African-American Settlement in DeWitty, NE (Now Audacious)
In 1855, Sally Bayne arrived in Omaha and is counted as the first free African American to settle in the Nebraska Territory. There were 25 African Americans recorded in the 1860 territorial census. William Walker, a black Canadian, purchased land that year of 1860 in Richardson and Nemaha Counties. The Homestead Act provided another incentive for settlement.
http://descendantsofdewitty.org/
(Not a lot on the site. It appears to be under construction. They a few great pics though)
Located in the Sandhills of Cherry County, Nebraska, the settlement of DeWitty was established in 1908 by black homesteaders who constructed housing made of stacked sod. These settlers farmed some of the least hospitable land in the state. The families were spurred to the area by the 1904 Kinkaid Act, which allowed settlers to claim large-but-undesirable parcels of land with poor irrigation and little vegetation. Those who accepted the challenge were known as Kinkaiders.
The town of DeWitty/Audacious included a general store, the St. James A.M.E. Church, and three schools. Books were borrowed from the State Library at Lincoln through a program to service rural families. Other supplies were purchased through trips to Brownlee or Seneca, or mail order from Sears, Roebuck and Company. During the early 1920s, the town had an all-black baseball team called The Sluggers, which played several undefeated seasons. However, by that time, most of the original homesteaders had found the land unprofitable and had left the area. In the late 1980s, only one ancestor of a black settler still owned land along the North Loup.
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/dewitty-audacious-nebraska-1908/
Though the vast majority of homesteaders lured to Nebraska by the promise of free land were white, not all were. Nowhere was that more evident than DeWitty.
A vibrant community of roughly 200 African-Americans, some of whom were slaves freed after the Civil War, settled along the North Loup River in the northern Sandhills on what's now U.S. 83. Though it wasn't the state's only largely black community, it was the most successful.
Though little is left beyond a pioneer cemetery and a handful of building foundations, DeWitty -- later renamed Audacious -- once boasted a post office, school and a variety of businesses. The school was notable because it was integrated between black students from DeWitty and white students from nearby Brownlee, which was all but unheard of in the late 19th century.
While the town no longer exists, its memory lives on through descendants and historians who share stories about Nebraska's most prominent black settlement.
https://journalstar.com/gallery/nebraska-ghost-towns/collection_f6ee5246-8cc9-54a5-8b63-7c906238b5b4.html#5
