African American Homesteader “Colonies” in the Settling of the Great Plains

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Winter 2019

African American Homesteader “Colonies” in the Settling of the Great Plains

Jacob K Friefeld

Mikal Eckstrom

Richard Edwards

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This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Center for Great Plains Studies: Staff and Fellows Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. African American Homesteader “Colonies” in the Settling of the Great Plains

Jacob K. Friefeld, Mikal Brotnov Eckstrom, and Richard Edwards

Abstract: African Americans participated in homesteading in the Great Plains primarily by establishing “colonies” or geograph- ically concentrated homesteading communities. We studied Nicodemus, Kansas; DeWitty, Nebraska; Dearfi eld, Colorado; Em- pire, Wyoming; Sully County, South Dakota; and Blackdom, New Mexico, which were the largest and most important Black homesteading communities in their states. Black homesteaders, like their white counterparts, were mostly very poor, struggled to grow crops in a harsh climate, and used the land they gained to build new futures. But because of their previous experiences in the South and racism in some nearby communities, Black homesteaders developed a distinct understanding of their eff orts, particularly of schooling and the “success” of their communities.

uring the late nineteenth and early twen- Dtieth centuries, African Americans migrated to the Great Plains to participate in homesteading. Th eir numbers were not large

Key Words: Blackdom, Dearfi eld, DeWitty, Empire, Home- stead Act, Nicodemus, racism

Jacob K. Friefeld holds a PhD in history from the Universi- ty of Nebraska–Lincoln. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Great Plains Studies at the Uni- versity of Nebraska–Lincoln. He is coauthor, with Richard Edwards and Rebecca Wingo, of Homesteading the Plains: Toward a New History (2017).

Mikal Brotnov Eckstrom is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Great Plains Studies. His written work includes a coauthored chapter with Margaret Jacobs in Why You Can’t Teach US History without American Indians (University of North Carolina Press, 2012) and the Wall Street Journal.

Richard Edwards is director of the Center for Great Plains Studies, professor of economics, and senior vice chancellor (emeritus). Recent books include Atlas of Nebraska with J. Clark Archer and others (2017) and Natives of a Dry Place: Stories of Dakota Before the Oil Boom (2015).

[GPQ 39 (Winter 2019):11–37] 11 12 Great Plains Quarterly, winter 2019 compared to whites, but they nevertheless es- in “town,” and the communities’ achievements tablished communities, started schools and and eventual demise were largely determined churches, and created “places” of their own. As by the success or failure of their constituent historian Timothy Nelson described it, “Black farm families. Th e town, or central core, typi- people were the town elders and controllers of cally provided only a meeting and trading space daily life.”1 Th e achievements and fates of these for the communities. Nicodemus was diff erent, homesteaders are an important though oft en- with its town as well as countryside being im- neglected part of Great Plains history. portant, because the town grew large enough to We explore six African American home- generate its own dynamic. Th us we prefer the steading communities in the Great Plains to terms “community” or “colony,” which we use see what Black homesteaders experienced and interchangeably, except when we mean to refer achieved and how their experiences were sim- specifi cally to the small village itself. ilar to or diff erent from those of white home- “Community” necessarily implies more in- steaders. We focus on Nicodemus, Kansas; defi nite boundaries, which matched the real- Dearfi eld, Colorado; Empire, Wyoming; De- ity on the ground. It should include all those Witty, Nebraska; Sully County, South Dakota; homesteaders who saw themselves, and in and Blackdom, New Mexico (Fig. 1). We do everyday life functioned, as part of the local not consider Black communities in the other society, whether or not their homestead lay Great Plains states.2 Th ese six sites represent within any particular borders. In Nicodemus, the largest, most long-lived, and most signifi - for example, there was the town, 160 acres cant Black homesteader settlements in their re- platted and marked off into lots. Nicodemus spective states. Nicodemus is the most famous Township, where most community residents and the only one that persists to the present. It lived, surrounded the town on three sides and survives today as a very small community and spread over 22,880 acres. But some commu- a National Historic Site of the National Park nity members homesteaded in other Graham Service. Th e others have disappeared, some County townships adjacent to Nicodemus identifi able by historic markers that have been Township, and still others located in adjoining erected, others only through archives and oral Rooks County, which Nicodemus Township histories. Yet each has a vital story to contrib- bordered. All were eff ectively members of the ute to the larger regional history, and togeth- Nicodemus “community.” Some families both er they help us appreciate the diversity of the claimed a homestead and maintained a resi- homesteading movement. dence or business in town. Th ese sites should be understood as rural Black people were attracted to the Great neighborhoods or rural communities rather Plains because they sought both to remove than towns, even though they are convention- themselves from the violent and racist South ally (mis)identifi ed as towns. Th ey were sites and to become landowners in their own right. of concentrated Black homesteading, rural Th ey were bitterly disappointed when southern neighborhoods surrounding a tiny settlement whites during Reconstruction largely defeated or village (except for Nicodemus). Most of the federal land reform, leaving most Blacks land- population of these settlements resided on less, destitute, and at the mercy of white land- their homesteading claims in the country, not owners. Th ose who sought to stake claims in African American Homesteader “Colonies” 13

Fig. 1. Six Black homesteader communities in the Great Plains.

one of the fi ve southern homestead states faced Th e “free” South was a dangerous, oppressive, bitter and unremitting white hostility. And all and vicious place for ex-slaves. southern Blacks suff ered under the rising tide Robert H. Knox, a prominent Black leader of white intimidation, beatings, and murder in Montgomery, addressed an 1872 convention when federal troops were withdrawn in 1877. of African Americans, saying he had initially 14 Great Plains Quarterly, winter 2019 counseled them to remain in the South but now al and civic benefi ts of longer- settled societies. urged them to leave: But Black homesteaders diff ered from their white neighbors because of their horrendous I yet would say let us rest here awhile lon- experience in the South and enduring racism ger; let us trust in God, the President, and in some surrounding Great Plains communi- Congress to give us what is most need- ties. Other factors also shaped the Black home- ed here, personal security to the laboring steaders’ experiences. In some cases Blacks masses, the suppression of violence, disor- were hindered in obtaining needed resources der, and kukluxism, the protection which or saw their rights abused. Th eir situation led the Constitution and laws of the United them to a very diff erent understanding of what States guarantee, and to which as citizens schooling meant. And they came to think of the and men we are entitled. Failing in these, “success” of their communities in a distinctive it is time, then, I repeat, to desert the State and revealing way. and seek homes elsewhere where there may be fruition of hopes inaugurated when by the hand of Providence the shackles were Six Black Homesteading Communities stricken from the limbs of four million Not all Black communities were the same. men, where there may be enjoyed in peace Indeed, the histories and destinies of each and happiness by your own fi reside the was infl uenced by events, circumstances, and 3 earnings of your daily toil. personalities unique to each. Th ere has been Th e Great Plains off ered Black people an op- substantial scholarly attention paid to the portunity to start over, to claim land they could phenomenon of all- Black towns, especially in own themselves and on which they could build Oklahoma and Kansas, where organizers es- new futures. As a largely agricultural people in tablished many such towns.4 Less attention has the South, both during slavery and aft erward, been paid to Black homesteader settlement in they had developed skills and a deep knowl- other rural areas of the Great Plains. And to edge of farming which they hoped to employ the extent that individual communities of Black and so “enjoy in peace and happiness by [their] homesteaders have been studied, they have own fi reside the earnings of [their] daily toil.” largely been considered separately, without re- While Black colonies in the Great Plains lation or comparison to the others. We begin experienced many of the same hardships and with brief descriptions of the six communities. triumphs as white homesteader communities, they also encountered or developed distinctive Nicodemus, Kansas features that shaped their experiences. Th e larg- In 1877 six Black entrepreneurs in Topeka er context of their eff orts was important: like joined with a local white developer to form white homesteaders, they struggled to create the Nicodemus Town Company. Th ey locat- successful farms in the harsh climate of the ed their town in the Solomon River valley in region; like whites they suffered from crop north-central Kansas, a dry prairie environ- prices and freight costs that were set in far- off ment. Th e fi rst group of settlers, about thirty markets; and like whites they worked to build people, moved from Topeka, but the organizers supportive communities to provide the cultur- quickly recruited much more widely, attract- African American Homesteader “Colonies” 15 ing approximately 300 migrants from Scott Two factors loomed very large in the pros- and Fayette Counties in Kentucky; they were perity of nearly every central Plains town followed by other “colonies” (groups) from during this period: whether it attracted a rail- Kentucky and Mississippi. Although as many road line and whether it became the county as 500 to 700 people arrived between 1877 and seat. In the 1880s Nicodemus failed to achieve 1879, living conditions during these early years either one. Although several railroads intimat- were so harsh, with most living in dugouts and ed they would run tracks through Nicodemus, food scarce, that many soon left . none did. And in the competition among area Most who stayed fi led homestead claims. As towns to become the county seat, Hill City won Kenneth Hamilton notes, “all but a few busi- out. Th e loss of both the railroad and county nessmen and others who could make a living in seat to white towns nearby halted the town of a frontier town resettled on homestead lands.” Nicodemus’s progress, and many merchants left By 1899 they had received eighty- eight home- for nearby Bogue, the railhead. stead patents, making them owners of 13,350 But while the town of Nicodemus declined acres. Although most attention has focused on after 1888, the farmers of Nicodemus the town of Nicodemus, its economic lifeblood Township persevered, suffering hard times was farming on homesteads in the surrounding when Great Plains agriculture struggled but Nicodemus Township. By the mid- 1880s, it was also experiencing good times when it thrived. a moderately prosperous settlement, enjoying Th e Nicodemus project, initially organized as the highs when harvests were good but suff er- a for- profi t speculative venture, always also ing lows when hit by drought, hail, and other contained the broader social goal of creating prairie hazards. Th e population of the commu- a safe community for African Americans. nity eventually stabilized at around 300.5 Nicodemus appears to have accomplished that The town also developed, and as early goal for the farmers and families of Nicodemus as 1879, “the nucleus of the town had been Township: they had left behind a horrendous formed, consisting of 35 dwellings, a general experience in the South and migrated at a time store, post offi ce, hotel, real estate offi ce, 2 nationally of rising anti- Black violence and livery stables, and 2 churches.” Nicodemus hostility, so Nicodemus must have seemed a attracted white merchants as well, and though community worth enduring hardship for. far out- numbered by Blacks, whites actively participated in town life. Its residents quickly Dearfi eld, Colorado established schools, including Graham County’s Dearfield was a Black community in Weld fi rst school, as early as 1879. So, too, its leaders County, about seventy miles northeast of were gaining political prominence in Graham Denver, in Colorado’s eastern shortgrass prai- County politics, in particular E. P. McCabe, who rie, along the South Platte River. At its peak was appointed interim county clerk, a position from 1917 to 1921, Dearfi eld may have housed as that started him on his political career, and many as 300 residents.7 Oliver T. Jackson estab- Abram Hall, who was Graham County census lished the Negro Townsite and Land Company taker, a sensitive political position. McCabe and founded the farming community in 1910. went on to achieve statewide offi ce, winning Nineteen settlers arrived in 1911, and their fi rst two elections as the Kansas state auditor.6 winter was extremely diffi cult. “Th at winter,” 16 Great Plains Quarterly, winter 2019

