In 1870s, after the failed promise of equality and opportunity under Reconstruction had ended, thousands of formerly enslaved Black Americans headed to Kansas and other Western states, hoping to take advantage of the opportunity to own land offered by the Homestead Act of 1862, which gave 160 acres of federal land to anyone who agreed to farm it.. The large-scale migration, which came to be known as “the Great Exodus,” predated the better-known Great Migration from Mississippi to Chicago by a quarter century. The people who participated in it were called “Exodusters.” Between 40,000 and 60,000 Black Americans left the South and migrated westward. Some were part of organized efforts to establish black settlements. Most settled in Kansas.

Why Kansas?

In part, the choice was practical. Getting to Kansas was simpler and less expensive than traveling further west or north, though still daunting .

There was also an emotional element to the choice of Kansas as the New Promised Land. Between 1855 and 1859, “Bleeding Kansas” was the site of violent conflicts in which abolitionists, supporters of slavery and free staters literally fought over whether the state would allow slavery or not. The most well known of these incidents was the raid led by John Brown against pro-slavery settlers on Pottawatomie Creek. In many ways it was a dress rehearsal for the civil war that would follow. The events gave Kansas the aura of holy ground for many Black Americans. As one made from Louisiana wrote in a letter to the governor of Kansas, “I am very anxious to reach your state, 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.”

The migration began in 1873, when Benjamin “Pap” Singleton, calling himself the “Moses of the Colored Exodus,” led the people he called “Exodusters” from Tennessee to found a small African-American town in Cherokee County called “Singleton’s Colony.” The gradual exodus turned into “Kansas Exodus Fever” in 1879, following political changes in Louisiana that threatened to escalate violence against former slaves. By early March, about 1500 “exodusters” had passed through St. Louis to Kansas. Thousands more crowded the wharves on the banks of the Mississippi waiting to get passage on a northbound steamboat. Many arrived in St. Louis with no resources and no idea how they would get across Missouri into Kansas. St Louis clergy and businessmen organized committees to collect food and funds to help them on their way.

Roughly 6,000 Black Americans arrived in Kansas in the spring of 1879, most of them from Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Other Exodusters made their way to Oklahoma, Colorado, Ohio, Nebraska, the Dakotas, New Mexico, Arizona and Montana . The exodus began to slow down by early summer, but continued through the 1880s. By 1880, the Black population of Kansas had grown to some 43,000..

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An interesting side note: Although much of what we know about the Great Exodus comes from newspaper accounts of the Exodusters on the move—accounts that are laden with the racist language of the period even when sympathetic to the cause of the migrants, we also have first hand testimony from some of the Exodusters themselves in interviews taken as part of a n 1880 Senate investigation into the cause of the migration. These interviews are an earlier counterpart to the better-known Works Progress Administration interviews with formerly enslaved peoples recorded during the Great Depression. In addition to their personal testimony, many of the witnesses brought additional evidence to the stand in the form of letters and affidavits from other community members. Who knew? Not me.