Exodusters

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The number one cause of black migration out of the South at this time was to escape racial violence or "bulldozing" by white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the White League, as well as widespread repression under the Black Codes, discriminatory laws that rendered blacks second-class citizens after Reconstruction ended.{{cite book |last=Gates |first=Henry Louis |author-link=Henry Louis Gates |title=Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience |publisher=Basic Civitas Books |year=1999 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/africanaencyclop00appi/page/722 722] |isbn=0-465-00071-1 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/africanaencyclop00appi/page/722 }} Vigilantes operated with almost total impunity, and no other issue was of more importance to the majority of southern blacks living in the countryside. Given the extreme level of discrimination and violent intimidation blacks faced in the rural South, the Exodusters can be accurately described as refugees.

Although blacks greatly outnumbered whites in Louisiana, black armed resistance was practically inconceivable. According to William Murrell in testimony given to the United States Senate, "the white people in Louisiana are better armed and equipped now than during the war".{{cite book|last1=Painter|first1=Nell Irvin|title=Exodusters|date=1976|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|location=New York, NY|page=23}} As evidence of the frightening lawlessness, which empowered the terrorist activities of the White League in the mid-1870s, the League "managed to seize a huge cache of arms from the arsenal in New Orleans [...] worth about $67,000" stolen directly from the United States government.

The Exodusters were not only fleeing extremist groups like the KKK. In fact, throughout Reconstruction a majority of the southern white population continued to resent black emancipation, resulting in an oppressive environment perpetuated by all segments of white society.{{cite book|last1=Painter|first1=Nell Irvin|title=Exodusters|date=1976|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|location=New York, NY|page=17}} Most black migration, including the Exodus of 1879, was spurred on by the dire economic prospects of black labor in the rural South. The depression of the 1870s served to exacerbate the racist policies of white merchants and planters, who sought to offset their agricultural losses by increasing prices and interest rates for blacks.{{cite book|last1=Painter|first1=Nell Irvin|title=Exodusters|date=1976|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|location=New York, NY|page=62}}

Most southern states completely undermined federal Reconstruction efforts to promote landowning as the blacks' ticket to economic freedom and equality. For example, in 1865 the Mississippi Black Code outlawed the selling or leasing of land to blacks.{{cite book|last1=Painter|first1=Nell Irvin|title=Exodusters|date=1976|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|location=New York, NY|page=7}} As a result, in large parts of Mississippi, less than 1 in 100 black workers owned land or a house.{{cite book|last1=Painter|first1=Nell Irvin|title=Exodusters|date=1976|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|location=New York, NY|page=68}}

In the aftermath of the Compromise of 1877 and the traumatic political campaigns of 1878 in Louisiana, the plight of organized black resistance had reached a point of hopelessness, leading to the Exodus of 1879. Political and economic oppression was enforced by means both legal and illegal, on the streets and in contracts, at both the local and federal levels. Grassroots black political activism, exemplified by the leadership of Henry Adams in Louisiana, functioned only in total secrecy and at great risk of assassination. Such efforts were eventually pushed out of rural communities and into New Orleans, where many organizers including Adams found themselves exiled.{{cite book|last1=Painter|first1=Nell Irvin|title=Exodusters|date=1976|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|location=New York, NY|page=133}}

The Exoduster movement has been characterized as an example of millenarianism, in that many Exodusters created settlements they believed to be their new Promised Land. That the journey of these refugees was termed an "exodus", a word taken from the Old Testament in reference to the Jews' flight from Egypt, indicates that the movement had spiritual motivations. The millenarian aspect of the Exodus was most realized in Tennessee, where Benjamin "Pap" Singleton's boisterous proselytizing mostly found an enthusiastic black following and a more amenable white audience.{{cite book|last1=Painter|first1=Nell Irvin|title=Exodusters|date=1976|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|location=New York, NY|pages=110–111}}File:Exoduster handbill.jpg

While the roles of community leaders like Singleton and Adams, white facilitators like Thomas W. Conway, formal politicians, and white philanthropists were in some ways crucial to the Exodus, the migration ultimately came about as a result of the collective misery of black southerners and the individual inquiry and initiative taken in response by would-be migrants. Black political leaders at the time, such as Adams and Singleton at the local level and Frederick Douglass and Mississippi Senator Blanche K. Bruce at the national level, were limited in their ability to influence the southern black populace. For this reason, during the post-Reconstruction period, blacks did not enjoy any truly representative national leadership.{{cite book|last1=Painter|first1=Nell Irvin|title=Exodusters|date=1976|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|location=New York, NY|page=27}}

