. This month we’re saying Happy First Book Birthday to the second edition of Black Gun, Silver Star (Bison Books, September 2022) by Art T. Burton.
About the Book:
In The Story of Oklahoma, Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves appears as the “most feared U.S. marshal in the Indian country.” That Reeves was also an African American who had spent his early life enslaved in Arkansas and Texas made his accomplishments all the more remarkable. Black Gun, Silver Star sifts through fact and legend to discover the truth about one of the most outstanding peace officers in late nineteenth-century America—and perhaps the greatest lawman of the Wild West era.
Bucking the odds (“I’m sorry, we didn’t keep Black people’s history,” a clerk at one of Oklahoma’s local historical societies answered one query), Art T. Burton traces Reeves from his days of slavery to his Civil War soldiering to his career as a deputy U.S. marshal out of Fort Smith, Arkansas, when he worked under “Hanging Judge” Isaac C. Parker. Fluent in Creek and other regional Native languages, physically powerful, skilled with firearms, and a master of disguise, Reeves was exceptionally adept at apprehending fugitives and outlaws and his exploits were legendary in Oklahoma and Arkansas.
In this new edition Burton traces Reeves’s presence in the national media of his day as well as his growing modern presence in popular media such as television, movies, comics, and video games.
A Word from the Author:
Since the publication of my biography on Bass Reeves, Black Gun, Silver Star: The Life and Legend of Frontier Marshal Bass Reeves it seems his persona in popular media is growing in leaps in bounds. The revised edition of the book which came out last year has been greeted favorably by the fans of Reeves. In the last few years he has been seen in a new BBC production of Around the World in 80 Days, Reeves was prominently featured in a French public television documentary produced by ARTE on the Black West. Several European companies have produced board games featuring Bass Reeves. I was interviewed in June, when I was the featured speaker at the Bass Reeves Western History Conference in Muskogee, Oklahoma, by CBS News Sunday Morning. That interview will be broadcast in October or November before the new Taylor Sheridan series Lawmen: Bass Reeves is premiered on cable television. Currently, I am attached to a project with Morgan Freeman who is producing a cable television series on Bass Reeves. Hopefully, someone will be option my biography on Reeves and we will see an epic movie on Reeves’ colorful career. The legend of Bass Reeves is currently a shooting star and I don’t see it flaming out any time soon. Recently, I was contacted by the Houston Police Department, where I found out Reeves went under cover in Houston in 1896 and was able to get a confession from a felon. I am sure more stories about Bass Reeves will follow. In the meantime, those interested in Reeves, the greatest hero in frontier America, should read my biography.
Reviews:
“This book will interest anyone desiring more information about Indian Territory, early Oklahoman history and how the U. S. Marshal’s and the Federal Court worked in the late 19th and early 20th century. I highly recommend it.” – Keith Dameron Denver Posse
“The author, retired history professor Art T. Burton, built his academic career through assembling histories of Black soldiers and gunfighters on the western frontier—the sort of people excluded from the dime novels and Hollywood pictures that continue to form the pop culture memory of the Old West.” – Shepherd Express
“According to author Art T. Burton, who writes in Black Gun, Silver Star, ‘Bass Reeves is the closest real person to resemble the fictional Lone Ranger on the American Western Frontier of the 19th century.'” – The Chronicle
“The life of Bass Reeves was the stuff of legends, and Art T. Burton’s book is the raw material for the telling of those legends.” – Third Coast Review
On Twitter:
Bass Reeves’ life is the inspiration for Taylor Sheridan’s upcoming Paramount+ series Lawmen: Bass Reeves. Watch the trailer here.
UNP blog 
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