The nineteenth-century US had a concept of relative ethnic superiority - and inferiority, combined with relative status. This "ethnic ladder" could be different depending on the time, place, and individual, so generalizations - particularly for a place as complex and large as the American West - is problematic: the West is the largest region of North America.

In general, African Americans could find higher status in the West than they would in the East/South. This was in part because they were typically in few enough numbers that they were not seen as an economic threat. The Chinese, in contrast, were numerous enough that Euro-Americans regarded them as an economic threat. This, combined with the alien nature of their culture, often placed Chinese Americans at or near the bottom of the ethnic ladder.

The majority of the Western population also tended to support the Union during the American Civil War, and this often made them sympathetic to the plight of the slave and people correspondingly tended to be supportive of African Americans in a generic way. In my focus of research and publication on Virginia City, Nevada, I found that the four bottom rungs of the ethnic ladder were often occupied, from bottom up, by the Chinese Americans, Native Americans, African Americans, and the Speakers of Spanish. This varied according to the individual: Mark Twain notoriously hated Native Americans and was supportive of Chinese emigrants and African Americans - so generalization is problematic.

All that said, African Americans encountered prejudice not unlike that found elsewhere. Oregon had particularly cruel laws, but that was not the exception: these sorts of laws existed in one form or another everywhere. African Americans could build a better life in the West than they might experience in the East/South, but it depending on the circumstance and the relative level of racism - that existed everywhere, but in some places it could be less than others.

An example from Virginia City can illustrate the situation: Dr. Stevenson was a respected member of the small African American community (in a population that reached toward 20k, African Americans barely exceeded one hundred). After the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment guaranteeing all men the right to vote (1870), Stevenson stood in line to register to vote. After he signed the list, the man behind him said that he would not place his name beneath that of an African American (except he didn't use that term!). This was an expression of the racism of the time. The local newspaper, however, observed that it was unfortunate that the two men had not stood in line in the opposite order; the newspaper observed that Dr. Stevenson was such an honorable man that he would not have regarded it as a problem to have placed his name after that of an inferior. So here we have sympathy for an African American and racism - both expressed by the same incident - not to mention that Dr. Stevenson was allowed to register!

In short, the subject is complex, and the situations were diverse.