#NegroesToEstablishBigColony | "Kansas," Rochester Weekly Republican May 29, 1919
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Negroes to Establish Big Colony in Kansas
Committee Dickers with Railroad for purchase of 20,00 acres at a Low Price
Topeka, Kan.--Negroes from all over the United States soon will establish a colony exclusively for negroes, in western Kansas.
A committee is now dealing with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad for purpose of 20,000 acres of land, with an option on another equal area, on which to establish the proposed colony.
M. B. Brooks, editor of the Hutchinson Blade, a negro paper; Thomas Owens and N. H. Jelitz of Hutchinson and T. W. Gangway of Pratt are the organizers of the plan for the colony. They have had assurances of 800 negroes in all parts of the country to move to the new colony if the deal for the western Kansas land can be made.
Negroes now living in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago St. Louis, Cincinnati, Washington and several southern cities have joined the peoples civil league the name of the organization.
It is not proposed to manage the colony on any socialistic or cooperative plan. The committee simply expects to purchase the land from the railroad and hold it in trust for the members of the organization until the final payments are made the railroad company owns many thousands of acres of good land in the western part of the state. It sells the land only, to actual settlers on the installment plan. The land is offered at a low price and may be paid for in five, ten or twenty-year installments.
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Only negroes who are now actual farmers, or those in cities who want to get back to the land will be permitted to take land in the colony. The only exception in a townsite of 160 acres on which a town is to be established as a trading post for the colony. The Civic League does not propose to establish this trading post to handle any business except that of looking after the land.
The deeds to the land will require that the settlers can never sell their land to other than negroes, and the prohibition is to apply to the lots on the townsite. It is not expected that any white man will ever spend the night within the confines of the colony. The charter for the town is to provide that only negroes can hold office. The school districts with the colony are to be controlled entirely by negroes, only negro teachers will be employed and negro children allowed to attend, even tho the negro schools might be the nearest to a white family living just outside the colony limits. All church organizations admitted are to be given ten acres as a site and only one church of each denomination is to be allowed within the colony.
Kansas already has a negro colony. It was established nearly thirty years ago in Graham county. The Union Pacific Railroad gave a colony of negroes several thousand acres of land in the eastern edge of the county. The township and the town they established was named Nicodemus.
It is only a hamlet several miles from the railroad. The negroes are all farmers but a few who maintain stores and shops at Nicodemus. There are no rulings against white men in Nicodemus, but as a matter of fact the negroes control the township and run things to suit themselves. Several county officers have been elected from Nicodemus. Nearly all the negroes own their own land, and many of them have fine homes. Their children attend the state agricultural college and are prosperous, advanced farmers. The negroes are actually more progressive and more careful farmers than many of the white farmers of the neighborhood and actually make more money than do many white people.
This colony was established simply by a group of negroes of eastern cities gathering up their friends and moving out. There was no idea of self government.
Rochester Weekly Republican May 29, 1919
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