Carving out a place for themselves: Black settlers’ pursuit of dream in late 1800s Nebraska
Not much remains in Custer County of the black homesteading families that lived here in the late 1800s. Their sod houses are gone, their descendants scattered.
These families were part of a wave of black settlers who came to Nebraska and other states after the Civil War, seeking lands offered by the government. They came here to start new lives, to claim land and work for themselves in a country that still didn’t know where they fit in. Within a generation or two they moved on, in search of better opportunities for their children.
The move to Nebraska came at a time when many former slaves were leaving the South after Reconstruction efforts ended and moving to the Great Plains to claim land offered by the federal Homestead Act of 1862, said Todd Guenther, a professor of western studies at Central Wyoming College.
Under the act, any citizen who had not taken up arms against the United States government, including freed slaves, was entitled to 160 acres of land in the Western U.S. Black settlers claimed land in at least eight Nebraska counties.
In Westerville, Speese and his brother Jeremiah Shores (slaves were often given the surname of the family that owned them, leaving many in former slave families with different surnames), each was able to claim his 160 acres, as were other black families.
Read their stories here: http://www.omaha.com/living/carving-out-a-place-for-themselves-black-settlers-pursuit-of/article_4658f6ec-eddf-11e5-842f-df85a963c447.html