Before the Exodus of 1879 to Kansas, southern blacks convened to discuss the option of emigration both formally and informally.{{cite book|last1=Painter|first1=Nell Irvin|title=Exodusters|date=1976|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|location=New York, NY|page=89}} Delegates from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, Arkansas, and Georgia met at a New Orleans conference in 1875 and discussed black emigration to western territories and Liberia.{{cite book|last1=Painter|first1=Nell Irvin|title=Exodusters|date=1976|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|location=New York, NY|page=83}} Black settlement outside of the South as a result of emigration was termed "colonization", and the New Orleans committee meeting became a full-fledged organization dubbed "The Colonization Council". The Council held its first public meetings in 1877.{{cite book|last1=Painter|first1=Nell Irvin|title=Exodusters|date=1976|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|location=New York, NY|page=87}} Council meetings consisted of speechmaking and petition writing and signing, with some 98,000 men, women, and children from Louisiana signed onto emigration lists.

Liberia proved an unrealistic destination for black refugees financially and logistically. As the land of John Brown, Kansas had fought bitterly for its Free State status, and took its fair treatment of black immigrants as a point of pride.{{cite book|last1=Painter|first1=Nell Irvin|title=Exodusters|date=1976|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|location=New York, NY|page=159}}{{cite book|last1=Painter|first1=Nell Irvin|title=Exodusters|date=1976|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|location=New York, NY|page=231}} Kansas did not actively encourage the Exodusters, but its equal-opportunity stance was more welcoming than most of the country.

The most successful of the Exodusters were those who moved to urban centers and found work as domestic or trade workers.{{cite web|title=Exodusters|url=http://www.fofweb.com/History/MainPrintPage.asp?iPin=EAHR6116&DataType=AmericanHistory |website=www.fofweb.com |publisher=Facts on File History Database}} Almost all of the Exodusters who attempted to homestead in the countryside settled in the Kansas uplands, which presented the most formidable obstacles to small-scale farmers.{{cite journal |last1=Hickey |first1=Joseph V. |title="Pap" Singleton's Dunlap Colony: Relief Agencies and the Failure of a Black Settlement in Eastern Kansas |journal=Great Plains Quarterly |date=Winter 1991 |volume=11 |issue=1 |url=http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/636/ |publisher=Center for Great Plains Studies |location=University of Nebraska-Lincoln}} The uplands were the only lands available for purchase after the squatters, railroads, and speculators had taken the best farmland. Given the agricultural challenge of farming these lands, many Exodusters were still destitute a year after their arrival.{{cite book|last1=Quintard|first1=Taylor|title=In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528-1990|date=1998|publisher=W. W. Norton|location=New York, NY}}

The Exodus of 1879 consisted mostly of refugees fleeing Mississippi and Louisiana between March and May and Texas later in the year.{{cite book|last1=Painter|first1=Nell Irvin|title=Exodusters|date=1976|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|location=New York, NY|page=185}} There was considerable uncertainty at the time as to the actual number of Exodusters that arrived in St. Louis. However, the Colored Relief Board estimated that about 20,000 Exodusters reached the city between 1879 and 1880; the St. Louis Globe-Democrat quoted 6,206 arriving between March and April 1879 alone.{{cite book|last1=Painter|first1=Nell Irvin|title=Exodusters|date=1976|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|location=New York, NY|page=184}}

Many steamboat captains refused to carry migrants across the Missouri River, and thousands of Exodusters found themselves stranded for months in St. Louis.{{cite book |last1=White |first1=Richard |title="It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own": A History of the American West |date=1991 |publisher=University of Oklahoma Press |location=Norman, OK |page=198}} Black churches in St. Louis, together with eastern philanthropists, formed the Colored Relief Board and the Kansas Freedmen's Aid Society to help those stranded in St. Louis reach Kansas. In contrast to fundraising success in Kansas, "St. Louis officials discouraged the Exodusters whenever possible",{{cite book|last1=Painter|first1=Nell Irvin|title=Exodusters|date=1976|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|location=New York, NY|page=232}} and therefore the burden of providing for stranded Exodusters fell entirely on the St. Louis black community. Other private relief organizations were funded by Quakers and other abolitionists in northern states and England. The Kansas Freedman's Aid Society raised some $70,000 in support of Exoduster migration and settlement, $13,000 of which came from England.