Jackson wrote, “only two of us had wooden the extreme drought of the 1930s, shrinking houses, and the suff ering was intense. We had yields at the same time that crop prices col- scarcely any wood to burn. Buff alo chips and lapsed. Wheat prices, which had ranged be- sagebrush was our chief fuel.”8 Some lived in tween $2.00 and $2.50 per bushel between 1916 dugouts and tents, and three of their six hors- and 1920, fell to around $1.00 per bushel in the es died. Th ey scavenged wood from along the 1920s and sagged below 50 cents per bushel in South Platte River and in the coulees. the early 1930s. World War I also reduced the By 1915 they had constructed forty-four fl ow of new Black migrants from the South, wooden cabins on their homestead claims, diverting them to northern cities with jobs in and by one estimate had put up over a hun- stockyards and factories. Dearfi eld’s popula- dred miles of fence. Additional settlers arrived, tion plummeted aft er 1921. Just how rapidly the boosting the population to 111. In spite of the community cleared out is diffi cult to say, but obstacles, by 1919 residents had received patents the Black population by 1925 appears to have on thirty- seven homestead claims, covering been but a tiny fraction of its 1921 level.12 6,720 acres.9 In 1918 Dearfi eld homesteaders harvested their first significant marketable Empire, Wyoming crops, netting them over $50,000, a huge pay- Th e multibranched Speese and Taylor families out allowing them to buy farm equipment, farmed successfully for a quarter century near upgrade their stock, and make home im- Westerville, Nebraska, but in 1908, “disgusted provements. Th e town also began to attract by racism, inadequate financial support for businesses; residents organized a company existing schools, and possibly legal problems to manufacture concrete blocks and opened with their land claims, [they] again heard the a lumber and coal yard and a boardinghouse Sirens’ song when the Ansley (Neb.) newspa- with store attached. A hotel, restaurant, and per reported newly irrigated land available in other businesses followed. Many residents eastern Wyoming,” the Equality State.13 Th eir found employment with surrounding white move may also have been triggered by concern ranchers and in the town of Greeley.10 that the family’s original farms did not provide So, too, Dearfi eld residents began to develop enough land for the multiplying families of the a cultural life for the community. Two churches next generation. So they migrated again, to provided regular services.11 Th e churches likely found Empire, in Goshen County, right along played a major role in other cultural initiatives, the state’s eastern edge next to the Nebraska as they oft en do in many rural communities. border.14 Residents also opened a school, and the town Charles and Rosetta Speese and three of hosted an annual festival and carnival, attract- Charles’s brothers and families moved to ing prominent outsider speakers, including Empire. Charles Speese made a claim for 320 Colorado governor George Alfred Carlson. acres under the Enlarged Homestead Act, and Demand for Dearfield’s farm products, Joseph Speese made a Desert Land claim for pumped up by World War I, created increasing 160 acres. Soon two Taylor families, headed prosperity in the community, but the relatively by Otis and Baseman, arrived; Baseman wet 1910s gave way to the drier 1920s and then was married to Maggie Shores, member of Fig. 2. Image from the homestead fi le of James M. Th omas, Dearfi eld, Colorado. Records of the Bureau of Land Management Collections, National Archives.

17 18 Great Plains Quarterly, winter 2019 another multibranched and interwoven Black cess to water from the new interstate canal, and farm family from Nebraska. Nathan Taylor others returning to Nebraska. By 1920, Empire and his wife had already arrived in the area. had largely emptied out.17 In 1911 Russel Taylor, a minister and educator, arrived and fi led a homestead claim. In all, Sully County, South Dakota ten homesteaders received patents by 1929 for In 1882 African Americans began moving to 2,741 acres.15 Sully County, twenty miles north of Pierre Th ese families arrived with capital to invest in central South Dakota, when two brothers, in their new farms from their successful ven- Benjamin P. and Patrick H. Blair, arrived from tures in Nebraska. Th eir status was refl ected Illinois to scout land for their family to settle. in the houses they built. No dugouts are men- When Sully County opened for homesteading tioned. Some put up substantial sod houses, but in 1883, they fi led claims in sections 13 and 14 in fact most dwellings in Empire appear to have of Fairbank Township; the family patriarch, been frame farmhouses. Th e exact population Norvel Blair, joined them in 1884 and of Empire is not known; there were thirty- six homesteaded or purchased land as well. In Blacks in Empire in 1910. In the following years, so doing, the Blairs became the fi rst residents a number of large families, including Russel of what would later become the Sully County and Henrietta Taylor and their seven children, Colored Colony. moved into Empire, raising the community’s Migrants and speculators, both Black and population to perhaps sixty or more.16 white, were attracted to Sully County and Taylor quickly became not only Empire’s especially to the town of Fairbank, because the most distinguished citizen but perhaps the most Chicago and Northwestern Railroad appeared prominent person in Goshen County. He was ready to build its line there. But the Chicago well educated, having graduated from Bellevue and Northwestern chose a different route, College, a Nebraska institution run by the the speculators lost their investments, and Presbyterian Church. He may also have earned many migrants departed. Norvel Blair and his a graduate degree in divinity from Bellevue family, however, survived the bust and stayed or an institution in Kansas. In Empire, he set on, fi ling homestead claims and timber culture to work organizing and leading the Empire claims and purchasing land as well. Th ey soon schools. He also obtained a post offi ce for the created a productive farm operation. A 1916 community, which opened in 1912 with himself map of the township shows several Blairs as postmaster. That year he also recruited (Norvel, Winnie, John Wesley, Mary Elizabeth, thirty residents to organize Grace Presbyterian Benjamin P., Lucy, and Patrick H.) all owning Church, for which he served as pastor. land, usually quarter sections, in Fairbank Empire residents were victims of several Township, totaling 1,500 acres. Considering the local racial incidents, including one traumatic Blairs and others, Black homesteaders obtained murder. Th eir community broke into factions, homesteading patents for twenty- nine claims and their farms produced meager results in totaling 5,170 acres.18 the harsh, dry, unforgiving climate. Th ey be- Th e Blair family was highly entrepreneurial. gan leaving in 1916 for new opportunities, some For a time Betty and Winnie Blair operated a moving just a few miles south to get better ac- restaurant and bakery in Pierre. Norvel raised African American Homesteader “Colonies” 19

