Speaker: Amber Kirkendall with Homestead National Historical Park

Location: Norfolk Public Library, Room B/C

The call of free land offered Black Americans a welcome reprieve from a cycle of poverty driven by sharecropping and racialized violence in the South. The Homestead Act of 1862 helped at least 3400 Black farmers build homes across the Great Plains. Homesteading attracted groundbreaking independent Black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux and agronomist and inventor George Washington Carver. Black homesteaders also founded intentional communities like Nicodemus, Kansas, where they built businesses, schools and churches and held elected offices at the local and state level. Their perseverance and grit helped Nicodemus not only survive but later become a National Historic Site run by the National Park Service.

Amber Kirkendall is the Park Ranger/Volunteer Coordinator at the National Park Service’s Homestead National Historical Park in Beatrice, NE. In 2015, Amber received an M.A. in historical studies from Nebraska Wesleyan University. In 2018, Amber started as an intern at Homestead National Historical Park and has been there ever since. Amber is passionate about unearthing historical stories and connecting them to modern audiences.