Build It and They Will Come

4/27/2016

The Lay of the Land

By Lyn Messersmith

Build It and They Will Come

            They got it backwards, but it worked. A group of former slaves and their descendants came to a desolate and lonely region in the Nebraska Sandhills, and built a community they called DeWitty, later renamed Audacious. Six hundred and forty acres seemed like a lot; surely enough to survive on, perhaps even prosper. Prosperity probably wasn’t a concept they dwelt on, so much as survival. That’s how it was in those days, and you didn’t have to be Black to know hard times in the hills. There were neighbors who understood that, and welcomed them. The little town of Brownlee, a dozen or so miles downriver, had amenities that served the newcomers until they established businesses of their own, and interactions continued in the form of competitions at rodeos, baseball games and Independence Day celebrations. Brownlee had a community hall, and DeWitty had music makers, so there were dances too.

DeWitty residents were strong for education, which eventually contributed to the demise of the community. Young people went away to college, became doctors, teachers, ministers, and writers, and the elders finally drifted away too, but memories of those years lingered around Brownlee and became legend as I was growing up nearby. My dad, and his peers, spoke names like Speese, Riley, Turner, Hayes, and Woodson, with admiration and respect.

Stew Magnuson, an author with Sandhills roots, has traveled Highway 83 many times, and chronicled the people and places along that route in a series of books. He became fascinated by stories about DeWitty, and recently spearheaded a project to raise funds for an historical marker about it.

On April 11, 2016, nearly two hundred people gathered at the marker for a dedication. Descendants of DeWitty came from both coasts and everywhere in between, and my family was privileged to host several of them. Sandhillers traveled more than a hundred miles to honor our common roots, and the ladies of Brownlee and surrounding communities put on a “y’all come” feed in that old community hall. The rancher who owns much of the ground where DeWitty stood organized a tour for those who cared to see where their ancestors had settled, and others uncovered buried grave markers in the Brownlee cemetery for family members to photograph.

As our guests departed for various destinations, they said the weekend had given them closure, and they felt like they had, in some sense, come home. I felt closer to my own family, and more proud than ever of my heritage and neighbors.

Many people snapped pictures during that celebration, but I carry mine in my head; of women carrying more chairs to the community hall to accommodate overflow crowds, of a man with a shovel uncovering grave stones and a rancher’s plane sitting in a meadow near the marker. Of people walking half a mile back to their cars after the ceremony because of limited parking at the highway site, and children from a nearby school eating sack lunches brought along on the field trip.

DeWitty is gone, and Brownlee nearly so, but the spirit of neighborliness is not. There are memories of moments less proud in the minds of descendants on both sides, but healing is possible, and the marker celebration is proof of that.

A group of locals leaned on parked vehicles outside the Brownlee community hall and visited while waiting for room to go in and eat. A thought came to me as we stood there, and as we drove away. It lingers now, as I look back on the event.

“If these walls could talk…”