Morgan horses, having brought his prized DeWitty, Nebraska stock with him from Illinois. Benjamin and “The Negro Homesteaders in the Sandhills Patrick operated a livery in Fairbank. In 1896 were led there by my mother’s father, Charles Benjamin became the fi rst African American Meehan. He grew up in Detroit and Round Eau, in South Dakota to be a school board member, Ontario, Canada, where my mother Rosetta, and he served as chairman of the Fairbank was born,” wrote Ava Speese Day. “When they district school board for ten years. And in 1906 heard about the Kinkaid Act in Nebraska,” Benjamin Blair met with other Black South she recalled, “grandfather and several others Dakotans in Yankton to form the Northwestern investigated and filed claims northwest of Homestead Movement, with a stated purpose Brownlee, along the North Loup River.” Earlier of “bringing a better class of intelligent negroes Meehan, an Irishman, his African American from the southern states to South Dakota, to wife, Hester Meehan, and other family fi le on land in colonies and in the case of those members had claimed homesteads in Custer having the means, to buy land outright.”19 County (Neb.); in 1907 they and others joined Black settlement in Sully County was boost- a small but growing Black settlement that had ed by this eff ort, driven by Blair entrepreneurial begun forming in 1904 and became known as energies. Mary Elizabeth (Betty) Blair, a land DeWitty.23 It grew to be the most populous, agent, made a big sale in 1908 to John and Ellen long-lived, and successful settlement of Black McGruder and their children. John McGrud- homesteaders in Nebraska.24 er, a former slave, had prospered in Missouri, Th e settlement grew in phases, with distinct where among other enterprises he purchased groups of individuals from across the country. the plantation on which he had been held a Eleven settlers fi led homestead claims in 1907, slave. In Sully County, the family ran 300 head three more in 1908, six in 1909, six in 1910, and of cattle, 3,000 sheep, and thirty racehorses and twelve in 1911, for a total between 1904 and 1911 workhorses. Son William and his wife, Meta of forty-three entries, many of them along both McGruder, farmed a half-section in Grandview sides of the North Loup River. By 1929 some township.20 fi ft y- six homestead claims for 29,402 acres had Th e Black population of the Sully Coun- been proved up. Somewhat later Charles and ty Colored Colony remains uncertain, with Rosetta Speese, along with some other mem- estimates ranging from 80 to 200, with total bers of the Speese family, left Empire in 1920 landholdings, including purchased land, of and moved to DeWitty (in 1925 they would perhaps 8,000 acres.21 Th e Blairs, McGruders, move again, to Sully County). From our exam- and others recruited to Sully County remained ination of census and other records, it appears active in and around the region from the 1890s that the total number of Black people who at at least into the 1920s. Many were forced off some point lived in DeWitty was between 155 the land during the Great Depression. Maxine and 171. DeWitty reached its population peak of McGruder, great- granddaughter of John Mc- 146 residents in 1915. In 1912, Miles H. DeWit- Gruder, was said (in 1953) to be “the only Negro ty established and operated the post offi ce and teaching at a white school in South Dakota.”22 ran a small store alongside, apparently giving Descendants of McGruders continue to live in a name to the community.25 the Pierre area. DeWitty parents placed a high priority on Fig. 3. Image from the homestead fi le of Peryle Woodsen, DeWitty, Nebraska. Records of the Bureau of Land Management Collection, National Archives.

20 African American Homesteader “Colonies” 21 educating their children, establishing several began around 1909 in an area of desert prairies. school districts in areas where there were no Th e region received only about 12 to 13 inches white settlers and one that included both white of precipitation annually, though underground and Black children. Most of the teachers were reservoirs and artesian wells off ered hope of drawn from DeWitty itself. Much of DeWitty’s bolstering the poor rainfall with irrigation. social life revolved around the St. James African Wetter years and increased white hostility Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, built in to Blacks in Roswell (and nationally) may 1910.26 Th e residents also cultivated other im- have stimulated the upsurge in interest in portant cultural pastimes— baseball, singing homesteading in Blackdom. groups, reading circles, and so on—that drew By 1929 residents received homestead pat- the community together. Th e fi rst Sunday of ents on forty- nine claims, making them owners August was reserved for a big celebration and of 9,625 acres. Some residents fi led for 160 acres picnic for the entire DeWitty colony, featuring under the Homestead Act, others for 320 acres speeches, food and games, and sometimes a under the Enlarged Homestead Act or the Des- rodeo. ert Lands Act; the mean holding was 196 acres. DeWitty, by then renamed Audacious, ulti- Th e dozen or so leading families, many inter- mately disappeared— by 1936 all of its settlers twined through kin and marriage relationships, had sold out to ranchers and moved away.27 included the Boyers, Herrons, Proffi ts, Collins, DeWitty homesteaders found the Sandhills to Eubanks, Wilsons, Smiths, and other families. have diffi cult farming conditions— poor soil At least twelve women homesteaded, several on quality and, as late-comers, their claims oft en their own and others perhaps to increase the had inadequate access to water. In a familiar family holdings. Th e community’s exact pop- pattern, DeWitty had prospered during the ulation is unknown, but reasonable estimates 1900s and 1910s, wetter years during which suggest a fi gure of around 150 persons.30 crop prices were also relatively high (and very Most residents occupied farms, but high during the war years). But starting in Blackdom developed a small village as well. 1921, drier times returned and crop prices fell It gained its own US post offi ce in 1912. Th e disastrously. When the stock market crashed town already had a schoolhouse, and during and the long drought of the 1930s arrived, De- the succeeding decade its residents opened a Witty farmers like others could not survive.28 store, built a new church, and added a pumping Th ey borrowed where they could, mortgaging plant and what was termed an offi ce building their land, but eventually sold out to adjoining (probably containing land sales and legal ranchers.29 offi ces). As was almost always true in the Great Blackdom, New Mexico Plains, Blackdom’s prosperity was strongly de- Blackdom, located fifteen miles south of pendent on adequate precipitation. From 1911 Roswell, was fi rst conceived by Frank Boyer through 1923, rainfall in the area averaged 13.5 and twelve other Roswell African Americans in inches, marred only by the dry years of 1917, 1903 when they formed the Blackdom Townsite 1918, and 1922. Rainfall in the 1920s, however, Company with a putative capitalization of was less plentiful and highly variable, and the $10,000. After some false starts, settlement disastrous decline in crop prices aft er World 22 Great Plains Quarterly, winter 2019

