The First Migrants recounts the largely unknown story of Black
people who migrated from the South to the Great Plains between 1877
and 1920 in search of land and freedom. They exercised their rights
under the Homestead Act to gain title to 650,000 acres, settling in
all of the Great Plains states. Some created Black homesteader
communities such as Nicodemus, Kansas, and DeWitty, Nebraska, while
others, including George Washington Carver and Oscar Micheaux,
homesteaded alone. All sought a place where they could rise by
their own talents and toil, unencumbered by Black codes,
repression, and violence. In the words of one Nicodemus descendant,
they found “a place they could experience real freedom,†though
in a racist society that freedom could never be complete. Their
quest foreshadowed the epic movement of Black people out of the
South known as the Great Migration. In this first account of the
full scope of Black homesteading in the Great Plains, Richard
Edwards and Jacob K. Friefeld weave together two distinct strands:
the narrative histories of the six most important Black homesteader
communities and the several themes that characterize
homesteaders’ shared experiences. Using homestead records,
diaries and letters, interviews with homesteaders’ descendants,
and other sources, Edwards and Friefeld illuminate the
homesteaders’ fierce determination to find freedom—and their
greatest achievements and struggles for full equality. Â
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