The emancipation of Nicodemus

Natural History, July-August, 1998 by William H. Wiggins, Jr.

The corral is located on an original Nicodemus homestead. A. Gillan Alexander III, third-generation owner of the 1,300-acre property, also has strong family ties to the 10th Cavalry. Sam Garland, his greatgrandfather, whose mother was a "full-blooded Cherokee," migrated from Panola County, Mississippi, to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to enlist in the 10th Cavalry during the early summer of 1867. After serving at Forts Hays, Lamed, Wallace, and Sherman, Garland mustered out in 1872, settled on this homestead, and later married a girl from Scott County, Kentucky.

1:30 P.M. Two hundred celebrants gather in the Nicodemus Town Hall for the Descendants Program. Louis Switzer, who has traveled from Oak Park, Michigan, to attend the homecoming, is one of those called upon to speak. His remarks echo those of family matriarch Ora Switzer, who in 1977 spoke to a newspaper reporter covering the town's centennial homecoming celebration. "I have a heritage I'm proud of," she said. "My grandmother came here in 1877, and they got busy and built a dugout where she had her first baby, my mother's brother. There were no trees out here, so they used sunflowers for the top."

2:30 P.M. With the aid of a portable public-address system, Sharon L. Kearse, from Topeka, announces the celebration's two-hour-long fashion show. In addition to introducing celebrants modeling fashions ranging from hip-hop style to Western garb, Kearse informs her audience that Nicodemus had the first school district in Graham County and that the 10th Cavalry laundresses earned $40 a month. At the climax of the show, to a chorus of "oohs" and "aahs," Barrie Tompkins and Angela Dates-Tompkins model the formal dress of a buffalo soldier and his wife; Barrie Tompkins is dressed in the uniform he wore in the parade, and his wife wears a matching, floor-length light blue skirt and a dark blue blouse with gold trim.

5:00 P.M. Weary celebrants lean on or stand in front of the jumbled mass of dusty cars and trucks--bearing license plates from Colorado, Missouri, Kentucky, Nebraska, and Kansas--parked on both sides of the dirt road. With rapt attention, the audience watches as the Buffalo Soldiers, back in action, conduct intricate cavalry maneuvers on the town's baseball field to the faint accompaniment of a military band, coming from a boom box atop a car parked near first base. After the exercises, some of the celebrants walk onto the field to socialize with the soldiers, asking them questions and taking pictures. Several onlookers are offered the opportunity to ride a horse across the outfield. I overhear one mother affirming the historical and cultural significance of this military demonstration by telling her daughter: "It's part of your history. Many blacks don't know about it."

7:00 P.M. The sun sets on Nicodemus's Emancipation Celebration. The host, the Nicodemus Historical Society, has kept alive matriarch Or a Switzer's charge to "keep things going on in remembrance of the old folks who started it."

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