In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Black homestead communities began popping up across the great plains as more African Americans moved West. Facing the racist history and present of the post-slavery southern U.S., many Black people pursued living in the Great Plains. In the plains African Americans had opportunities to claim large plots of land for themselves, build hopeful futures for themselves and their family, and form communities. These homestead communities or colonies typically consisted of a small neighborhood or town with centralized businesses and churches, surrounded by a larger, less defined area full of homestead claims for agricultural cultivation. Below are biographies of some of the other established Black homestead colonies in the Great Plains.
Nicodemus
Nicodemus, Kansas was founded in 1877 by six Black entrepreneurs and one White developer, and spanned around 23,000 acres total. By 1879, up to 700 people had arrived and began to develop businesses, churches, and a school in the central townsite. After 1888 the town began to decline, as no railroad was built through it and they lost the Graham County seat position to a nearby White town, leaving Nicodemus isolated. However, the famers of Nicodemus continued to persevere, and the town remains today.
DeWitty
DeWitty, Nebraska began with eleven settlers filing homestead claims along the North Loup River of the Sandhills in Nebraska in 1907. Slowly more and more started to join, with a total population of 155-171, and 56 proven up homestead claims by 1929. Miles H. DeWitty started a post office in 1914, giving the colony it's name. The settlers of DeWitty prioritized education, and had multiple school districts. By 1939, all of the Black colonists of DeWitty had sold their land and moved elsewhere, finding the Sandhills to be difficult for farming.
Blackdom
Blackdom, New Mexico started in 1909, with the claiming of land in the desert prairies south of Roswell by Frank Boyer and twelve African American men. A total of 49 homestead claims were finalized by 1929. Blackdom developed a small village with a post office in 1914, a school house, church, store, and a pumping plant. A loss of rainfall in the early 1920s and the end of wartime economy brough the end of Blackdom, with the community practically empty by the mid 1920s. The last chance for money in the area came from the discovery oil in the 1920s, and the selling of oil leases by the few who still owned their land.
Sully County
Sully County, South Dakota opened for homesteading in 1883. That year, Patrick and Benjamin Blair filed claims in Fairbank Township, their father joining them a year later to get his own land. By 1916, several Blairs, and other Black settlers, had filed claims and purchased land in the area. Many of the Blairs worked in town, starting their own businesses, and Benjamin became a member of the Fairbank school board. Families also bred racehorses. Sully County Black population estimates range from 80 to 200, with total landholdings of around 8,000 acres.
Empire
Empire, Wyoming's Black community started around 1908 when the multiple members of the Speese and Taylor families moved from Westerville, Nebraska following financial problems and increasing racism at their previous farms. By 1929, 2,741 acres of land had been claimed and patented in Empire. There was likely around 60 African Americans in Empire after all of these large families had moved in. The families that arrived already had some capital from their previous endeavors, affording to build more substantial frame farmhouses. Empire residents began leaving in 1916 following a series of racial violence and poor farming results in a dry climate.
The post-Civil War era marked a new age of freedom, and violence for Black people in the United States. While the Reconstruction Acts (1867-68) brought political and economic gains for African Americans, major pushback occurred across former Confederate states and the country as a whole. Laws, such as Jim Crow laws which began in 1870, were put in place on the local and state levels to enforce racial segregation. In 1896 the supreme court upheld Jim Crow laws in Plessy V. Ferguson which outlined the term “separate but equal” regarding the condition of public facilities for Black Americans. Jim Crow Laws contributed to the continual disenfranchisement of People of Color.
The Homestead Act was enacted in 1862 to increase settlement in the Western United States. It provided that any adult citizen, or intended citizen, who had never taken arms against the government could claim up to 160 acres of government land for free minus a filing fee. In order to keep the claim, people had to “prove up,” meaning live on and improve the land over the course of five years. Over a hundred million acres were granted to citizens from 1862 and 1934.
The Desert Land Act was an amendment to the Homestead Act. It was passed in March of 1877, and granted 320-640 acres of dry arid or semi-arid land to applicants for $1.25 an acre. After three years individuals were required to submit proof of their efforts to cultivate and irrigate the desert land. The residency requirement of the Homestead Act was not present in the Desert Land Act, meaning that farmers did not have to physically live on their claimed property.
Brotnov Eckstrom, Mikal, Edwards, Richard, and Friefeld, Jacob. "African American Homesteader “Colonies” in the Settling of the Great Plains." Great Plains Quarterly, Volume 39, Number 1, Winter 2019, pp. 11-37. https://doi.org/10.1353/gpq.2019.0001.
"Homestead Act (1862)." National Archives, 2022, https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/homestead-act?_ga=2.195919848.59302945.1752779344-59808952.1752779344.
"Land Acts." National Archives, 2015, https://www.archives.gov/files/calendar/genealogy-fair/2014/handouts/session-11-handout-5of5-martinez-land-other-land-acts.pdf.
Wilson, Charles Reagan. “Jim Crow.” In The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 4: Myth, Manners, and Memory, 237–39. University of North Carolina Press, 2006. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469616704_wilson.77.