Black Ozarkers

Black Ozarkers, who have also been called Ozark Mountain Blacks, are African Americans who are native to or residents of the once isolated Ozarks uplift, a forested and mountainous geo-cultural region in Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. They are mostly descendants of the enslaved from America's upper south and Appalachian region of Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and North Carolina, being brought by European American slave owners in the western expansion beginning in the early 19th century.

Some are also descendants of Black people brought to the region enslaved by Native Americans on the Trail of Tears or up the Mississippi River by the French to work on small farms and in mineral mines during the French and Spanish colonial period. There was also a number of families that voluntarily migrated into the region and settled before and after the Civil War. All are of African ancestry, with many also having biracial heritage – being of both African and European descent or African and Native American descent. Some, like the Black Ozark folk artist Joseph Yoakum, were of triracial heritage, descending from all three.