The Exodusters

• The Exoduster movement started in 1879
• President Abraham Lincoln freed enslaved Americans all across the United States


  1863
• The Civil War ended and enslaved people in the South were freed


  1865
• The Civil War was caused by the Confederacy splitting away from the Union over the issue of slavery
• By 1879, former slaves were often still working for their former masters with little freedom or dignity
• Benjamin Papp Singleton set up a settlement in Kansas in 1873 under the Homestead Act
• A false rumor of free land in Kansas led to 40,000 former enslaved people heading there
• Under the Homestead Act, people could claim 160 acres of land for a 10 administration fee and farm on it for five years
• The migrants became known as the Exodusters after the exodus by Moses and his people in the Bible
• Singleton declared, "I am the whole cause of the Kansas immigration"
• Charities had to step in to help the struggling Exodusters
• White settlers in Kansas resented the government helping the Exodusters
• The Kansas government provided funding and support to help the sick Exodusters
• By 1880, there were over 41,000 black settlers in Kansas
• By the 1890s, the stream of Exodusters had declined as the hard realities of homestead life became known
• Smaller Exoduster movements occurred in Nebraska and Oklahoma in the late 1880s
• Former slaves were often still living on the same plantations they had lived on while enslaved
• Benjamin Singleton encouraged immigration to Kansas for a better life
• Over 41,000 black Americans moved to Kansas for a better life
• Life in Kansas was better but still very hard for the Exodusters
• The Exodusters were an exodus to a dusty place where farming was not easy
• The end of slavery in the Civil War had not hugely improved the lives of freed people
• Charities and the Kansas government supported the Exodusters