Feature
A Visit to Loretto by the Kansas Black Farmers Association
Photo by Neil Tucker CoL
Special visitors arrived at Loretto Motherhouse on Sept. 20 from the town of Nicodemus in northwest Kansas.
Officers and staff from KBFA presenting to the Loretto Community.
Photo by Donna Mattingly SL
Nine women from one extended family traveled to Loretto to explore how their history overlaps Loretto’s history with both enslavement of Black people and operation of Indian boarding schools. Organized today as the Kansas Black Farmers Association (KBFA), the group also shares Loretto’s keen interest in regenerative agriculture. Hear the presentation of their history and work below, given at Loretto on Sept. 20.
Loretto’s visitors are descended from men and women enslaved by Kentucky planter and politician U.S. Representative and later Vice President Richard Mentor Johnson. They were the labor force at Johnson’s Choctaw Academy for Indians on his farm near Blue Spring and Stamping Ground, Ky. Their visit to Loretto included a day at the Choctaw Academy location.
Photo by Neil Tucker
Freed at the end of 1865, these ancestors determined to leave Kentucky in 1877, as reconstruction soured into Jim Crow violence. They were among the first settlers in Nicodemus, the first all-Black town in Kansas and the oldest all-African American town west of the Mississippi River.
The visit crowned a three-year friendship between KBFA and the Loretto Land Justice Committee. Two years ago, the Loretto group traveled to Nicodemus National Historic Site for the 147th annual picnic. In 2027 Loretto will again be a proud participant in celebrating the founding of Nicodemus at the 150th Homecoming/Emancipation Day, July 30 – Aug. 1.