The failure of federal and state governments to financially support black migrants can be attributed to both bureaucratic incompetence (as in the case of the mayor of Kansas being denied temporary assistance from the secretary of war due to congressional jurisdiction) and to nineteenth-century preferences for limited government.{{cite book|last1=Painter|first1=Nell Irvin|title=Exodusters|date=1976|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|location=New York, NY|page=233}} At the local level, Topeka Mayor Michael C. Case refused to spend municipal funds to aid Exodusters, believing that the money would be better spent to return them to the South. Moreover, much of the poor white population resented the extent of relief efforts aimed at helping immigrant blacks.

The political response of southern white Democrats, and of some conservative "representative" black men, was one of disgust and incomprehension. They distrusted the intentions of white philanthropy in aiding black migration; in fact, they were convinced of ulterior motives.{{cite book|last1=Painter|first1=Nell Irvin|title=Exodusters|date=1976|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|location=New York, NY|page=253}} They denied outright claims of economic hardship and political oppression as motivating factors for black flight. They attributed feelings of discontent to a small group of leading black rabble-rousers and outside white meddling. In solidarity, the Democratic party as a whole "refused to admit to the fact of Southern lawlessness because many of the crimes had been perpetrated by Democrats, usually for their party's own advancement".{{cite book|last1=Painter|first1=Nell Irvin|title=Exodusters|date=1976|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|location=New York, NY|page=254}} In contrast, the Senate minority opinion, represented in a report by Minnesota Senator William Windom and New Hampshire Senator Henry W. Blair, utilized the direct testimony of prominent black figures and sided with them. Ultimately, though, the Democratic majority in Congress ensured that no legislation would be passed in support of the Exodus Movement.{{cite book|last1=Painter|first1=Nell Irvin|title=Exodusters|date=1976|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|location=New York, NY|page=255}} Appropriation bills for refugee aid introduced by Kansas Senator John J. Ingalls and Ohio Representative James A. Garfield died in committee.{{cite book|last1=Painter|first1=Nell Irvin|title=Exodusters|date=1976|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|location=New York, NY|page=250}}

Senate investigations debated whether or not black migration fit into a greater conspiratorial political scheme on the part of Republicans, who were thought to be packing swing states to increase their chances of success in the upcoming 1880 presidential election, which Republicans did win. Such accusations, lobbed in particular at Kansas Governor St. John and Thomas Conway, were only seriously considered at the end of 1879, when more attention was being given to the black migrants from North Carolina, who, unable to reach Kansas, were being redirected to Indiana.{{cite book|last1=Painter|first1=Nell Irvin|title=Exodusters|date=1976|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|location=New York, NY|page=252}}

The Exodus was not universally praised by African Americans; indeed, Republican statesman Frederick Douglass, a former slave who escaped captivity, was a critic of the movement.{{cite book |editor-last=Romero |editor-first=Patricia W. |title=I Too Am America: Documents from 1619 to the Present |publisher=Publishers Agency |year=1978 |page=[https://archive.org/details/itooamamericadoc0000unse/page/150 150] |isbn=0-87781-206-3 |oclc=4662987 |url=https://archive.org/details/itooamamericadoc0000unse/page/150 }} Douglass did not disagree with the Exodusters in principle, but he felt that the movement was ill-timed and poorly organized.{{cite book |last=Sernett |first=Milton C. |author-link=Milton C. Sernett |title=Bound for the Promised Land: African American Religion and the Great Migration |publisher=Duke University Press |year=1997 |pages=14 |isbn=0-8223-1993-4}}

Although the Exodus of 1879 saw a high volume of black migration during a shorter period of time, most of the black migration to Kansas occurred steadily throughout the decade. The black population of Kansas increased by some 26,000 people during the 1870s.{{cite book|last1=Painter|first1=Nell Irvin|title=Exodusters|date=1976|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|location=New York, NY|page=146}} Historian Nell Painter further asserts that "the sustained migration of some 9,500 Blacks from Tennessee and Kentucky to Kansas during the decade far exceeded the much publicized migration of 1879, which netted no more than about 4,000 people from Louisiana".{{cite book|last1=Painter|first1=Nell Irvin|title=Exodusters|date=1976|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|location=New York, NY|page=147}} During the 1870s and the decade that followed, blacks bought more than {{convert|20000|acre|km2}} of land in Kansas, and several of the settlements established during this time (e.g., Nicodemus, Kansas, which was founded in 1877) still exist today.

