Description: Nicodemus was a microcosm of all the issues facing black Americans in the late nineteenth century, and Hall, McCabe, and Niles are archetypes for powerful philosophies that have persisted into the twenty-first century. This study of their ideas and the ways they shaped Nicodemus offers a novel perspective on the most famous post-Civil War African American community in the West.
Brief description: Award-winning novelist and independent historian Charlotte Hinger is the author of several articles and encyclopedia entries on African American history in the West and the novels Come Spring, Deadly Descent, Lethal Lineage, and Hidden Heritage.
Review Quotes: "In this unprecedented full-length scholarly study of Nicodemus, Charlotte Hinger shows that the experiences of obtaining land, recruiting residents, building communities, protecting economic and political interests, grappling with the moral headache of helping refugees--all on the harsh, lonely prairies of western Kansas--drew African Americans into the same divergent patterns of racial uplift, social justice, and radicalism with which they would contend in the century and a half that followed."--James N. Leiker, author of Racial Borders: Black Soldiers along the Rio Grande