Ho for Kansas!

By 1877, Singleton was ready to go. Placing ads in various newspapers under the banner headline "Ho for Kansas!" Singleton advertized for volunteers to make the westward journey and establish a black community. At informational meetings he described a place where there were "excellent selections of land . . . plenty of fine water [and] a healthy climate." For many, this was the opportunity they had been praying for.

Beginning in 1878, the first group of "Exodusters," under the watchful eyes of agents for the Homestead Association, left for Kansas. Their name called to mind the biblical story of Moses leading the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt. The journey of the Israelites from Egypt to the promised land is recounted in the Book of Exodus. Like the Israelites, these African Americans were seeking a new life in freedom in the "promised land" of the American West.

A year later, in 1879, the new community of Singleton Colony, named for the "Father of the Black Exodus," was incorporated. "Pap" Singleton's dream of bringing his people to a better place had become a reality.

Black settlers continued to travel westward. By end of the nineteenth century, almost 8,000 African-American homesteaders called Kansas home. Other black pioneers moved even farther west to new state of Nebraska and to the Oklahoma and Oregon Territories. It was not an easy life. For many black homesteaders, the hard trip was bad enough. But the worst part for many was the unrelenting loneliness of living on the prairies. Yet, the hardships and sacrifices of individuals made possible Benjamin Singleton's vision of a better future for African Americans. "My people that I carried to Kansas came on our own resources, he explained. "We have tried to make a people of ourselves. . . . "

Want To Know More? For more information on the Exodusters and black migration to the West visit Black American West and Heritage Museum, and African Americans in Kansas and the West . For information on even earlier African-American pioneers see Black Fur Traders and Frontiersmen.

Check Out At Your Library: William Loren Katz's Black People Who Made the West (Grade 6+), and The Black West (Grade 9+), Lillian Schissel's, Black Frontiers (Grade 3+), Petra Press, A Multicultural Portrait of the Move West, (Grade 5+) and R. Conrad Stein's The Story of the Homestead Act

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