Nicodemus in Kansas is the only remaining western town established by African Americans during Reconstruction after the Civil War, and it came to symbolize Black self-determination on the Great Plains. Founded in 1877 by Rev. W.H. Smith, W.R. Hill, and five other Black men of the Nicodemus Town Company, it was promoted in Kentucky as a place for African Americans to build self-government in a free state. By the mid-1880s it had become a small active town, though its decline began after the railroad bypassed it. Its surviving buildings and the continued presence of descendants preserve the story of formerly enslaved and newly free people building an independent western community.