Exoduster Movement

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Shush Second

Cards (17)

  • The American Civil War ended
    1865
  • The anti-slavery north won the American Civil War
  • Over four million African-Americans were freed from slavery in 1865
  • Many of the southern states could not accept this and they continued to try and restrict black Americans freedom
  • Ways the southern states restricted black Americans freedom
    • The KKK terrorised black Americans throughout the southern states and used intimidation to prevent black Americans form voting
    • The southern states forced many black Americans into sharecropping
  • Sharecropping
    A system where a landlord gives a tenant some land in return for a proportion of the crops they grow, keeping black farmers working on white plantations for free
  • Life for black Americans remained difficult in the southern states
  • Some black Americans decided to move west to file homestead claims
  • Many began to move to Kansas, which had always been a free state
  • Exodusters
    • Black Americans who moved west to Kansas
    • Much of the good farmland was already taken by 1880
    • Left with difficult farming land and struggled to survive
    • Many had believed the land would be free but struggled to afford the fee to file a homestead claim
    • Many became ill on the journey to Kansas, as they had travelled through areas infected with yellow fever
  • Benjamin Singleton

    A former slave who pioneered the move of black Americans to Kansas by advertising it to those still living in the south
  • By 1880, over 43,000 black Americans had settled in Kansas
  • A rumour spread that the US government was giving away free land for ex-slaves in Kansas
    1879
  • Exodusters
    Black Americans who moved west to Kansas
  • Kansas government's response
    Gave Exodusters a small amount of state funding to help them begin their life in Kansas
  • White Americans in the southern states were less supportive, believing it was wrong of the government to help the migrants
  • News of the difficulties of life in Kansas spread back to the south
    The amount of new migrants began to decline by the 1880's