NICODEMUS RISES
JOHN 3 — (NRSV)
5 Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God 
without being born of water and Spirit. 6 What is born of the flesh is flesh, 
and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.”

WASHINGTON —  Over twenty-five years ago, on February 2, 1996, Kansas Senator Bob Dole introduced legislation to establish Nicodemus, Kansas as a National Historic Site. The historic site is composed of the First Baptist Church, the St. Francis Hotel, the Nicodemus School District Number 1, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and the Township Hall. Nicodemus is the last remaining community established by African-Americans during the Reconstruction era following the Civil War. It is the longest-lasting African-American homesteader colony in America.
 
When introducing to Congress the legislation Senator Dole offered this statement.  “Too often, the tragic legacy of the Civil War was that blacks traded the chains of slavery for poverty, prejudice and persecution. The free soil of Nicodemus allowed blacks to flourish. In my view, it is important to preserve that rich heritage, so that future generations will understand the special place of Nicodemus in the settling of the west.”
 
If you were to travel HWY 24 from just north of Lawrence, Kansas, westward towards Topeka, St. Mary’s, Wamego, Manhattan, Clay Center, Beloit, Osborne, Stockton, and a bit beyond, you would arrive in Nicodemus, Kansas. You may also follow HWY 18 westward out of Manhattan, traveling through many of the small towns where my paternal first and second great-grand-parents settled and lived after the Civil War, including Lincoln and Barnard, Kansas. I have a third-cousin who still farms 360 acres just north of Barnard.
 
The value that Bob Dole embraced in the story of Nicodemus is one that we can all embrace, because it is the story of many American families and immigrants. A Pilgrimage of Churches was written as a celebration and a remembrance of the pioneers who settled across the Great Plains in the years following the Civil War.  The final paragraph in the book’s preface offers this thanksgiving for a heritage that still endures today. 
 
“A Pilgrimage of Churches is one person’s answer to the landscape of the Great Plains, flowing from Canada to the Coastal Plains of Texas, and the people who live there, who work the land, and who worship together in community on the Sabbath. These communities hold a rich heritage of faith and devotion that is an American story. It is a story we hold in common and share with many other Americans, whose families pioneered and settled the land generations before us. My desire is to tell it with a Quaker simplicity and sincerity that honors my own family’s legacy. The poetry draws from a rich literary, artistic, and liturgical language, which reveals people of faith, and their intimate connection with the land that flourishes still, caring for and cultivating the American plains and prairies to help feed a Twenty-First Century world.”
 
“Nicodemus Rises” is the eleventh poem in A Pilgrimage of Churches, and it is intended to honor a community of African-Americans who through their labor and lives are still giving back to the nation something of great value. They are maintaining a heritage of faith and community we cannot easily measure, but value as a treasure. A heritage that we can hope they will pass on to their children and grandchildren, and great grandchildren wherever they may go on their own journey of life.  We remember the past and hold it dear as a remembrance because the past shapes us as a people and as individuals. Out this remembrance of family and faith we shape our identities, we add value to our own lives. This is why it is so important, as Bob Dole observed, for us to preserve the richness of that historical and cultural heritage.
 
We live in a divided land where it seems impossible most of time for us to cherish such a heritage and value one another as a people. We have forgotten that the American story, is a story that we all share and are writing together still. How we see one another matters, how we speak to one another matters, how we view and honor our common humanity and heritage matters. How we value the diversity of America and who we are as a Melting Pot & Fruit Salad of many people and cultures matters a great deal. Out of Many One — E Pluribus Unum.

As we take time to celebrate the life of a great American, who defended and honored American democracy his whole life, let us pause together in thoughtful accord. As fellow Americans; as one nation under God, let us make a new pledge of allegiance to treat one another with a greater respect and with a gentle openness the pioneer families discovered across the Great Plains and Tallgrass Prairies of America.  This openness and freedom was and is still, the dream that is America and what we want for all America. 
 
 
July 28, 2020 — Wall Street Journal Article on Nicodemus, Kansas