AP US History in 1 Minute Daily: Exodusters (Day 158/309)

Hey APUSHers, let’s chat about Exodusters as part of my series- APUSH in 1 Minute Daily!

Exodusters Waiting for a Steamboat to Carry them westward in the 1870s, Wikimedia Commons

With the incorporation of Black Codes, Sharecropping, the Convict Lease System and the rise of white supremacist terrorist groups, some African Americans sought to escape the conditions in the south during and after Reconstruction.

Exoduster Handbill, Wikimedia Commons

In the 1870s and 1880s, thousands of African Americans left Southern states as part of a mass migration to the Midwest, particularly Kansas, and were called Exodusters.

Nicodemus Settlement, Kansas Historical Society

The term comes from the Biblical story about the exodus, or exit, of the Israelites from Egypt to the promised land. Many African Americans formed independent communities in Kansas. 

African Americans Going West, 1850-1890, New York Public Library

In Kansas in 1850, the population of African Americans was less than 350, but by 1880 there were more than 43,000 Black Kansians. This trend was similar to other western states as well.

As a result of the continued discrimination and violence toward African Americans in the South, a group known as the Exodusters migrated to the “promised land” of Kansas to create autonomous communities.

Join me tomorrow as I explain Grant’s Presidency in the next APUSH in 1 Minute Daily!