Book Birthdays celebrate one year of a book’s life in social media posts, reviews, and more. This month we’re saying Happy First Book Birthday to The First Migrants: How Black Homesteaders’ Quest for Land and Freedom Heralded America’s Great Migration (Bison Books, 2023) by Richard Edwards and Jacob K. Friefeld.
About the Book:
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.
A Word from the Authors:
The First Migrants’ first year has been gratifying. While the book’s warm reception by audiences, award committees, and reviewers has given me satisfaction, my thoughts dwell on the journey that brought the book to publication. It has been seven years since Rick Edwards and I began collaborating on this project. I can scarcely imagine working with a more thoughtful, generous coauthor, but it took far more than the two of us to bring The First Migrants into existence.
As we researched and wrote this book, Rick and I had the pleasure of working with descendants of Black homesteaders to tell this epic story. The book exists thanks to the generosity of descendants like Angela Bates, Elizabeth Burden, Joyceann Gray, and Jeanettee Parton. My fondest memories of researching The First Migrants center on time spent at Cecil Leo McGruder’s home near Pierre, South Dakota, talking about his family who homesteaded in the area. I enjoyed hearing about his evenings playing music with his family and good times visiting neighbors. We also shared a laugh over the self-descriptive quote he gave his high school yearbook—“he never let his studies interfere with his sleep.” Cecil Leo passed shortly before The First Migrants was published. I’ll never forget my time spent talking with him or his infectious laugh. He will be missed.
The book’s success is also a testament to the great work of the University of Nebraska Press. Their attentive staff cared about the book, and they were always quick to answer questions or respond to concerns—even when Rick and I were quibbling with them over some aspect of the manuscript that now seems trivial.
Projects like this don’t take shape in solitude—especially when you have a coauthor! So, while the reception has been gratifying, the real joy sprung from the hours working with Rick and our research team, listening to Black homesteaders’ descendants, and bringing the book to publication with UNP.
A very happy birthday to The First Migrants!
Awards
2024 Spur Award Finalist
2024 Jon Gjerde Prize Honorable Mention for best book in Midwestern History
Reviews:
“Utilizing a wealth of primary sources and accounts from descendants, the authors make palpable the homesteaders’ relentless drive toward freedom through self-reliance. It’s a revealing look at an underrepresented chapter in American history.”—Publishers Weekly
“The First Migrants is an important contribution to black history and the larger history of the American West.”—Fergus M. Bordewich, The Wall Street Journal
“The First Migrants is a highly readable, lively book that not only contextualizes the homesteading movement of African Americans in the West but does so by highlighting individuals involved, showcasing personal stories within a decades-long movement.”—Bryan Jack, Missouri Historical Review
“In this eye-opening study, grounded in a broad array of source materials, Richard Edwards and Jacob K. Friefeld describe the rise, fall, and enduring legacy of the most prominent of these so-called homesteading colonies.”—Brice J. Dinges, Roundup Magazine
UNP blog 