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The First Migrants: How Black Homesteaders’ Quest for Land and Freedom Heralded America’s Great Migration
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 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.
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 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.
508 pages, Hardcover
Published August 1, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 19, 2023
“The First Migrants” is the rare academic book that reads like an interesting book about history, African American Studies, anthropology, and farm life that any general reader would like. If you like books about pioneers, farms, and history, you’ll like this book!
July 2, 2024
A fascinating history that I have been wanting to know more about ever since reading Hector's Bliss by Dennis Vossberg.
Edwards and Friefeld do a wonderful job of outlining the history leading up to the homestead movement, and why it was attractive to newly freed Black people in the South (also briefly touching on the cruelty to the landscape and native peoples that had to happen so homesteading could occur). They then dedicate chapters to particular settlements such as in Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado, while reminding the reader that due to a lack of historical documents, we don't have the full picture of what happened in these colonies. But what we do have is a story of perseverance, and community, between Black, white, and even Native American peoples.
A particular photo in this book that emphasizes this thesis, is the sons of Nebraska's first Black homesteaders Henry and Mary Burden, skinny dipping with a white boy! In the late 1800s! How incredible is that! The joy in their faces (those you can see) is palpable, and it moves me. Especially knowing how segregated swimming pools were, and still are. It reminds me of how their children or grandchildren could have been at the Monson Motor Lodge when acid was poured on protesters in the pool by white owner James Brock 80 years later. How strange is history?
The authors want to dissuade the notion that it was perfect, or a utopia. Because it wasn't, but it was SOMETHING. It was something that reflected the Great American Experiment for a brief time in history.
Growing up in a white family that came to Nebraska via homesteading, I never learned about Black homesteaders. While there are probably many reasons why it was left out of our curriculum (racism, etc), a large part may be that these settlements didn't last. Not that the farms weren't successful, but, as Edwards and Friefeld argue (with backing from DeWitty descendants) is because these Black homesteaders aimed to carve out a space for these formerly enslaved people to functionally recover from slavery and educate their children for a brighter future wherever that would take them. And I think that is a really beautiful sentiment that shows the courage and tenacity of African Americans. Especially right now, in the summer of 2024, we get to see Black excellence on show leading up to the Olympics. These athletes can compete at the highest level, because of those who came before them and paved the way.
"The homesteaders' greatest dreams lay with their descendant- their children and grandchildren, in whom they invested such hopes and for whom they sacrificed so much. That would be their legacy."
I hope to continue to learn about this incredible movement, maybe even from a descendant of this great American Dream.
Edwards and Friefeld do a wonderful job of outlining the history leading up to the homestead movement, and why it was attractive to newly freed Black people in the South (also briefly touching on the cruelty to the landscape and native peoples that had to happen so homesteading could occur). They then dedicate chapters to particular settlements such as in Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado, while reminding the reader that due to a lack of historical documents, we don't have the full picture of what happened in these colonies. But what we do have is a story of perseverance, and community, between Black, white, and even Native American peoples.
A particular photo in this book that emphasizes this thesis, is the sons of Nebraska's first Black homesteaders Henry and Mary Burden, skinny dipping with a white boy! In the late 1800s! How incredible is that! The joy in their faces (those you can see) is palpable, and it moves me. Especially knowing how segregated swimming pools were, and still are. It reminds me of how their children or grandchildren could have been at the Monson Motor Lodge when acid was poured on protesters in the pool by white owner James Brock 80 years later. How strange is history?
The authors want to dissuade the notion that it was perfect, or a utopia. Because it wasn't, but it was SOMETHING. It was something that reflected the Great American Experiment for a brief time in history.
Growing up in a white family that came to Nebraska via homesteading, I never learned about Black homesteaders. While there are probably many reasons why it was left out of our curriculum (racism, etc), a large part may be that these settlements didn't last. Not that the farms weren't successful, but, as Edwards and Friefeld argue (with backing from DeWitty descendants) is because these Black homesteaders aimed to carve out a space for these formerly enslaved people to functionally recover from slavery and educate their children for a brighter future wherever that would take them. And I think that is a really beautiful sentiment that shows the courage and tenacity of African Americans. Especially right now, in the summer of 2024, we get to see Black excellence on show leading up to the Olympics. These athletes can compete at the highest level, because of those who came before them and paved the way.
"The homesteaders' greatest dreams lay with their descendant- their children and grandchildren, in whom they invested such hopes and for whom they sacrificed so much. That would be their legacy."
I hope to continue to learn about this incredible movement, maybe even from a descendant of this great American Dream.
July 3, 2024
I first found out about this book through an Author Talk hosted by the Willa Cather Foundation. Being a Cather enthusiast, a descendant of white settlers in the Great Plains, and a Civil Rights advocate, I was drawn to the stories of the first African American homesteaders. I was moved by so many of the stories but came away with an overriding appreciation of their tenacity. Black homesteaders had to deal with the same trials as everyone else (grasshopper invasions, greedy land speculators, drought, etc.) AFTER they had already spent a good part of their lives enslaved…and having their mothers, fathers, and siblings literally sold down the river. Still…their primary goals were to have land they could call their own and the ability to have their children educated. I was in awe of their determination to make a life for themselves and families after so much hardship.
If there are any Cather fans reading this, Cather’s short story “El Dorado: A Kansas Recessional” demonstrates the plight of the white homesteader during the same time period. Interesting to pair the two! https://cather.unl.edu/writings/short...
If there are any Cather fans reading this, Cather’s short story “El Dorado: A Kansas Recessional” demonstrates the plight of the white homesteader during the same time period. Interesting to pair the two! https://cather.unl.edu/writings/short...
January 10, 2024
Black migrants from the Southern states hoped that land ownership would transform their lives and help them build successful communities. The challenge of farming grasslands and living in ‘soddies,’ with not even a general store within a day’s ride, is almost too much to comprehend.
Many of the migrants proved up their claims, but with little support from the government, combined with the social and geographic isolation, their communities were fairly short-lived. Their children left the farms, and in the second generation perhaps achieved what their parents hoped for themselves - but not on the prairie.
This was an academic treatment of the subject - no Isabel Wilkerson story telling here - and I did not finish. But I was interested to learn that Black settlers were in fact part of the story of expansion into the previously native lands.
Many of the migrants proved up their claims, but with little support from the government, combined with the social and geographic isolation, their communities were fairly short-lived. Their children left the farms, and in the second generation perhaps achieved what their parents hoped for themselves - but not on the prairie.
This was an academic treatment of the subject - no Isabel Wilkerson story telling here - and I did not finish. But I was interested to learn that Black settlers were in fact part of the story of expansion into the previously native lands.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews