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Exodusters: African American Migration to the Great Plains
A letter from John Turner of St. Louis authorizing William Lloyd Garrison to raise funds for migrants en route to Kansas, April 2, 1879.

A letter from John Turner of St. Louis authorizing William Lloyd Garrison to raise funds for migrants en route to Kansas, April 2, 1879.

This letter from St. Louis pastor and black community leader John Turner allowed Boston abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison to raise money to support the Exodusters arriving in St. Louis. Turner and his colleagues likely sent standardized letters like this one to community leaders across the country. When they asked for donations to help Exodusters in St. Louis, bearers of the letter, like William Lloyd Garrison, would have proof that they were acting on behalf of the St. Louis community to collect money.

Reverend John Turner was the Chairman of the Committee of Twenty-Five, a group of St. Louis black community leaders who came together in March 1879 to strategize about how to meet the needs of the Exodusters. By March, approximately 2,500 Exodusters had already arrived in St. Louis and thousands more continued to arrive over the coming months. Most were greeted by members of the St. Louis black community on their arrival, and at least two-thirds of Exoduster arrivals were housed and fed at St. Louis’s black churches until their travel to Kansas could be arranged. The St. Louis black community received little financial support from white St. Louisans, so they reached out to black communities and former abolitionists across the country to raise the funds necessary to provide food, shelter, clothing, and transportation for the Exodusters.

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Citation Information
Turner, John, “Letter from John Turner, St. Louis, [Missouri], to William Lloyd Garrison, 1879 April 2,” Digital Public Library of America, https://dp.la/item/5c832dd0a40b7672bdbd8a6e941e226e.
Note: These citations are programmatically generated and may be incomplete.
Courtesy of Boston Public Library via Digital Commonwealth.

Tips for Students

For this source, consider:

  • the author's point of view
  • the author's purpose
  • historical context
  • audience

Item 7 of 15 in the Primary Source Set Exodusters: African American Migration to the Great Plains

Previous ItemNext Item
An illustration from Harper’s Weekly depicting white men subjecting a black man to violent intimidation while voting, 1876.
An 1875 newspaper article inviting Tennessee’s African American residents to participate in a state convention about migration to Kansas.
A photograph of Benjamin “Pap” Singleton, 1880.
A broadside distributed by Benjamin Singleton advertising migration to Kansas, 1878.
A sheet of lyrics for a song entitled, “The Land that Gives Birth to Freedom,” about leaving Tennessee for Kansas, 1877.
A map showing black towns and settlements in Kansas and Oklahoma in 1900.
A letter from John Turner of St. Louis authorizing William Lloyd Garrison to raise funds for migrants en route to Kansas, April 2, 1879.
A print from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper depicting African Americans en route to Kansas via St. Louis, 1879.
A photograph of a crowded steamboat with migration organizers Benjamin Singleton and S. A. McClure superimposed in the foreground.
An illustration from Harper’s Weekly entitled, “The Negro Exodus: The Old Style and the New,” May 1, 1880.
An excerpt from the Second Report of the Kansas Freedmen’s Relief Association, 1880.
A 1910 photograph of Elsie and Lela Scott, children of Exodusters John and Julia Scott, who settled in Stafford County, Kansas.
A photograph of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Nicodemus, Kansas.
An excerpt from an 1887 map of Graham County, Kansas, including Nicodemus, an African American community founded in 1877.
An excerpt from Benjamin Singleton’s testimony before Congress, 1880.

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