Benjamin “Pap” Singleton and the Kansas Exodusters

Benjamin “Pap” Singleton (1809–1900) began his work on the Underground Railroad (UGRR) when he escaped from Tennessee to Detroit in the 1840s. He then helped other fugitives flee to Canada. This formed his belief in the necessity of Black migration from the post-Reconstruction South to Kansas. Known as the “Father of the Black Exodus,” “Black Moses” saw self-sufficient Black communities in abolitionist Kansas as the “New Canaan.” Singleton’s efforts were driven by the failures of Reconstruction and the rise of groups like the Ku Klux Klan, which terrorized Black communities in the South.

Exodusters (Free Black Americans) migrated from Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Tennessee to the Great Plains in the late 1800s. They settled in Kansas, Oklahoma Territory, Colorado, and Nebraska. Some stopped in cities like St. Louis, Missouri, before moving farther west. Between 20,000 and 40,000 African Americans took part in this movement. In 1879 alone, about 6,000 migrants arrived in Kansas.

To prepare for his migration, Singleton purchased 1,000 acres of public land near Baxter Springs, Kansas, in 1873. The following year in Nashville, Singleton, along with a black minister named Columbus M. Johnson, organized the Edgefield Real Estate and Homestead Association. That year, a group of 300 Black people migrated to the Cherokee colony. The colony occupied Singleton’s land in Cherokee County in southeast Kansas near the Missouri border.

Singleton’s other well-known colony was Dunlap Colony in the Flint Hills of Kansas. In 1878, hundreds of Exodusters arrived, building a community with stores, mills, and churches. The Presbyterian Church built the Freedman Academy for Education in 1800. In 1882, the Academy had 90 male and 85 female students, including 45 former slaves. Dunlap was a strong community until the late 1800s. The rocky Flint Hills soil made farming difficult, leading many families to move to cities in search of work and causing the colony’s decline.