![]() However, with more than 100,000 claimants for only 2,400 homesteads, he was not able to obtain one directly in the lottery drawing. Oscar Micheaux traveled to South Dakota in 1904 to participate in a lottery run by the General Land Office to distribute homesteading lands on the Rosebud Reservation. They knew how to farm, and saw land ownership as their way to support themselves and their families, and a symbol of their freedom and equality in the United States. They especially sought to own their own land, and realize their long denied dreams of working their own farm. Are, and henceforward shall be free.” After Emancipation Blacks sought to build new lives, provide for their families, and educate their children. The Emancipation Proclamation, which like the Homestead Act was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln, declared “that all persons held as slaves…. As he traveled the nation on a Pullman, he decided to homestead – the prairie called to him.īlack homesteaders understood better than anyone the implications of landownership on political and social freedoms and rights. His family grew wheat and corn on their 80-acre farm.Īs a young man, Micheaux worked odd jobs in and around Chicago, including as a Pullman porter. They moved across the Ohio River to Illinois, where Oscar was born in 1884. ![]() Like many Black homesteaders, his parents Calvin and Belle Michaux were born enslaved, in Kentucky. Oscar Micheaux was an African-American homesteader. ![]()
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