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“The Negro Exodus—The Old Style and the New”
No caption
In
the decades following the Civil War, over a half-million blacks (and an
even larger number of whites) migrated from the American South to the
North and West. A concentrated and notable period of this black
exodus occurred in the late 1870s and early 1880s, an episode of which
is illustrated in the central image of this unsigned Harper's Weekly
cartoon. During those few years, an estimated 40-60,000 Southern
blacks moved to Kansas, the primary destination, or other regions of the
Great Plains or lower Midwest.
Blacks left the South for a variety of reasons. The economy of
the South, already devastated by the Civil War, suffered further during
the economic depression of the 1870s. Southern blacks were
vulnerable because the great majority were poor farmers, working under a
tenant system that kept them in debt and unable to buy their own
land. They were often barred from entering other occupations by
the racial prejudice of white employers or, increasingly, by state and
local law. In politics, the end of Reconstruction during the 1870s
resulted in the disfranchisement of black men through intimidation,
violence, or voting restrictions. Finally, there was a strong
religious element in the migration to Kansas, which was promoted and
perceived as the Promised Land where American blacks could live together
and be free of the detrimental effects of bigotry.
A
leading advocate of the "Great Exodus" was Benjamin Singleton,
a former slave from Tennessee who had escaped to the North. He and
Columbus Johnson formed a real-estate company that advertised across the
South and assisted thousands of blacks in moving to Kansas in
1877-1879. (In later years, Singleton became a black nationalist
and started a back-to-Africa movement.)
However,
the mass migration during its principal years (1879-1881) was the work
of many organizers and supporters. Southern blacks received
information about Kansas and other areas through letters from settlers,
mass meetings, and circulars. Adding to an air of expectancy was
the "Exodusters" belief that God was delivering them from
their bondage to the Promised Land. Coming mainly from Louisiana,
Mississippi, and Arkansas, groups of blacks paid nominal fees to sail up
the Mississippi River, then traveled westward to Kansas. In
February 1880, shortly before this cartoon appeared, 900 black families
arrived in St. Louis en route to Kansas.
The size of the black exodus thrust it into the national spotlight,
with politicians and the press debating its cause and effect.
Although a variety of reasons--economic, political, religious, social,
and personal--were involved, most white commentators reduced the issue
to one of politics. Republican politicians and newspapers focused
on the denial of suffrage to Southern blacks (who voted overwhelmingly
Republican). Democrats countered that Republicans sponsored the
migration in order to reduce Southern representation in the U.S. House
of Representatives (which is based on population).
Although Kansas officials had initially encouraged the migration,
they began in late 1879 attempting to divert it to Illinois and
Indiana. This alarmed Midwestern Democrats, including Senator
Daniel Voorhees of Indiana (a state almost evenly divided between the
two parties), who introduced a resolution establishing a committee to
investigate the cause of the exodus. Senator William Windom, a
Republican from Minnesota, tacked on an amendment which required the
committee to make recommendations to the full Congress if the cause was
found to the suppression of civil rights. The Voorhees Committee
held hearings during the early months of 1880, a presidential election
year. At its conclusion, the majority Democrats and the minority
Republicans issued conflicting reports judging the cause to be that which
each had originally assumed it to be.
This cartoon contrasts the Great Exodus of 1879-1881 with the plight
of a runaway slave in an earlier time (inset picture). Whereas the
slave crouches in fear as he hides from a passing steamboat, the
Exodusters disembark openly from a riverboat as white men observe from
on deck. While some travelers seem weary and harried, the artist
conveys a sense of camaraderie and joy. In reality, although some
of the black migrants did find success in Kansas, the state did not
prove to be the Promised Land for most. They experienced economic
privations in what was still called the Great American Desert, and the
mass nature of the migration aroused the latent racism of a number of
white Kansans.
Robert C. Kennedy
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