From NKAA, Notable Kentucky African Americans Database (main entry)
Deer Lodge and Chouteau Counties, Montana
(start date: 1870S)In the 1870s a small group of African Americans left Kentucky and settled in Deer Lodge and Chouteau Counties, MT. They were the forerunners; by 1880, the bulk of the African American population in Montana had come from Kentucky, including the Johnson, Broose and Dodgeston families. Montana would become a state in 1889.
For more see C. McMillen, "Border state terror and the genesis of the African-American community in Deer Lodge and Chouteau Counties, Montana, 1870-1890," The Journal of Negro History, vol. 79, issue 2 (1994), pp. 212-247; and Wood, Anthony William, The Erosion of the Racial Frontier: Settler Colonialism and the History of Black Montana, 1880-1930, April 2018, at the Montana State University website.