Wagon wheel impressions still mark the earth of the western Kansas prairie, where, beginning in 1877, Black former slaves journeyed across the plains. Those ruts, a physical reminder of the former slaves’ brave and challenging escape from new post-Reconstruction oppressions in the American South, and their dreams of true independence, self-determination and self-governance. 

But wagon wheel ruts aren’t the only reminder of that dream; they lead to the small, unincorporated community of Nicodemus, Kansas, the oldest, and last remaining, all Black town in the American West. 

Angela Bates is a fourth-generation descendent and historian of the community’s original settlers. Bates has dedicated much of her life to preserving and sharing the story of her hometown, her community, and her ancestors.

“It’s my personal family story and it’s the nation’s story,” Bates said in an interview with the Daily Yonder.

“It’s the only town that historically represents that time period at the end of reconstruction.”

Today, thanks to the work of Bates and other Nicodemus descendants, the community and its history remain intact through the establishment of the Nicodemus Historical Society, the Nicodemus National Historic Site, and the Kansas Black Farmers Association.

Though fewer than 25 residents live in Nicodemus today, hundreds of descendants from all corners of the country return to the prairie town to commemorate their families’ stories during their annual Homecoming Emancipation Celebration, which has been held every summer since 1878.

In February, Bates and the Nicodemus Historical Society premiered their original documentary “Ellis Trail to Nicodemus, The End of the Journey to the Promise Land,” which includes re-enactments of the original settlers’ journey to Nicodemus and interviews with their descendants.

Ho For Kansas!

After the conclusion of the Civil War and Reconstruction in the late 1870s, it became clear to many Black southerners that, while slavery had been abolished, oppression, poverty, and violence persisted. 

Many migrated to northern cities, where jobs and opportunities were more accessible. Others hoped to move West, where they could build communities – by Black Americans for Black Americans – from the ground up. There, they hoped to partake in a self-determined, agrarian way of life, outside of the systemic racism that was built into the fabric of almost every already established town and city in the nation.

Against this backdrop, two men – W.H. Smith, a Black reverend, and W.R. Hill, a white land developer from Indiana – founded the Nicodemus Town Company in order to promote the town to former slaves who lived and labored in the green fields of Kentucky and Tennessee. 

Flyers about Nicodemus were dispersed to Black communities in the region. For just $5, residents could purchase a plot of land.

By early summer in 1877, several families had become the first settlers in the community, and by the end of the summer over 300 train tickets were purchased for a ride out west. Families packed what they could carry and boarded trains headed to Ellis, Kansas, the closest railroad station to Nicodemus. From there, settlers loaded up on wagons to travel 35 miles north to Nicodemus.

Nicodemus was framed as the “Promise Land” and the “Western Eden,” with rich soil and an enjoyable, mild climate. Anyone who has ever spent a winter or summer on the plains could tell you this is an exaggeration. After arriving, many of the settlers were disappointed. The land was nothing more than a treeless, dry prairie. 

A sign from the historic site bears the following exchange: 

“Where is Nicodemus?” settler Willna Hickman asked her husband Daniel upon arrival. 

“That is Nicodemus,” he responded, pointing to several billows of smoke rising from underground dugouts. 

The first winter was especially hard. Without any lumber, tools, or supplies residents were forced to make do by carving additional dugouts into the Kansas sod. Many only survived with the help of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, who provided meat, supplies and indigenous wisdom for surviving a harsh winter on the plains. 

The community was notably self-governed. Some residents went on to become the first Black public officials in the county and state. 

The organization of an all-Black township and, following that, a county organized by members of that township caused a stir in the region. “[White folks in the area] did not want all of the Black folks to govern them or the county,” Bates said. 

W.R. Hill, the white land developer who helped settle Nicodemus, even worked to prevent the Black township’s growing influence. He made sure Nicodemus was located on the eastern border of the county and that his township, Hill City, was located in the center. Hill City remains the seat of Graham County today, where influential government offices, departments, and courts are located.

In 1887, three railroad companies were prospecting the area to extend their rail lines out West. If the railroad passed through Nicodemus, it would all but ensure Nicodemus’ continued economic growth. 

Bates believes W.R. Hill strategically undermined the community’s hopes for a rail stop. Hill was “in cahoots” with the railroad companies, Bates said. “I believe his influence is what caused the railroad to bypass Nicodemus and then establish the town of Bogue.”

Bogue, Kansas didn’t exist before the railroad moved through the area. It was built by the railroad company just four miles west of Nicodemus and marked the beginning of the end for the community.

“All that hope, everything, was blighted when they bypassed Nicodemus,” Bates said.

Many Nicodemus merchants packed up and moved to Bogue, where they could benefit from the new railroad stop. 

