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1865–1877

Black Homesteaders Opportunities and Limits outside the South 349
Nicodemus, Kansas, founded in 1877, is among the oldest and most famous of the black
towns founded in the late nineteenth century. In these settlements, black migrants such as
the men and women shown here, left behind the racial restrictions and horrors of the South
for the promise of a new start: a viable homestead in the West. While some whites lived
in Nicodemus, the town’s population was mostly black. Nicodemus peaked in the early
1880s before beginning to decline late in the decade. a few hundred people still live there
today. this late-nineteenth-century photo of two well-dressed black couples in Nicodemus
reflects a striking sense of frontier commitment and rough-hewn refinement. these couples
vividly illustrate the sense of hope and possibility projected by the boosters of Nicodemus
at its height. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C., HABS KANS, 33-Nico, 1-6, 069503p/.

designated Indian Territory. Tullahassee, for example, which began as a Creek settle-
ment in 1850, had become mostly African American by 1881, as the Creeks moved
elsewhere. In the late 1880s, when Indian land in Oklahoma was opened up for set-
tlement, all-black towns boomed. They offered a freedom unknown elsewhere. But
the five- to ten-acre plots on which most black migrants settled were too small for

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