"Not Giving Up Is Part of Our Heritage"

From the late 1870s to the early years of the twentieth century, thousands of African Americans made their way west. Some moved to already established cities and towns along the frontier. For others, though, the dream of establishing their own settlements had a tremendous appeal. As a result, blacks established a number of African-American communities on the Great Plains.

The largest number of African-American frontier communities were located in Oklahoma, where blacks organized more than two dozen towns. The most famous settlement, and one that is still in existence, is Boley, which is today home to blacks and whites alike. Colorado also had a pioneering African-American settlement called Dearfield, now under the protection of the Black American West Museum and Heritage Center. Kansas boasted half-a-dozen African-American communities, the majority of them settled through the hard work of the "Exodusters" and other groups of black pioneers. These new towns included Singleton and Votow in the southeastern part of the state, Dunlap in central Kansas, and Morton City located in the southwest.

The most famous African-American town, however, is Nicodemus, located in northwestern Kansas. Founded in April 1877, Nicodemus was home to 350 former slaves who arrived the following fall. The town originated from the joint efforts of W. R. Hill, a white builder, W. H. Smith, a black homesteader, and five African-American ministers from nearby Topeka. Naming the town after the first slave said to purchase his freedom in the United States, the group founded the Nicodemus Town Company. Promising that they would build "the largest colored colony in America," the company began advertizing for prospective settlers. In exchange for a fee of $5, company officials vowed that anyone could live in Nicodemus.

The creation of Nicodemus was dream for many former slaves, but the reality complicated matters. A former slave named Willianna Hickman recalled that Nicodemus was something less than spectacular. "When we got [in] sight of Nicodemus, the men shouted, 'There is Nicodemus . . . . I looked with all the eyes I had. `Where is Nicodemus? I don't see [it] .' My husband pointed out various smokes coming out of the ground and said, 'That is Nicodemus' The scenery was not at all inviting, and I began to cry."

Others felt the same way. Instead of a town, all that greeted prospective settlers upon their arrival was a vast treeless landscape, broken only by the dugouts (pits dug into the ground) that residents used for housing. As many as sixty families refused to stay and returned to Kentucky; others threatened to hunt down Hill and Smith and hang them! Those who did remain tried to make the best of the situation. Timber was scarce, and so, like their predecessors, they hollowed dugouts out of the ground in which to live. By the time most of the homesteaders had arrived, it was too late in the year to plant crops. As a consequence, settlers had to make do with what supplies they had brought with them. If not for the generosity of some Osage Indians traveling through the region, as well as whites from nearby communities, the hungry settlers would have never survived the winter.

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