Nicodemus was the first school district in Graham County, Kansas. They first met in dugouts, and then in a frame building. The current building was built in the early 1900's after a fire destroyed the previous one.
Formerly enslaved African Americans left Kentucky at the end of the post-Civil War Reconstruction period to experience freedom in the "Promised Land" of Kansas. Nicodemus represents the involvement of African Americans in the homesteading movement across the Great Plains. It is the oldest remaining Black settlement west of the Mississippi River.