War I badly damaged Blackdom’s farmers. Th e Nicodemus have now disappeared, was the Blackdom post offi ce closed in 1919. Blackdom hard work wasted and the hardships endured began to empty out in the 1920s, though cur- in vain? Each community had its own unique rent records do not allow us to say by exactly circumstances, ambitions, personalities, and how much. As Roosevelt Boyer Jr. remembered, narrative, so seeking commonalities risks “the demise of Blackdom was gradual and by losing their individual and local character. the mid-1920s it was practically deserted.”31 Nonetheless, we propose that there were some However, there was one fi nal installment commonalities. Th e larger context in which all in the Blackdom story, as Timothy Nelson homesteading occurred shaped Black as well discovered.32 National companies and local as white fortunes. Th e special circumstances wildcatters discovered oil in the Roswell Blacks faced meant they also developed dif- Basin and began buying leases and sinking ferent features and ideas about their enterprise exploratory wells. Blackdom residents, in that made them distinctive. order to make their land more attractive to major lease buyers and strengthen their Shared Context of Homesteading bargaining power, pooled their lease rights Like most white homesteaders, African Amer- and formed the Blackdom Oil Company. Th ey icans came to the Great Plains because they agglomerated lease rights to perhaps 10,000 wanted to own land and better themselves and acres, and by March 1920 the company was their children’s futures. Like whites, Black mi- reported to have entered a contract for 4,200 grants were lured to the region by the promise acres with the National Exploration Company of free land available to homesteaders. But as in a deal perhaps worth up to $70,000. Th e we note below, Black southerners’ experience commercially viable producing fi elds turned under slavery and vicious postwar labor con- out to be elsewhere, so the Blackdom lands did tracts gave land ownership a diff erent meaning not ultimately pan out, and by the onset of the for African Americans. Great Depression, oil activity in the Roswell Once they reached the Great Plains, Basin largely came to an end. Th e Blackdom Oil Black homesteader communities followed Company’s contracts and records of payouts in broad outline the same pattern in their have apparently not survived, so it is diffi cult to founding, growth, and decline as similar white know with confi dence, but probably Blackdom’s settlements. During 1870– 1895, white claimants hard-pressed homesteaders received some created a fl urry of fi lings in the central Plains substantial funds from sale of their leases. (Kansas and Nebraska), built and extended farms, and founded nearby towns; during this period Nicodemus was founded, and Assessing the Experiences of the Speese, Shores, and other Black families Black Homesteader Colonies established their farms around Overton and How are we to understand the enormous hard elsewhere in Nebraska. During the opening work expended, the risks faced, the hopes and two decades of the twentieth century, white dreams, the dangers and hardships and disap- homesteaders moved into more remote areas, pointments that Black homesteaders endured including the Nebraska Sandhills, eastern to create these communities? Since all except Colorado and Wyoming, the Dakotas, and African American Homesteader “Colonies” 23

New Mexico; this was when Black colonies at leadership to the settlement. Th ey encouraged DeWitty, Dearfi eld, Empire, Sully County, and others to join their community, organized Blackdom were founded and prospered. And schools and churches, obtained a post offi ce, fi nally, aft er enjoying the agricultural boom planned town celebrations, and spread the of the opening two decades of the century, word of the settlement’s opportunities. virtually all farmers suff ered hard times in the Th e two models tended to become more 1920s and were mostly washed out by the 1930s similar in practice as the settlements developed, drought and depression—drought that caused for the simple reason that the towns usually their crops to wither, and depression that dried turned out to be disappointing investments— up opportunities for off -farm employment. Th e none of the original investors appear to have twin disasters hit Black farmers as well as white received much profi t. So, too, noncorporate and caused both to abandon their land. residents insisted on taking part in community In more fi ne-grained ways, too, Black home- decision making, and over time their contribu- steaders shared circumstances similar to those tions were needed to fuel the settlement’s con- of whites. One similarity was that several of tinued development. Th us the leading families the Black colonies were initially organized in each community came to be respected as as for- profi t enterprises, as were some white the “town elders and controllers of daily life,” settlements. It was the fashion of the time for in Nelson’s phrase. town developers and land investors to form A second similarity was that residents of corporations to plat and profi t from town de- both Black and white communities sought to velopment. Th e prime movers who organized recreate the rich cultural and civic lives they the Nicodemus Town Company, the (Dearfi eld) had left behind (or create them, if their for- Negro Townsite and Land Company, and the mer communities denied them such comforts). Blackdom Townsite Company hoped to make Building a church, then a school, obtaining a profi ts by attracting investors, recruiting set- post offi ce, and opening a general store— even tlers, and selling town lots or memberships. if, as they said about the Nicodemus store, it These founders typically saw themselves as was “a generally- out- of- everything” store— also “advancing the race” and did not see any linked isolated homesteading families to each confl ict between that goal and profi t-making. other, to kin who remained behind, and to the As entrepreneurs, they noticed that southern wider world. Th ey expended great eff ort on Blacks’ desire to migrate to a safe communi- these community activities, even though most ty off ering economic opportunities created a Black homesteaders, like most Norwegian, Bo- market demand that they, the entrepreneurs, hemian, Jewish, and other homesteaders, were sought to fi ll. very poor. Th eir farms demanded virtually all Empire, DeWitty, and Sully County, by con- their time, and their livelihoods were always at trast, developed into Black settlements more risk from the next hailstorm or drought or de- informally, without an organizing corporation cline in crop prices. Nonetheless, they devoted or offi cially designated president or leader. In precious and scarce resources—time, energy, these cases, however, leading families played a emotions, and money—to enrich their cultural crucial organizing role, and with their extensive and civic lives. Th ey hired teachers and pas- kin and neighbor connections, they provided tors, organized baseball teams and traveled to 24 Great Plains Quarterly, winter 2019 games, organized reading circles and societies, homesteaders. Near Nicodemus, the notorious solicited books from nearby or state libraries, murder of John Landis capped off a decade-long and hosted huge community celebrations, es- reign of open killing and vigilante criminality pecially on the Fourth of July and (variously in Norton County. DeWitty was not far from named) Emancipation Day. the enormous Spade Ranch, where Bartlett Making music and engaging in other Richards and William Comstock conspired to hometown creative activities created steal 212,000 acres from the government and for community bonds. In DeWitty, for example, which they were convicted and jailed. the Speese and Shores families were known to Yet in the memoirs, letters, histories, and be musically talented, with the grown children other writings about the six Black homestead- being accomplished violinists and pianists. er sites, we fi nd almost no mention of crimes They formed the Jubilee Singers to put on within those communities. It’s not that there sophisticated, high- culture performances of was no crime. In Nicodemus, for example, in vocal and instrumental music. Th ey were in 1879 there was a confl ict about the distribution demand and toured the surrounding towns. In of aid contributed by outside charities, with Blackdom, singers from the church, according allegations of pilfering. In 1880 there was an to the Artesia Pecos Valley News, toured to armed standoff in Roscoe when whites refused raise money to construct a church building: to let Nicodemus Blacks join the party. In 1886 “A number of negroes from the Blackdom Rev. John Anderson and Deacon J. Joseph got settlement up the valley came to Artesia into a fi stfi ght over interpreting a Bible verse. At Saturday aft ernoon and put on a very creditable the 1887 Emancipation Day celebration, there performance in the Corringhall that night. were several incidents— one involving a white Th e receipts went to the building fund of the man and white woman who got drunk and Blackdom church. It is the intent of the troupe were charged with disorderly conduct, anoth- to give concerts at other places in the Valley.”33 er a fi nancial dispute between two Black men In addition to the practical purpose of fund- who exchanged shots and wounded a bystand- raising, such touring must have also been an er, and a third, a fi stfi ght between two visitors exhilarating break from the hardships of daily to town, one white and one Black. In Dearfi eld, life. Scholarship has shown that African Amer- someone outside the community created the icans created rich cultural lives for themselves only serious disturbance. In Blackdom, there even under the terrible and constraining con- are intimations that Frank Boyer and the other ditions of slavery; now, in “places” of their own, founders early on may have been junior part- they fl ourished.34 ners in a signifi cant land fraud organized by A third similarity between Black and white Chester and Benjamin Tallmadge, white land homesteader communities was the almost com- investors who were later indicted for land fraud plete lack of serious crime in them. Black settle- and perjury. (We found no records or evidence ments were located in remote areas, no longer of crimes in the other colonies.) Yet these cases quite the “lawless frontier” but without devel- are few and minor. oped criminal justice systems they could rely Th e lack of crime in the Black colonies was on. Empire, for example, was not far from the noticed by their white neighbors, at least when murderous four- year Johnson County War be- not in the grips of racist stereotypes. Th e Weld tween the ranchers’ hired gunmen and (white) County News, for example, praised Dearfi eld’s African American Homesteader “Colonies” 25 success, citing its two churches and school for American colonies ranged from welcoming or “adding materially to the educational and mor- neutral to hostile, although no community (so al standards of the community” and observing far as we know) experienced the kind of every- that “since the fi rst fi ling within the colony [ten day violence and intimidation regularly visited years earlier] there has been but one arrest for upon Blacks in the South. any off ense of any magnitude and the off end- During these years, from roughly 1880 to er in that instance was not legitimately a resi- 1925, the racial climate in the whole country dent.”35 In both Black and white homesteader turned increasingly hostile and violent toward settlements, close family ties and community Blacks. Southern states enacted Jim Crow laws, (not police) enforcement tended to result in and the fact that Black families there lived on little crime. largely isolated sharecropping farms made A fi nal similarity between the experiences of them exceptionally vulnerable to Ku Klux Black and white settlers was that homesteading Klan– type violence. During the twenty years was crucial to their success and to the fl ourish- from 1905 to 1924, white Americans lynched an ing of their communities. Recruiters seeking to average of fi ft y-six Black Americans every year. induce settlers from the South, like those mi- Th e Supreme Court in its notorious 1896 Plessy grating from Kentucky and Tennessee to Nico- v. Ferguson decision declared that “separate demus, emphasized the opportunity for land- but equal” segregation was constitutional. Th e ownership: “To farmers wanting homes there Woodrow Wilson administration (1913 to 1921) are 30,000 acres of fi ne, choice Government proved to be a particular disaster for Blacks in Land in the Great Solomon Valley subject to government and other areas. entry. Come and go to the Solomon Valley with For African Americans setting out to home- us and plow deep, while the sluggards sleep.”36 stead in unfamiliar physical and social sur- Owning their own land was the mark of eco- roundings, this ominous national climate must nomic freedom for Black migrants. Most had have created great anxiety about what they been an (unwilling) agricultural people under would fi nd in their new neighborhoods. Norvel slavery and debt peonage, and they expressed Blair, born into slavery, had built a successful their great hunger for owning land in the South farm and horse- raising enterprise in Illinois, before the white terrorists and racist politicians but he abandoned it for Sully County aft er be- destroyed their hopes. What they knew was ru- ing cheated out of much of his Illinois property ral life, and their skills were agricultural. Most by a white lawyer. Roosevelt Boyer Sr., son of of them were also very poor, making purchase Blackdom founder Frank Boyer, when asked of land out of reach. Th ey intended to earn about how the whites treated the Blacks when their livelihoods as farmers, using the skills they arrived in the Roswell area, responded, they already possessed. Th ey were farmers, and “At fi rst whites didn’t mind. Th ey were all from they had come to claim land. the North [but] they soon all moved out and left the place to the Southerners. Th ey didn’t Context and Consequences of Racism like nobody. Th ey was hard on us as they could Despite the homesteading context that Black be.”37 Moreover, Blacks who homesteaded in the homesteaders shared with whites, they also Great Plains would live on their farms scattered faced a diff erent reality, being Black in a racist across the landscape and be as isolated and as society. Th e racial climate surrounding African vulnerable to terrorist violence as Blacks in the 26 Great Plains Quarterly, winter 2019

