US History

The Development of the Industrial United States (1870-1900)

African Americans

Migration

This collection uses primary sources to explore the Exoduster movement.

Teaching Guide: Exploring the Exoduster Movement

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.

Resources

1. [To Kansas](http://www.inmotionaame.org/migrations/topic.cfm?migration=6&topic=4), *In Motion: The African American Migration Experience*, The New York Public Library. 
2. “[Seeking the Promised Land: African American Migrations to Kansas](http://www.civilwaronthewesternborder.org/essay/seeking-promised-land-african-american-migrations-kansas#),” *Civil War on the Western Border*, Kansas City Public Library.  
3. “[Exodus to Kansas](https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2008/summer/exodus.html),” *Prologue Magazine*, Summer 2008. 
4. [Western Migration and Homesteading](https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african/afam009.html), *The African-American Mosaic*, Library of Congress.  

Overview

When Reconstruction ended in 1877, southern whites used violence, economic exploitation, discriminatory laws called Black Codes, and political disenfranchisement to subjugate African Americans and undo their gains during Reconstruction. Kansas and other destinations on the Great Plains represented a chance to start a new life. Kansas had fought to be a free state and, with the [Homestead Act of 1862](https://dp.la/primary-source-sets/sets/the-homestead-acts), the region offered lots of land at low cost. As a result, between the late 1870s and early 1880s, more than 20,000 African Americans left the South for Kansas, the Oklahoma Territory, and elsewhere on the Great Plains in a migration known as the “Great Exodus.” 

These African American migrants, or Exodusters, came primarily from Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Tennessee. Some participated in organized recruitment efforts to establish black colonies in Kansas. Others just picked up and left, often traveling by steamboat to St. Louis, where they received help to get the rest of the way. One prominent promoter of the Exodus was Benjamin “Pap” Singleton, who organized several colonies in Kansas and recruited African Americans from Tennessee to move there. The peak of the Exodus occurred in the spring of 1879 when 6,000 migrants arrived in Kansas in only a few months. 

For many Exodusters, the “promised land” of Kansas proved more punishing than they had hoped; the land was difficult to cultivate, and building homes and businesses with few resources proved challenging. The Exodus slowed in the 1880s and, by 1900, the population of many of the rural Exoduster towns and settlements began to decline. 

The Exodus demonstrated that formerly enslaved people were claiming their freedom of movement—the power to decide where they would travel and live that slavery had denied them. In doing so, they sought better lives for themselves and rejected the violent white supremacist regime that was taking hold in the post-Reconstruction South. The predominantly black communities the Exodusters created provided important models of black self-government and community building in the West at the end of the nineteenth century.

English

Exodusters: African American Migration to the Great Plains

exodusters_14_b50bba1763e6a48ca7e4486f98808f12.jpg

Everts & Co, L.H., excerpt from “Graham Co., Kansas,” Digital Public Library of America, https://dp.la/item/b50bba1763e6a48ca7e4486f98808f12.

The town of Nicodemus, Kansas was founded by a group of African Americans from Kentucky in 1877 as one of the first all-black communities in Kansas. By the 1880s, Nicodemus had several hundred residents, some stores and businesses, a post office, churches, and a school. Part of the appeal for Exodusters to move to a settlement like Nicodemus was the opportunity to claim tracts of land under the Homestead Act. This map of Nicodemus suggests both a small town in the shaded area and expansive surrounding land (shaded in green).

An excerpt from an 1887 map of Graham County, Kansas, including Nicodemus, an African American community founded in 1877.

Cite this item

Tips for Students

Item 14 of 15 in the Primary Source Set Exodusters: African American Migration to the Great Plains