Dust Bowl Tour Day 4

We have a friend, a flamboyant, beautiful woman, a singer who can electrify a room with her voice, a person who can talk to anyone anywhere and make them love her. We’ve known her for years and we always knew she was born in Kansas.

But we didn’t know she was born in Nicodemus until a few weeks ago. And we didn’t know what that meant until today.

Our friend’s ancestors were among the former slaves who bought shares in the Nicodemus Town Company and traveled from Kentucky to Kansas in 1877 expecting to find houses waiting for them, instead the folks who had come before them were literally living in the ground in dugouts. From this hard beginning, the families founded “what would become the oldest continuously occupied town west of the Mississippi planned and settled by African Americans.” (National Park Service)

There are still people living in Nicodemus…