South. And despite promises like those made ments. Empire’s closest white town, Torrington, to potential Nicodemus recruits— “Resolved, treated Black people degradingly, segregating that this Colony shall have from one to two its restaurants, hotels, and schools, and dis- hundred militia, more or less, as the case may criminating against Blacks in other ways. Th e require, to keep peace and order”—no commu- local newspaper, the Torrington Telegram, was nity had a hundred- man militia to protect it.38 fi lled with off ensive racial images, stereotypes, Black homesteaders in the Great Plains were false reports, and caricatures. So too Blackdom subjected to almost none of the violence they residents found their surrounding society to be had suff ered in the South. In all six communi- unsupportive, racist, and on occasion openly ties, only one fatal incident, though a terrible hostile, especially aft er its nearest white town, one, is recorded: the beating, resulting in death, Roswell, fi lled with white immigrants from of Baseman Taylor by Goshen County sheriff ’s the South, as Roosevelt Boyer Sr. observed. deputies while Taylor was in the deputies’ cus- Th e Roswell Daily Record, established in 1903, tody. We consider this case in more detail else- became a recurrent purveyor of racial slander, where.39 Th e case surely reverberated at least stereotyping, and race scares, adding to the among Empire, DeWitty, and Sully County, town’s toxic culture.42 because residents of those communities were Nicodemus experienced both helpful white closely linked to Baseman Taylor through behavior and racism. Whites (and Osage In- multiple kinship and marriage connections. dians) assisted Nicodemus settlers during the (A white man, John Landis, who surveyed for early, very diffi cult years when they needed Nicodemus claimants, was also killed, though food and other help. Charlotte Hinger de- it appears his connection to Nicodemus was scribes several examples; in one case, “Uncle not central to his murder.40) Aside from the Johnny Furrow,” a white, “‘time and again’ went Baseman Taylor case, however, we found no as far east as Beloit, nearly ninety miles away, violent acts, personal assaults, or barn-burning ‘where he stocked up with a load of provisions, or destruction of property directed at Blacks in and going back [to Nicodemus] sought out the these communities.41 Absence of physical abuse needy ones.’” By the mid- 1880s Black– white is undoubtedly a very minimal standard, but cooperation had grown and infused almost sadly, it is a relevant one. Compared especially all activities. Although the vast majority of to contemporaneous treatment of Blacks in the the residents were African American, town South, the lack of overt violence is notable. life was thoroughly biracial, as Claire O’Brien That does not mean all the surrounding has carefully charted; she listed rosters by race communities treated the newcomers humanely for—all integrated—the emigration associ- or as good neighbors. Black homesteaders were ation, the land company, the school district forced to interact with whites in nearby towns offi cers, the literary society, the cornet band, to do offi cial business in the county courthouse the baseball club, the Grand Benevolent Soci- or land offi ce, to fi nd off - farm work, to pur- ety, and the Daughters of Zion. She noted the chase supplies and materials, and to interact carefully ordered sequence of Fourth of July in the normal course of civic life. Even leaving speakers, with Blacks and whites alternating. aside the murder of Baseman Taylor, Wyoming She and Kenneth Hamilton show how whites proved to be one of the most hostile environ- were among the town leaders who lobbied vig- African American Homesteader “Colonies” 27 orously to persuade the railroad companies to evidently no objections from white neighbors. bring a track to Nicodemus. In these and many In Sully County, the most prominent Black other ways, Blacks and (relatively few) whites families, the Blairs and McGruders, built their appear to have lived, worked, socialized, pol- multifaceted enterprises apparently without iticked, and recreated harmoniously together. racial incident, or at least we have found no Nicodemus politicians, especially E. P. McCabe mention of any incidents if they occurred.44 and Abram Hall, were appointed to county po- We do not know all the small, subtle, or un- sitions (and McCabe elected twice statewide), seen ways in which racism may have harmed which could not have happened without major these communities. For example, the killing white support.43 of Baseman Taylor enraged and embittered Nicodemus’s ledger also includes, however, his brother, Russel Taylor, Empire’s most im- jealousy and racial animosity from nearby portant community leader. Russel Taylor re- Graham County towns. Some competition was peatedly sought to bring to justice the sheriff ’s to be expected among towns contending for the deputies, who were never charged with a crime, railroad line, for investors, and for designation but every time he was thwarted, and it left him as the county seat, but rude, racist treatment a changed man. His focus on that case likely occasionally greeted Nicodemus residents distracted him from his community leadership, when they journeyed for ordinary business and Empire soon divided into factions, quar- to Hill City, Stockton, or Roscoe. Only one reling over the schools, churches, and other serious racial fi ght, in Roscoe, in December matters. Also suff ering drought, Empire began 1880, is recorded, but several other incidents, to disintegrate, with key families moving away, which may initially have been motivated by perhaps in part a victim of racism. other factors, took on a racial fl avor. Suspicion also remains that both the railroads’ decisions Education and Generational Transition to bypass Nicodemus and Graham County’s Both Black and white homesteader commu- choice of Hill City rather than Nicodemus as nities placed a high priority on education, county seat were racially infl uenced, but no and there was much diversity within white direct evidence has been produced. communities—between Jewish and Mennonite, In contrast, Dearfi eld, DeWitty, and Sully for example— on how they viewed schooling. County appear to have had friendly relations Most white communities, like Black ones, es- with nearby whites; we have found no recorded tablished schools almost as soon as settlement major racial incidents nor indeed even minor occurred. Yet for former slaves and their chil- ones. In Dearfi eld, homesteaders oft en had dren, education took on a special meaning. to find off-farm work, which they did on Because slaves had been denied school- neighboring ranches and in Greeley. DeWitty ing and indeed were forbidden even to teach residents worked on neighboring ranches themselves how to read and write, Blacks un- as farmhands and cooks. Irishman Charles derstood becoming educated as essential to Meehan and his Black wife, Hester Meehan, the defi nition of being free. Indeed, Rev. S. P. became one of DeWitty’s most prominent Roundtree, one of the Nicodemus founders, couples, living for two decades in open violation “wore a brand on one cheek as punishment of Nebraska’s antimiscegenation law, with for having received educational instruction 28 Great Plains Quarterly, winter 2019

