DeWitty, Nebraska

Center for Great Plains Studies Author

08/31/2018 Added

170 Plays

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Dr. Mikal Eckstrom talks about his newest article in "Great Plains Quarterly" on the African American homesteader site of DeWitty, Nebraska. Read the article at: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/700929

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[00:00:04.910]So the latest article that I co-wrote with Rick Edwards
[00:00:09.070]is about DeWitty, Nebraska,
[00:00:11.500]which is located in Cherry County near Valentine.
[00:00:16.940]DeWitty is the largest and longest lasting
[00:00:20.300]African-American homesteading settlement
[00:00:23.090]in the state's history.
[00:00:25.180]So DeWitty is an interesting definition of community
[00:00:30.900]because they homesteaded out of the Kinkaid Act
[00:00:33.970]which gave them 640 acres,
[00:00:37.200]so you have
[00:00:39.370]tracks of land of 640 acres
[00:00:41.920]between all of these various homesteaders
[00:00:46.030]and yet they still build churches,
[00:00:48.940]they have a post office,
[00:00:50.560]they have a general store,
[00:00:52.610]they interact with Brownlee, which is about 11 miles away,
[00:00:56.070]which is a largely white community,
[00:00:57.910]they have schools, so it's this vibrant space
[00:01:04.010]that makes us redefine what community is
[00:01:08.410]and what success is for homesteaders.
[00:01:12.820]So DeWitty fits into the larger narrative
[00:01:14.790]of African-American homesteading in the Great Plains
[00:01:17.460]in a very specific way.
[00:01:23.070]DeWitty is an interesting case
[00:01:25.550]because when we think about
[00:01:29.850]race relations in the early 1900s,
[00:01:33.570]we think of very hardened anti-miscegenation laws
[00:01:39.000]and in DeWitty we actually have living evidence
[00:01:43.090]of inter-racial marriage, we show a lot of cooperation
[00:01:47.200]between African-American homesteaders
[00:01:49.720]and their white neighbors,
[00:01:52.620]we did search high and low for instances of violence
[00:01:58.390]or discrimination and we just could not find any.
[00:02:02.830]So DeWitty is interesting,
[00:02:05.640]it is one of six African-American communities
[00:02:08.900]that we study in the Great Plains,
[00:02:11.250]but what makes DeWitty so special
[00:02:13.570]is that the families that come through DeWitty
[00:02:17.460]actually link to three other homesteading sites
[00:02:21.200]that we study.
[00:02:23.570]The reason why DeWitty is no longer in existence
[00:02:28.450]is much for the same reason
[00:02:30.610]as many ghost towns dot the Great Plains.
[00:02:35.080]Drought,
[00:02:36.350]soil quality,
[00:02:38.690]market crashes,
[00:02:42.340]but
[00:02:43.870]unlike other towns that were predominantly homesteaded
[00:02:48.570]and built up by white people,
[00:02:51.970]DeWitty was seen as a temporary place
[00:02:56.050]where they could educate their children
[00:02:57.770]so that they could go on
[00:02:59.790]and because it is an African-American community
[00:03:03.250]and we are talking about the time
[00:03:06.140]when there was miscegenation laws,
[00:03:08.060]marital partners for the children
[00:03:11.210]required the kids to move beyond Nebraska,
[00:03:15.780]so when you don't have that second generation there,
[00:03:20.020]it eventually will disappear.
[00:03:22.710]DeWitty is a really special place
[00:03:28.630]because here you are in the remote parts
[00:03:32.460]of the sand hills in western Nebraska.
[00:03:36.940]Not a space that you would see
[00:03:39.870]where a lot of inter-racial harmony was taking place
[00:03:43.020]and actually, we know that there were dances
[00:03:48.310]where they would celebrate the 4th of July
[00:03:51.250]with their white neighbors in Brownlee,
[00:03:54.420]which is 11 miles away.
[00:03:56.550]We also have inter-racial sports taking place.
[00:04:01.430]We also have some of the first examples
[00:04:05.860]of inter-racial education in Nebraska's history,
[00:04:10.670]long before Brown v Board in Kansas.

DeWitty, Nebraska

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