Share
The First Migrants: How Black Homesteaders' Quest for Land and Freedom Heralded America's Great Migration (in English)
Richard Edwards
(Author)
·
Jacob K. Friefeld
(Author)
·
Bison Books
· Hardcover
The First Migrants: How Black Homesteaders' Quest for Land and Freedom Heralded America's Great Migration (in English) - Edwards, Richard ; Friefeld, Jacob K. ; Bates, Angela
$ 25.87
$ 36.95
You save: $ 11.09
Choose the list to add your product or create one New List
✓ Product added successfully to the Wishlist.
Go to My WishlistsIt will be shipped from our warehouse between
Thursday, May 30 and
Friday, May 31.
You will receive it anywhere in United States between 1 and 3 business days after shipment.
Synopsis "The First Migrants: How Black Homesteaders' Quest for Land and Freedom Heralded America's Great Migration (in English)"
2024 Spur Award Finalist 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.