TODAY ONLY

March 5

First Exodusters Arrive in St. Louis

On this day in 1879, the first group of black so-called Exodusters, en route to Kansas, arrived in St. Louis aboard the steamer Colorado.

Led by "Pap" Singleton. Benjamin "Pap" Singleton (1809-1892), a former slave born in Nashville, Tennessee, became the leader of the Exoduster Movement of 1879. Later he was called Father of the Exodus.

A History Moment. In the late 1860s, Singleton and his associates urged Blacks to acquire farmland in Tennessee. Whites would not sell them useful land. So Singleton started scouting land in Kansas. Soon several Black families migrated from Nashville.

The Movement Grows. Eager to live in a place where they could escape harsh sharecropper contracts, pass their own laws, and escape imprisonment and murder, thousands of African Americans saw Kansas as the promised land. Though nearly destitute and knowing nothing about the state, they bought steamboat tickets and headed out.

What's an Exoduster? The African-Americans who moved west called themselves Exodusters because they were on an "exodus" or journey to freedom.

The Singleton Colony. Later that year, the Singleton Colony was established near what is now Emporia, Kansas.

A leader in the "Great Exodus" that brought thousands of African Americans west from the post-Reconstruction South, Benjamin Singleton became toward the end of his life a pioneer of black nationalism who launched one of the first back-to-Africa movements in the United States.