Dr. James Leiker is Associate Professor of History at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas. His research focuses on the history of race relations in the American West, and on the communities and cultures of the Great Plains. His articles have appeared in Kansas History, Western Historical Quarterly, and Great Plains Quarterly, while his book, Racial Borders: Black Soldiers along the Rio Grande (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 2002) was a co-winner of the T.R. Fehrenbach award for best book on Texas history, and was ruled one of eight best books on the Southwest by the Border Regional Library Association. Dr. Leiker has served as a consultant on a Ford Foundation grant examining the historical intersections between African Americans and Native Americans, as well as a “Teaching American History” grant exploring the legacies of the Brown decision (1954). He is currently researching a study of the Cheyenne Exodus of 1878 and its impact on cultural conflict on the Plains.
Leiker, James