Of note, however, western migration of African-Americans was not limited to the Exoduster period, and places like Quindaro, Kansas, thrived for some period before, during, and after the Exoduster movement.{{citation needed|date=February 2013}} Similarly, in the early 20th century, black migrations to the American West and Southwest would continue, and several additional all-black towns would be established, especially in Indian Territory, which would become the state of Oklahoma.{{citation needed|date=February 2013}}

The impact of the Exoduster migration on subsequent white treatment of African Americans was mixed. On the one hand, the exodus did little to alleviate the national propensity for violence towards blacks. From the 1880s through the 1930s, the lynching of African Americans increased, and some 3,000 lynchings took place during that period nationwide.{{cite web |last=Warren |first=Kim |title=Seeking the Promised Land: African American Migrations to Kansas |url=http://www.civilwaronthewesternborder.org/essay/seeking-promised-land-african-american-migrations-kansas |website=Civil War on the Western Border: The Missouri-Kansas Conflict, 1854-1865 |publisher=Kansas City Public Library}} On the other hand, the Exoduster migration seems to have had some impact on labor relations between southern black farm workers and their white employers. Temporary benefits accorded to counties with the highest black labor scarcity included better price terms in leasing contracts and shrinking long-term contract commitments.{{cite book|last1=Painter|first1=Nell Irvin|title=Exodusters|date=1976|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|location=New York, NY|page=210}}

• Gabriel's Story, by David Anthony Durham
• Paradise, by Toni Morrison
• Justin and the Best Biscuits in the World, by Mildred Pitts Walker
• Why the Dark Man Cries, by Connie Fredricks

• Freedmen's town
• Camp Nelson Heritage National Monument
• African American settlements in Western Canada
• Great Migration (African American)

{{reflist|30em}}

• Campney, Brent M. S. (September 6, 2007) "[http://southernspaces.org/2007/not-dixie-imagined-south-kansas-free-state-narrative-and-rhetoric-racist-violence "This is Not Dixie:" The Imagined South, the Kansas Free State Narrative, and the Rhetoric of Racist Violence.]" Southern Spaces. ISSN 1551-2754.
• Davis, Damani. (Summer 2008). "[https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2008/summer/exodus.html Exodus to Kansas: The 1880 Senate Investigation of the Beginnings of the African American Migration from the South.]" Prologue Vol. 40, No. 2.
• Katz, William (1987). The Black West. Seattle: Open Hand Publishing.
• Moore, Shirley; Taylor, Quintard (2003). African American Women Confront the West, 1600-2000. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.
• Ravage, John W. (1997). Black Pioneers. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
• Savage, W. Sherman (1976). Blacks in the West. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
• Woods, Randall B. (1998). "Integration, Exclusion, or Segregation? The "Color Line" in Kansas, 1878-1900." Billington, Monroe Lee; Hardaway, Roger D., eds. African Americans on the Western Frontier. Niwot, CO: University Press of Colorado.
• Woodson, Carter G. (1969). A Century of Negro Migration. New York: Russell and Russell.

{{NIE Poster|Negro Exodus}}

• [https://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/program/episodes/seven/theexodust.htm (PBS The West "Exodusters")]
• [http://www.kshs.org/cool3/exoduster.htm (Kansas State Historical Society, Exoduster Flier)]
• [http://www.kansasmemory.org/ Access documents, photographs, and other primary sources on Kansas Memory, the Kansas State Historical Society's digital portal]

Category:African-American history of Kansas

Category:African-American history between emancipation and the civil rights movement

Category:African-American demographics

Category:African-American refugees

Category:Social history of Kansas

Category:1879 in the United States

Category:History of the Southern United States

Category:1879 in Kansas

Category:Politically motivated migrations