Fig. 4. Fletcher- Switzer House, Washington and Second Streets, Nicodemus, Graham County, Kansas. Th is building served as the St. Francis Hotel in the nineteenth century. Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress, https:// www .loc .gov /item /ks0124/. from his master’s son.” Th is past imparted an organized schools nearly as soon as they urgency and deep signifi cance to their eff orts arrived in their new settlements. In Nicodemus, to create schools far beyond schooling’s prac- the wife of Z. T. Fletcher opened a school in tical benefi ts. Of course, they also understood her dugout in 1877– 78, reportedly attended that literacy and math skills were important to by forty- five students. In 1879 town leader their own everyday needs, to be able to read Abram Hall presented a paper, “Th e Needs of and analyze sales contracts, land documents, the Race,” in which he painted education as and newspapers, and they understood edu- “the key which will unlock the door of caste cation as necessary for their children’s future [ . . . ] and consequently of wealth and bring livelihoods. But they had as well this profound us home, and make those homes the abode of inspiration: educating their children marked intelligence.” He insisted that education “was them as free people.45 the key to the entire situation” that faced Black Little wonder, then, that colony residents America.46 Hall’s passion for education was African American Homesteader “Colonies” 29

Fig. 5. Aerial view of Nicodemus from the northeast, 1953. Nicodemus Historic District, Graham County, Kansas, Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress, https:// www .loc .gov /item /ks0077/.

shared by most of his neighbors. John Samuels very best buildings in the county among rural had learned to read in secret while enslaved schools.” Wyoming state law prescribed segre- in Tennessee; being able to read left a lasting gated schools, at least “when there are fi ft een impact on him, and he served on the committee or more Colored children” in a district, to keep to create Nicodemus’s fi rst town school in 1879, Black children out of white schools, but segre- the fi rst public school in Graham County. gation apparently was not much followed in In Empire, too, as soon as the colony practice. Initially, Empire cleverly applied this formed, its residents opened a school. In law in reverse to their own advantage, admitting 1909– 10 the community had hired a young only Black students. Taylor, when he assumed Black woman, Sallie Th istle, to be the teacher leadership of the school in 1911, reversed the in their one- room schoolhouse. Th e county policy, opening the school to white as well as school board authorized a new school building Black children, but few whites attended, and for Empire, one Russel Taylor called “one of the soon the Empire School was again all Black. 30 Great Plains Quarterly, winter 2019

Th e school enrolled twenty-two students for homesteading and what would constitute “suc- 1912–13. Aft er that, Taylor used the segregation cess” in that endeavor. For most white home- law to maintain the autonomy of the Empire steaders and communities, success was defi ned schools from the county board; in 1914, for as building farms and communities that would example, he successfully protested the board’s persist over succeeding generations. Th e “loss” hiring of a white female teacher for Empire.47 of children and grandchildren to cities and ur- Th e story was much the same in DeWitty, ban life and the “depopulation” of rural com- Dearfield, Sully County, and Blackdom—a munities were marks of failure. Th e proudest school was quickly opened soon aft er settle- boast of white farmers is some variation of “this ment began, the community worked to con- farm has been in my family for fi ve genera- struct a school building (which oft en was also tions!” Blacks held a diff erent view. used for church services), and young educat- For many Black homesteaders, their farms ed people from the community were hired were seen as a transitional phase, carrying them as teachers. In Blackdom, the very articles of from the horrors of slavery and Reconstruc- incorporation included an explicit commit- tion to some better future in which their de- ment to develop schools for the residents of scendants’ lives were better but not necessarily the town and surrounding countryside, pre- tied to a family farm. Th eir “success” was thus sumably inserted because organizers thought not in whether future generations continued that it would make Blackdom more attractive farming, but rather whether the homesteading to recruits. When the board of the Greenfi eld generation equipped future generations with school district, of which Blackdom was part, the life skills and education they would need was unwilling either to integrate its school or to succeed in a wider world. build a separate Black school in Greenfi eld, Two very practical problems reinforced this Blackdom leaders convinced it instead to pur- view. One was that to pursue higher education, chase the construction materials for a school which usually meant high school as well as any- in Blackdom and in 1909 the residents built thing higher, students had to leave their home their own school. communities. No Black community was able Th ese were extremely poor communities to open a high school. Th us, unless children whose residents necessarily worried about ended their schooling around eighth grade, whether they would even survive. For them to exit from the community (or at least tempo- put scarce resources of time and money into rary exit) was required. Th e Speese children building schools and paying teachers showed at DeWitty, for example, attended high school both the high priority they placed on education and lived during that period in neighboring and their vision that what they were building Th edford. Any additional education would take was a functioning community, a “place” that them further from home. would feature all the necessary attributes of The second problem was deeper still. In community life. small communities, eligible marriage part- Perhaps growing out of the deep signifi cance ners for the new generation were very limited. they attached to schooling, Black homesteader Th e Shores, Taylor, and Speese families in the communities also appear to have developed a homesteader generation had intermarried to a quite diff erent understanding of why they were signifi cant extent, creating close and helpful kin Fig. 6. Present- day view of Sheep Creek near the site of the Empire, Wyoming, settlement. (Photo by Jason Vlcan.)

