The Exodusters: Going West to Kansas

Twenty thousand. 

That’s how many African Americans moved west in the year 1879 alone. The number was so staggering, it caught the attention of the U.S. Senate, and in 1880, they appointed a committee to investigate the mystery behind this mass migration.

What took place in the 1870s that would cause tens of thousands of African Americans to suddenly leave their homes?

The Struggle Continues

On the surface, it would appear conditions were improving for African Americans in the 1870s. The Civil War was long over, and slavery had been outlawed for more than a decade. African Americans had been granted citizenship by the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and the 15th Amendment had established the right to vote for Black men. But how things appeared on the surface was only part of the picture.

Despite their new freedoms, African Americans still faced discrimination, particularly in the South. Public opinions and attitudes lagged behind changing laws, which did not protect African Americans from racism. Groups like the Ku Klux Klan used violence to intimidate African Americans, preventing them from voting or settling wherever they chose. They lacked the civil rights other Americans possessed and had few opportunities to make money and support their families. Conditions for African Americans were so bad in the post-Civil War South, African American historian Carter G. Woodson called this time “slavery in a modified form.”

Still, why not move north? Why, as one of the senators appointed to the committee put it, seek “protection among strangers in a strange land” out West?

The Homestead Act

During this same time period, the states and territories in the Western United States hoped to attract more settlers. In an attempt to encourage Americans to migrate west, the government passed The Homestead Act of 1862. This law gave all Americans, regardless of race, the opportunity to own land in the West. Any adult citizen who had not fought against the United States in the Civil War could claim 160 acres of land by paying a small fee. If they lived on the land for five years, they could purchase it for $1.25 an acre. Increased populations from the resulting migration would help create new states from Western territories and add to demand for railroads, increasing profits.

Many African Americans struggling in the South viewed the chance to move west as an opportunity for a better life. There were rumors they would receive free transportation, free land, and even money. By the late 1870s, a huge number of African Americans from states along the Mississippi River moved west, many of them to the state of Kansas. Out of the twenty thousand African Americans who moved west in 1879, six thousand settled in Kansas. They began to think of it as a biblical “exodus” to the promised land, like the Bible story of Moses helping the slaves escape from Egypt to the Promised Land. As a result, the year 1879 would soon become known as The Exodus Year. And the African Americans moving west to Kansas? The Exodusters.

Kansas

But why did these migrants choose Kansas? First, Kansas had never been part of the South. It was also closer to the Southern states than places like California or Oregon, making it easier to get to. Migrants could travel by boat up the Mississippi River or by train. Kansas was also associated with the abolitionist John Brown and others who fought to keep slavery out of the state. For this reason, it held significance for many African Americans. One African American man from Louisiana found it significant enough to write a letter to the governor of Kansas. "I am very anxious to reach your state,” he wrote, “not just because of the great race now made for it but because of the sacredness of her soil washed by the blood of humanitarians for the cause of black freedom."

For others, it was the work of a single man that drew them to Kansas. Benjamin “Pap” Singleton was a former slave who had escaped to freedom in Canada. When he returned to the U.S., he became a businessman and an activist for African Americans. He was determined to lead them away from the South where they continued to face discrimination and hardship. In 1873, Singleton led a group of six hundred Exodusters to Cherokee County, Kansas. There he established a settlement called “Singleton’s Colony.” Singleton made several trips to Kansas with groups of African Americans and founded several different communities. Many all-Black towns founded during this time, such as Nicodemus, Kansas in 1877, were well-known and had populations in the hundreds.

Beware of Speculators and Adventurers 

But there were also people who hoped to make money from the Exodusters with misleading descriptions of settlements in the West. Fancy advertisements and brochures and articles in newspapers enticed African Americans to move west. They promised free or cheap land where government fees and rules did not have to be followed. These misleading advertisements were placed by land speculators who had bought up large amounts of land and hoped to resell it at a higher price. These speculators failed to mention that the land, the climate conditions, and the access to water were nothing like what Southern farmers were used to. Benjamin “Pap” Singleton himself warned African Americans of this danger in his flyers, writing, “Beware of Speculators and Adventurers, as it is a dangerous thing to fall in their hands.”

A Dream Deferred

Ultimately, what began as a flood of Exodusters migrating west eventually slowed to a trickle. The dream, held by many, of finding rich farmland like the land they left behind proved to be just that. They could not cope with the different climate and conditions in Kansas and other Western states and returned home. But some Exodusters learned how to farm in these new conditions. They created ways to build channels for water, used fertilizers to help their crops, and learned to survive harsh winters. Though the Exoduster Movement did not last, the mark it left on the landscape of the West persists to this day. In the 10 years of the Great Exodus, Kansas gained 27,000 new African American residents, and states such as Oklahoma and Kansas saw the founding of over one hundred Black communities. These people dreamed of a better life and decided to pursue the opportunity despite the unknowns. The investigation that followed provided our earliest insight into the lived conditions of African Americans in the post-Civil War South, so even today, we owe a debt to the Exodusters who took that risk, leaving behind everything they knew to head west.