As a Black man who moved to Montana, I am painfully aware that more often than not, I will be the only person who looks like me in any given room, building, or, in extreme cases, city. This is not something I am unused to, but something I have always been curious about when traveling state to state.
There is a level of relatability and comfort that is lost when you feel like an outsider in a community simply because of your appearance. As a reporter, it is my job to investigate interesting topics such as this and ask the questions that may make other people, myself included, uncomfortable.
So, this got me thinking about the particular town that I find myself in currently, Great Falls. The questions I sought to answer were as follows: What is the racial makeup of a town like Great Falls, and what is the ethnic diversity like here?
According to the U.S.A. Data Census of 2023, 82.9% of the population in Great Falls is White (Non-Hispanic). Of course, this is not shocking or remotely new information. But what I wanted to know was how exactly it got to this point. As I would find out, it isn’t as simple as mass relocation.
After speaking with Rebecca Engum, the Director of Great Falls Tourism, I learned that Great Falls not only brings in over a million yearly overnight visitors, but some of them relocate to Great Falls later on in life (post-retirement).
But the relocation is especially true for people coming from states such as Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Washington.
But the international migrants have a shockingly wide variety.
According to Engum, it is not uncommon “to see visitors from New Zealand, Australia, Japan, China, Russia, and even the Netherlands.”
This also explains the range you see in the cuisine of Great Falls with our restaurants and shops. People visit Great Falls initially, and after deciding they want to stay, some of them set up shops and bring over aspects of their culture into the town.
This is what makes Great Falls unique as a cultural intersection point.
During the late 1800s, the Chinese, Black, and Native American communities played a huge role as the minority groups within Great Falls, shaping the history of the area and adding additional culture to the town during its early conception.
After discussing this with local historian Ken Robison, I learned that the tensions among races didn’t start to settle until post-World War II, as “the attitudes toward Chinese were finally beginning to shift.”
Although the progress made is slow, Great Falls has done many things well - such as being one of the first communities to implement Juneteenth as a communal celebration and setting up foundations like the Young Women’s Christian Association.