For those that remained in Nicodemus, the calamitous impacts of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression drove more families to look for opportunities elsewhere. Some moved to the Eastern part of the state, others west to California or north to Detroit. Nicodemus faced the same fate as many other rural communities: it began to shrink.

But Nicodemus never died out, thanks to the community’s persevering traditions and spirit.

Coming Home to Nicodemus

The historic community built by the hard-working settlers of Nicodemus is being preserved by the latest generation of residents, led by the dedicated Angela Bates.

LueCreasea Horne, sixth-generation descendent and Park Ranger at Nicodemus Historical Site, praised Bates for being a trailblazer in the community.

“She doesn’t get all of the credit that she deserves,” Horne said. “She was the one lining us up and telling us we have something special here and we need to start preserving that. Without Angela, we would not be where we are right now.”

In 1956, when Bates was four years old, her family left Nicodemus for California. She remembers returning to visit every summer for the annual Emancipation Celebration.

The celebration, first held in 1878, just one year after the town’s founding, commemorates the abolition of slavery and the rich community born of restored Black freedom. 

Today, the event is more than just an average community gathering, it’s a Homecoming. For one week each summer, the population grows from around 25 to over 1,000, as descendents from across the country reunite with their cousins, grandparents, aunts, uncles and friends in the small Kansas town.

“[Nicodemus] was always an intimate part of my genealogical and physical connection,” Bates said. “I think that’s true with most descendants.”

Before Horne’s family moved back to Nicodemus in 1989 when she turned 12, they traveled from Topeka, Kansas to attend the Homecoming. 

“We knew it was Homecoming time when my mom and my grandma would take me and my brothers to the store to get new summer outfits,” Horne recalled. “We had to be fly and fresh because we had cousins coming in from California, and Detroit and all over the place.”

“I have so many fond memories of driving in and seeing that blue Nicodemus water tower,” she said.

The event was a confluence of culture. Horne recalls listening to her aunts and uncles tell old town histories, practicing new dance moves brought by her cousins from the cities and swapping stories about what life was like in different parts of the country.

Homecoming also meant bunking up in crowded households. After all, there were few local hotels for folks to stay during the celebrations. “Of course, nobody had a bed,” Horne said. “We all had to sleep on the floor. But that togetherness, that fondness and just being so happy to see each other created memories that we still all share.”

Being one of the handful of local residents today, Horne has taken on the role of host, typically opening up her home to over 20 family members during the celebration.

Taking the “Preservation Baton”

As for Bates, her connection wavered a bit as she entered adulthood. She only returned for the Homecoming once after starting her own family. But in 1979, after her parents retired and bought a home back in Nicodemus, Bates’ annual summer visits started again.

She became increasingly involved in the community’s historical preservation efforts, which at that time were led by Bates’ cousin, former halfback for the Green Bay Packers, Veryl Switzer. 

“It’s time for you to take the preservation baton,” Switzer said to Bates. 

“So I stepped up to the plate,” Bates said. “I started the historical society in 1988 and then in 1989 I moved to the area and have been here ever since.”

With the establishment of the Nicodemus Historical Society, Bates began collecting photographs and documents from descendants in Nicodemus and across the country. She worked with the University of Kansas to set up a repository at their research library to hold and preserve the materials.

“We’ve got thousands of documents, it’s so unbelievable,” Bates said. 

Bates and the Historical Society have also organized a collection of over 20 programs, as well as exhibits and presentations for every season and topic, Bates said. “From the railroad all the way down to quilting.”

Another of Bates’ goals was designating Nicodemus as a National Historic Site with the National Park Service, which requires an Act of Congress.

Bates was not intimidated. She spoke with then-Senator and presidential hopeful Bob Dole, who was a former resident of nearby Russell, Kansas. 

“And she helped write that legislation,” Horne said. 

In 1996, Nicodemus became a National Historic Site. 

The site includes five buildings that represent the “Spirit of Nicodemus:” Township Hall, St. Francis Hotel, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the First Baptist Church and the Nicodemus School District #1 Schoolhouse.

Visitors are welcomed by Park Ranger Horne, who initially worked as a guide for site when it opened in 1996. 

“I always try to get the visitor to understand how awesome it was that these folks, with just a little bit of money they were able to save up, bought their train ticket to get out and then bought a lot of land,” Horne said. “They built a beautiful utopia for themselves out here just years after being emancipated.”

She enjoys continually learning about her ancestors’ stories and sharing them with visitors through talks and tours. 

“Unfortunately, folks deal with Hollywood,” Horne said, saying that many people don’t get to see representations of Black homesteading or land ownership. “Being able to tell people about this dream — and it still is a dream for many, today — is important.”

This passion certainly runs in the family, because Horne’s mother also works to promote representation and justice for today’s Black farmers in Kansas.

JohnElla Holmes, Ph.D, serves as the CEO and President of the Kansas Black Farmers Association (KBFA), which was founded and based in Nicodemus.