31 32 Great Plains Quarterly, winter 2019 ties that provided mutual support. But that was have accomplished this goal for the farmers and more diffi cult to repeat in succeeding genera- families of Nicodemus Township. At a time of tions without violating norms of fi lial closeness. rising national anti-Black violence and hostility, Moreover, although DeWitty’s most prominent that was a signifi cant achievement. Nicodemus couple, Charles and Hester Meehan, a white became a home for people who risked every- man and Black woman, demonstrated that in- thing to migrate there and start new lives, to terracial marriages were possible, thus poten- the children who grew up there, to the entre- tially greatly increasing the number of eligible preneurs who operated successful businesses partners, others apparently did not view their there, and to the farmers who created success- example as a realistic model. We have found no ful farms. Th at it later declined in numbers and other interracial marriages among homestead- many of its residents found new opportunities ers in the six communities. So, to fi nd marriage beyond Nicodemus perhaps only means that partners, young people in these communities Nicodemus succeeded in laying the foundation increasingly had to search elsewhere. for their success elsewhere. Th us the “success” of Black communities as DeWitty was built, prospered, and endured well as Black individuals became redefi ned. as long as it did because African American Residents focused less on whether the family families made courageous decisions to take farm or even the community persisted over big risks to build better lives for themselves many generations and more on how home- and their children. Th ey faced long odds and steading provided both a refuge for the home- must have known that their choice would re- steading generation and a staging area for the quire years or even decades of worry, sacrifi ce, following generations, whose success was likely and arduous toil. Th eir achievement was that to occur elsewhere. Th is is the broader view they succeeded not only in providing material of outcomes we need take into account when necessities for themselves but also in building a assessing what the Black colonies achieved. home community which embodied their hopes For example, Nicodemus’s town population and dreams, in which for two decades or more would eventually dwindle to a mere handful, they found opportunity and fulfi llment. and to some it became (in Kenneth Hamilton’s A diff erent way of seeing the Black colonies phrase) a “Black symbolic social center,” made is that they created a temporary space, some offi cial when the National Park Service desig- lasting a dozen or two dozen years, Nicodemus nated it a National Historic Site.48 Yet perhaps much longer, between their horrifi c past of slav- that judgment is too severe. Th e Nicodemus ery and postbellum violence and their future project, initially organized as a for-profi t specu- of greater integration into American society. In lative venture, also always contained the broad- that temporary space, they built farms, raised er social goal of creating a safe community for children and grandchildren, created schools, African Americans— a community where, in churches, and cultural lives for themselves, the words of Robert H. Knox, the Black leader building their own “place” where “Black people in Alabama, Blacks could seek homes “where were the town elders and controllers of daily there may be enjoyed in peace and happiness life.” Th eir true achievement may be seen in the by your own fi reside the earnings of your daily lives of their children, grandchildren, and later toil.”49 Th e settlement of Nicodemus appears to descendants, who went on to lead productive, Fig. 7. An image from the homestead fi le of Charles Speese, Empire, Wyoming. Records of the Bureau of Land Management Collection, National Archives. 33 34 Great Plains Quarterly, winter 2019 successful, and fulfi lling lives as pharmacists, Town,” Kansas History 5, no. 4 (Winter 1982), reprint- educators, a mortician, nurses, postal clerks, ed as “Th e Settlement of Nicodemus: Its Origins and Early Promotion,” in Promised Land on the Solomon, authors, NFL players, and in one case, a can- National Park Service (Washington: Government cer researcher at the Sloan Kettering Cancer Printing Offi ce, 1986), 9; data developed from fi les Center in New York— just as their homesteader of the General Land Offi ce (GLO) and National Ar- ancestors might have dreamed for them. chives and Records Administration (NARA). 6. Clayton Fraser, “Nicodemus the Architectural Development and Decline of an American Town,” in Notes Promised Land on the Solomon, National Park Service (Washington: Government Printing Offi ce, 1986), 41- Th is research was supported in part by National Park 42; Charlotte Hinger, Nicodemus: Post- Reconstruction Service grant #P17ACOO181, which we gratefully ac- Politics and Racial Justice in Western Kansas (Nor- knowledge; all views expressed are those of the authors. man: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016), 37, 20; We thank three anonymous reviewers for their helpful Claire O’Brien, “With One Mighty Pull: Interracial comments and our research assistants Jessica Carter, Town Boosting in Nicodemus Kansas,” Great Plains Sadie Counts, Crisanto Dubuc, and Katie Meegan for Quarterly 16 (Spring 1996): 119. their excellent help. 7. Estimates of the peak of Dearfi eld’s population 1. Timothy Nelson, “Th e Signifi cance of the Afro- vary widely. Melvin Edward Norris Jr., “Dearfi eld, Frontier in American History: Blackdom, Barratry, and Colorado— Th e Evolution of a Rural Black Settle- Bawdyhouses in the Borderlands, 1900– 1930” (PhD ment: An Historical Geography of Black Coloniza- diss., University of Texas at El Paso, 2015), ch. 20. tion on the Great Plains” (PhD thesis, University of 2. Although individual Blacks homesteaded in Colorado, Boulder, 1980), 158, puts the number at North Dakota and Montana, we do not discuss them 700 residents in 1921. However, Junne et al. suggest because persistent Black homesteading communities that fi gure is incorrect and “the actual number of were not created in these states. We do not ana- Dearfi eld residents was more likely between 200 and lyze Black settlements in Oklahoma, because it has 300.” George H. Junne Jr., Osita Ofoaku, Rhonda unusual and much more complicated racial confi g- Corman, and Rob Reinswold, “Dearfi eld, Colora- urations and cultures, a sometimes combustible mix do: Black Farming Success in the Jim Crow Era,” in of the South and the West, with African Americans, Enduring Legacies: Ethnic Histories and Cultures of Indians, and whites, Indians who owned Black slaves, Colorado, ed. Arturo Aldama (Boulder: University of and other elements unique to the state. It deserves Colorado Press, 2011), 117n48. and has received substantial and excellent scholarly 8. Colorado Encyclopedia, “Dearfi eld,” https:// attention. We don’t look at Texas, because it was not coloradoencyclopedia.org /article /dearfi eld. a public lands state governed by the Homestead Act, 9. Norris, Dearfi eld, 139; homestead data devel- due to agreements made at the time of its annexation oped from GLO and NARA fi les. by the United States. 10. Norris, “Dearfi eld, Colorado,” 164. Norris 3. US Senate, 46th Congress, 2nd sess., Report gets this $50,000 amount from a letter O. T. Jackson 693, “Report and Testimony of the Select Committee wrote in 1918. See Oliver T. Jackson to W. J. Harsha, of the United States Senate to Investigate the Causes December 5, 1918, Papers of Oliver T. Jackson, Paul of the Removal of the Negroes from the Southern W. Steward Collection, Denver Public Library, West- States to the Northern States” (Washington: GPO, ern History Collection. 1880), vi, x, xiii. 11. Quoted in Norris, “Dearfi eld, Colorado,” 145, 164. 4. Kenneth Hamilton, Black Towns and Profi t: Pre- 12. US Department of Agriculture, Bureau of emption and Development in the Trans- Appalachian Agricultural Economics, “Th e Wheat Situation,” WSP West, 1877– 1915 (Champaign: University of Illinois 61, November, 1944, 1. Press, 1991). 13. Todd Guenther, “Empire Builders, an African 5. Kenneth Hamilton, “Th e Origins and Early American Odyssey in Nebraska and Wyoming,” Promotion of Nicodemus: A Pre- Exodus, All- Black Nebraska History 89 (2009): 184. African American Homesteader “Colonies” 35

14. Guenther, “Empire Builders,” 177– 79. History of Sully County” (master’s thesis, University 15. Guenther, “Empire Builders,” 183– 86; Yorick of South Dakota, 1936), 33. Nichols, US Department of the Interior Bureau of 22. Th ompson, 75 Years, 261. Land Management Records, Cheyenne Land Offi ce, 23. DeWitty is treated in detail in Mikal Brotnov Township 23N, Range 60W, Section 3, BLM Digital Eckstrom and Richard Edwards, “Staking Th eir Archive, https:// glorecords .blm .gov /details /patent Claim: DeWitty and Black Homesteaders in /default .aspx ?accession = WY0140 _ _ .378 & docClass = Nebraska,” Great Plains Quarterly 38, no. 3 (Summer STA & sid = r0ork31i .k1l; Russel Taylor, US Department 2018): 295– 317. of the Interior Bureau of Land Management Records, 24. Ava Speese Day, “Homesteading on the Plains: Cheyenne Land Offi ce, Township 25N, Range 60W, Th e Ava Speese Day Story,” in African American Section 3 and 4, BLM Digital Archive, https:// Women Confront the West: 1600– 2000, ed. Quintard glorecords .blm .gov /details /patent /default .aspx Taylor and Shirley Ann Wilson Moore (Norman: ?accession = 608408 & docClass = SER & sid = q2h335m3 University of Oklahoma Press, 2003), 119– 21. .uki; Robert Galbreath, “Making a Home in Empire, 25. Many sources erroneously report that Wyo.,” WyoHistory (A Project of the Wyoming State DeWitty (or Audacious, as it was renamed) was Historical Society), https://www .wyohistory .org “disincorporated” or “dissolved” in 1936. However, /encyclopedia /making - home - empire - wyo. Home- Cherry County has no record of DeWitty ever being stead data developed from GLO and NARA fi les. incorporated. Private communication from Sally 16. Robert Galbreath, “Empire, Wyoming,” August Monroe, Deputy Clerk of Cherry County, Nebraska. 10, 2016, Alliance for Historic Wyoming, https:// www John Farrar, “Black Homesteaders Settle the North .historicwyoming.org /profi les/empire - wyoming. Loup Valley” in NEBRASKAland, July 1998, 40; 17. Guenther, “Empire Builders,” 193. Charles Barron McIntosh, Th e Nebraska Sand Hills: 18. “Fairbank Township, Little Bend Township” Th e Human Landscape (Lincoln: University of map, from Sully County 1916, South Dakota (Onida: Nebraska Press, 1996), 230; C. B. McIntosh, “Notes Geo A. Ogle and Co., 1916); homestead data devel- for DeWitty Paper #2,” 1907, 1974, 1978, 1980– 1981, oped from GLO and NARA fi les. n.d., Papers of C. Barron McIntosh, RG5410.AM. S1 19. Lila Morton Pengra, “Sully County Col- SS1 File 13, Nebraska State Historical Society, Lincoln, ored Colony,” in BlackPast.org: Remembered and NE (hereaft er referred to as “McIntosh Papers”). Reclaimed, http://www .Blackpast .org /aaw /blair Th e population count does not include those who - norvel - 1825 - 1916; John Andrews, “Freedom in Sully lived outside the bounds of the community but who County,” South Dakota Magazine, February 4, 2014, nevertheless relied on the community for their social http://www .southdakotamagazine .com /sully - county and economic needs. For example, not every person -colored - colony; Sully County Centennial History from Custer County moved to DeWitty. Some people Book Committee, 100 Years of Proud People, 1883– remained, while others moved to Empire, Wyoming, 1983: A History of Sully County (Onida, SD: Sully or Alliance, Nebraska. Th ough the distance was long, County Centennial History Book Committee, 1983), those social and economic ties to the DeWitty com- 283; Betti Vanepps- Taylor, Forgotten Lives: African munity remained. Bertha W. Calloway and Alonzo Americans in South Dakota (Pierre: South Dakota N. Smith, Visions of Freedom on the Great Plains: An State Historical Society Press, 2008), 97. Illustrated History of African Americans in Nebraska 20. Vanepps- Taylor, Forgotten Lives, 97– 98; Sully (Virginia Beach: Donning Company Publishers, County Centennial, 100 Years, 283. George McGrud- 1998), 30– 32. er’s fi nal homesteading affi davit states that he owned 26. Ava Speese Day, “St. James RMC Church 1,000 sheep every year since they fi led. See RG49, and Cemetery,” in A Sandhill Century, Book 1: Th e F26993, George McGruder, Bureau of Land Manage- Land (Valentine, NE: Cherry County Centennial ment Files, NARA, Washington, DC. Committee, 1985), 247; “Letter to Mrs. Walker from 21. John Andrews, “Freedom,” 2; E. L. Th omas, Ava Speese Day,” March 28, 1964, Nebraska State His- ed., 75 Years of Sully County History, 1883– 1958 torical Society, Lincoln, NE; Frances Jacob Alberts, (Onida, SD: Onida Watchman, 1959), 261; Vanepps- “Negro Homesteading in Nebraska,” in Sod House Taylor, Forgotten, 98; Charles H. Rogge, “Early Memories: A Treasury of Soddy Stories, ed. Frances 36 Great Plains Quarterly, winter 2019

