UNL researchers to expand project studying Black homesteaders

This gave Black settlers, many of whom had recently been enslaved, the opportunity to acquire 160 acres of land, cultivate it and eventually own it. In total, the act allowed Black homesteaders to claim nearly 650,000 acres of land throughout the Great Plains.

"That's what the law was really all about," said Rick Edwards, director emeritus of the Center for Great Plains Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. "It inspired people to search out their American dream, better their lives and become financially independent."

Edwards began collaborating with Homestead National Historical Park in Beatrice more than a decade ago and was the principal author of a study published in 2019 called the Homesteader Project, which examined Black homesteading communities in Nebraska, Kansas, New Mexico, Wyoming and South Dakota.

Now, in partnership with the National Park Service and the University of Oklahoma, the Center for Great Plains Studies is expanding its research into Oklahoma. The project will be led by Kalenda Eaton, an associate professor of African and African American Studies at the University of Oklahoma.

"When we think of Oklahoma and homesteading, one of the things that comes to mind is land rushes," said Mark Engler, superintendent of the Homestead National Historical Park.  "So we'll be looking at Oklahoma land rushes in the context of African American history. It's important to understand this dynamic story."

Research for the project is done by looking at primary sources, including homesteading records at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., newspaper accounts from the time, personal letters or diaries discovered or interviews with descendants.

According to Edwards, there is an estimated 93 million descendants of homesteaders, almost a third of the nation's population. The research done by Edwards and his team with the Homesteader Project allowed descendants of Black homesteaders to learn about their ancestors, who created all-Black or mostly-Black self-governing rural communities.

One of these communities was in DeWitty, Nebraska, which was settled by Black Canadians who had previously escaped American slavery. Though the town was later renamed Audacious, descendants of the families who lived in the colony got in touch after the Homesteader Project study was published in 2019. Now, they've created The Descendants of DeWitty, an organization based in Omaha that works to educate people about the homesteader community.

"(The Black homesteaders) did all of the things that they wanted to do to create lives for themselves," Edwards said. "Though they could never entirely isolate themselves in individual communities, they were the ones who ran things. That's part of the reason they came here, is because they couldn't do that in the South."

The researchers on the Homesteader Project intend to convey the trials and tribulations Black homesteaders encountered — many of those stories haven't been told yet. Engler said that from a National Park perspective, he feels a responsibility to share their stories.

"One of the things we wanted to do in the study was to look at participation of homestead projects, which were told by white homesteaders, and look at the Black homesteaders who participated as well," Engler said. "We wanted to fill out the missing portions of the homesteading story."