Bates helped found the organization in 1999 to garner local support for Pigford v. Glickman, a class action lawsuit that alleged the USDA racially discriminated against Black farmers seeking farm loans and assistance. 

Today, KBFA trains new farmers, youth, women, and veteran farmers to use regenerative agriculture practices, and provides guidance for accessing USDA programs and grants. It also assists in national grassroots efforts to support Black and Indigenous farmers of color.

From founding the Historical Society, to establishing the Historic Site, to helping organize KBFA, Bates considers the preservation of Nicodemus nearly complete. 

She plans to retire from her work later this year, she said. 

“Angela did what nobody else wanted to do. She sacrificed a good job, retirement benefits, her entire life to live out here and make sure that Nicodemus is preserved and lives on past us,” Holmes said. “Because of her, we still have Nicodemus.”

When asked who she will pass the baton to, Bates said that the race is practically finished.

Each of the organizations she’s had a hand in will continue under their various boards, the Historic Site will continue to run with funding from the parks system and folks can continue to donate documents to the repository at the University of Kansas. 

“She’s forgotten more than I’ll ever know about Nicodemus,” Horne said, “She saw where she wanted Nicodemus to go, and she’s had to drag some people along with her, but she’s gotten it done.”

Bates then proceeded to read off a laundry list of projects to be completed: installing new signage in front of the historic buildings and other parts of town, constructing a veteran’s memorial near the visitor center and the release of an upcoming documentary. Perhaps retirement isn’t so near afterall. 

Sharing the Legacy of Nicodemus

In February, Bates and the Historical Society premiered the documentary, “Ellis Trail to Nicodemus, The End of the Journey to the Promise Land.” 

The project has been a long time coming for Bates, who wrote the script for the documentary’s reenactments. 

“It was a dream of mine back in the early nineties,” Bates said, sharing that she initially wrote the script for a project with Disney, which fizzled out on Disney’s end.

But a few years ago, as Bates was planning a living re-enactment of the Ellis Trail journey, the dream resurfaced.

“I thought to myself, well, if we’re going to do this, we need to film it,” Bates said.

Bates and the Historical Society secured funding from the Trust for Public Lands, the National Parks Foundation, the Dane G. Hansen Foundation, Robert Brogden Buick GMC, and other private donors. 

Then she connected with Nick Abt, a filmmaker based in Wichita, Kansas who was hired to shoot the re-enactment and interviews.

The film centers around the experience of Emma Williams, and her family’s wagon journey to Nicodemus. As the story goes, Williams – a shared great-grandparent of Bates, Horne, Holmes and many of the film’s cast members – was pregnant when she traveled over the Kansas prairie with her parents Tom and Zerina Johnson, her brother, and her sister Ella. 

Williams left her husband Charles back in Kentucky. He said he’d meet her there in the spring and gave her a single yellow rose to take on the journey. 

Emma Williams is played by descendant Heather Alexander, and her sister Ella is played by LueCreasea Horne.

“I’ve always known the story of the Ellis Trail,” Horne said. “But it was surreal to actually walk [it]. It gave me a newfound appreciation for my ancestors who made that trip all the way from Kentucky, and then Ellis over here.”

Horne recalled a particularly moving scene in which her character consoles her pregnant sister, who is nervous about the trip.

“Once you got in the clothing and in the place, you almost transport yourself back in time,” Horne said.

“We were walking through that tall, native grass, trying to keep up with the wagons and the horses in the heat wearing long dresses for probably less than a mile,” she continued. “But these folks walking those 30 plus miles … they think they’re gonna come to a town, and when they arrive there’s nothing here.”

Shortly after arriving, Williams gave birth to the first baby born in Nicodemus.

“The story ends with her standing on the banks of the Solomon River, wondering if she had made the right decision to leave her husband,” Bates said. “It does beg a sequel, don’t you think?”

Bates said she had seen the yellow rose once in her younger years, which was dried and pressed in a Bible, and handed down through the generations. But the whereabouts of the flower are unknown today.

The film premiered with two showings at Frontier Stage Theatre in Hill City, Kansas on February 17 and at the Old Cowtown City Museum in Wichita, Kansas on February 24. 

“I’m glad this story will finally be available to the public,” said Bates’ brother James Earl Bates, who recently moved back to Nicodemus from Belgium with his wife.

“I’m gonna be there with bells on,” said Holmes. “This is a story that adds a sense of pride and resilience, not just for African Americans, but for all of us that are in rural communities.”

Bates hopes to share the documentary in other venues across the state and country, as well as PBS and other streaming services. More updates will be posted on the Nicodemus Historical Society website and Facebook page, Bates said. 

“The whole concept of Nicodemus and what it stands for – everybody in this nation should understand the significance of African Americans in the West,” Bates said. “We want to make sure that people are aware of that.”

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