Jacob Alberts (Holdrege, NE: Th e Sod House Society, he treats it extensively in Nelson, “Signifi cance,” 1972), 260; C. B. McIntosh, “Cherry County Histor- 154– 59. Our treatment relies almost entirely on his ical Society Notes,” n.d., RG5410.AM. S1 SS1 File 6, research. McIntosh Papers. 33. Quoted in University of New Mexico Earth 27. C. B. McIntosh, “Ada Speese Day Correspon- Data Analysis Center, “Blackdom: Th e First All- Black dence,” n.d., RG5410.AM. S1 SS1 File 2, McIntosh Settlement in New Mexico— A Story Map,” http:// rgis Papers. .unm.edu /blackdom/. 28. “During the 1916– 1919 period, U.S. corn prices 34. Herbert G. Gutman, Th e Black Family in averaged $1.35 per bushel, a price not seen again until Slavery and Freedom, 1750– 1925 (New York: Vintage 1946. Th is price was 135.6% higher than the $0.57 Books, 1977); Eugene G. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, average price over the prior 10 years. With the end Roll: Th e World the Slaves Made (New York: Vintage of World War I and the recovery of agriculture in Books, 1976); Brenda E. Stevenson, Life in Black and Europe, prices fell precipitously. White: Family and Community in the Slave South “Over the next four years, U.S. corn prices aver- (New York: Oxford, 1997); Anthony Kaye, Joining aged $0.61 per bushel, a decline of 54.7% and over the Places: Slave Neighborhoods in the Old South (Chapel full 1920– 1940 interwar/Depression period, the price Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007); and was not much diff erent, averaging $0.65 per bushel. Philip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture Th ere is some real justifi cation for the complaint of in the Eighteenth- Century Chesapeake and Lowcoun- farmers that they entered the Great Depression 10 try (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, years before the rest of the nation. 1998). “Th e 21- year average includes two years when the 35. “Weld County’s Negro Colony,” Weld County price was $0.29 per bushel, refl ecting the failure of News, November 1921 (Harvest edition), 60; Junne et the Federal Farm Board’s attempt to remove excess al., “Dearfi eld,” 110. supplies from the market without including any 36. Nell Irvin Painter, Exodusters: Black Migration provision for reducing production. Prices could fall to Kansas aft er Reconstruction (Chicago: W.W. Nor- that low because there were no programs to provide ton, 1992), illustration following page 100. a fl oor on prices.” Daryll Ray, “How Did Prices 37. Nelson, “Signifi cance,” 17; New Mexico History Fare Following Other Golden Eras in Agriculture?” .org, “Roswell,” http://newmexicohistory .org /places March 25, 2015, http://www .agriculture .com /markets /roswell; Baton, “A History of Blackdom,” 7. /analysis /corn /how - did - prices - fare - following - or 38. Th e 100- to 200- man militia promise appeared - golden _9 - ar48090. in a widely disseminated poster, “All Colored People 29. “Letter to Mrs. Walker from Ava Speese Day,” that Want to Go to Kansas on Sept 5, 1877 Can do March 28, 1964, Nebraska State Historical Society, so for $5.00.” Th ere is no evidence such a militia Lincoln, NE; McIntosh, Nebraska Sandhills, 237; Don was ever formed. Th e organizers’ main concern may Hanna Jr., “DeWitty Community, the Negro Settle- have been refl ected in the concluding clause of the ment,” in A Sandhill Century, 246– 47. promise: “any member failing to pay in his dues, 30. Homestead data developed from GLO and aforesaid, or failing to comply with the above rules in NARA fi les; population estimate by Nelson, “Signifi - any particular, will not be recognized or protected by cance,” 153. the Colony.” Nicodemus Historical Society, 1877. 31. Maisha Baton, “A History of Blackdom, NM, 39. Eckstrom and Edwards, “Staking Th eir Claim.” in the Context of the African American Post Civil Todd Guenther labels this case a “lynching,” although War Colonization Movement,” report to the Offi ce of it seems to us more a case of police brutality. Cultural Aff airs, Historic Preservation Division, State 40. Landis was brought in to Nicodemus of New Mexico Project No. 35- 95- 10009.09 (Santa Fe, Township to survey when Blacks could fi nd no one October 29, 1996), 13. else willing to do the job; soon aft er he was shot in 32. Timothy Nelson deserves full credit for the back. However, Landis had been in continual discovering the genesis and role of the Blackdom Oil confl ict— legal and extralegal, including several Company and its relation to Blackdom’s fi nal years; armed skirmishes— for ten years with Democratic African American Homesteader “Colonies” 37 vigilante “Regulators” in Norton County. When he 43. Hinger, Nicodemus, 52; Hamilton, “Settlement moved to Kansas he “received the plaudits of his of Nicodemus,” 15– 18; O’Brien, “With One Mighty friends and the execrations of his enemies” and later Pull,” 119– 26. his friends “were unable to decide which he enjoyed 44. Pengra, “Sully County Colored Colony”; An- most” (38). His murder seemed to have been more drews, “Freedom in Sully County.” related to this long confl ict than to his Nicodemus 45. In Hamilton, “Settlement of Nicodemus,” 2, work, though opposing views on race were part of quoting from the Federal Writers’ Project, Kansas: the basic confl ict. F. M. Lockard, Th e History of Early A Guide to the Sunfl ower State (New York: Viking, Settlement of Norton County, Kansas (Norton, KS: 1939), 330–31. Norton Champion, 1894). Charlotte Hinger also 46. Glen Schwendemann, “Nicodemus: Negro discusses the murder, and appears to see a more Haven on the Solomon,” Kansas Historical Quarterly direct connection to race, in her Nicodemus: Post- 34 (Spring 1978), 26; Hinger, Nicodemus, 84– 85. Reconstruction Politics and Racial Justice in Western 47. Guenther, “Empire Builders,” 188– 89. Guen- Kansas (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, ther states that there was only one attempt to segre- 2016), 50– 52. gate, in Cheyenne, and it failed. Galbreath, “Empire, 41. Timothy Nelson recounts the long, sometimes Wyoming,” 2. cooperative, sometimes contentious, usually corrupt 48. Hamilton, “Settlement of Nicodemus,” 23– 24. but occasionally priggish relationship between Ros- 49. US Senate, 46th Congress, 2nd sess., Report well’s best- known bordello operator, a Black woman 693, “Report and Testimony of the Select Committee named Mattie Moore (also known as Mittie Moore of the United States Senate to Investigate the Causes Wilson) and the Roswell police. It’s not clear that this of the Removal of the Negroes from the Southern was racial harassment, though, as Nelson colorfully States to the Northern States,” xiii. documents, there were certainly racial aspects to it. 42. Nelson, Blackdom.