Former teacher keeps stories alive about blacks in Nebraska

Vicki Troxel Harris told numerous stories that she has collected to an audience of about 60 in the Student Center at Chadron State College on Monday night. She said a vast majority of the blacks she has researched were honest, hardworking people who wanted their children to become educated because they knew that was their ticket to an improved life.

“They attacked life with faith in God and humor,” she said. “They were good neighbors and did the best they could.”

She noted that one black family that had worked on a plantation in the South prior to settling near Seward made a deal with a white school teacher. If he would teach their children to read and write, they would teach him how to farm.

Harris also told of two black brothers, Jeremiah Shores and Moses Speese, who were skilled carpenters and helped build the church at Westerville, east of Broken Bow.  Another resident of Custer County who made an impact, the speaker said, was Albert Marks. He was a preacher with many whites in his congregation. Marks was just 5 feet, 6 inches tall, weighed more than 300 pounds, had a booming voice and had memorized much of the Bible, Harris said.

Billy Young was the blacksmith in Dunning for years, she said. The farmers in the area depended on him to fix their machinery and he repaired their children’s toys without charge.

Harris said one of the outstanding nurses in Cherry County was Hester Freeman, who was married to a white man, Charles Meehan. She treated many families, both blacks and whites, during flu epidemics and other emergencies.

She also told of Charles Speese, son of Moses Speese. While living near Torrington, Charles owned a jack named Pitman’s Napoleon. He acquired a string of mustang mares and raised mules that were coveted by farmers and ranchers in the region because the mules inherited their sire’s gentle disposition.

Another outstanding black was Jim Kelly, a self-taught veterinarian who worked closely with Print Olive, one of Nebraska’s most notorious ranchers in the early 1880s. She also mentioned Amos Harris, whom she said was foreman for a large ranch in the Ainsworth area.

Harris also told about George Flippin, who was elected captain of the University of Nebraska football team in 1892. When the University of Missouri learned that Nebraska had a black captain, it refused to play the Bugeaters, who didn’t become the Cornhuskers until 1900s, that year.  When the team went to Colorado to play, it was kicked out of a Denver YMCA because Flippin was on the team, she added.

Flippin became a medical doctor and founded the hospital in Stromsburg, the speaker said.

One of the largest settlements of blacks was at Overton, where 12 families settled in the 1890s. Harris said all but two of the 35 students at a rural school there were black one year. After the Kincaid Act was passed and homesteaders could acquire 640 acres of land instead of just 160, most of the people at Overton moved to southern Cherry County and formed a town initially called Dewitty and later Audacious.

Harris said the move was a mistake because the Sandhills was not suitable for farming. However, some of the families remained there until 1936, nearly 30 years after the settlement opened. The Woodson family retained 440 acres of land and rented it to a large rancher for years for a dime an acre, Harris said. When the rancher sent the family a check for $45 one year in the 1930s to pay the rent, they returned the extra dollar, she noted.

Harris said the Woodsons owned the land until 1993.

Harris also said the Benson family in Crawford and Robert Anderson at Hemingford were highly respected blacks in those communities for many years.

The program was sponsored by the NeKota Reading Council and Chadron State College.