In the era of Reconstruction, African Americans were living in a state of limbo, unsure of their place in society. De jure, they were freedmen, but de facto they were still being socially oppressed by white Americans because of their race. Wanting to take advantage of any opportunity to better their lives and increase their financial situations, many African Americans, most of them agricultural workers, started the search for reliable incomes.
One especially enticing opportunity in 1879, put forth by the Kansas state governor, provided southern blacks the chance to settle on readily available farmland in Kansas. With the dream of becoming a yeoman farmer finally in reach, African Americans flocked to Kansas to escape from their dependency upon white Americans for employment, marking the start of the Black Exodus of 1879. Harper’s Weekly published, “few [Exodusters] turned their faces in any other direction” than Kansas because “it ha[d] been more thoroughly advertised than any other.” African Americans looking for a new home turned to Kansas, and “nearly every day there [were] fresh arrivals.”
But even with Kansas Governor John P. St. John, presiding as President of the Kansas Freedmen’s Relief Association of Kansas and promising “to relieve as far as possible, the wants and necessities of destitute freedmen, refugees and immigrants coming into [Kansas],” the Exodusters did not find significant success in establishing stable lives for themselves. Nell I. Painter points out that African Americans did find limited success in Kansas by achieving higher social status than their counterparts in other states and established a successful independent black settlement in Nicodemus, Kansas. However, other social factors prevented them...
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... Kansas Memory.
St. John, John P. Governor John P. St. John to Horatio N. Rust, January 16, 1880, Kansas Historical Society. Kansas Memory.
_____________. “Magnitude of the Black Exodus.” New York Times, August 11, 1879. Proquest Historical Newspapers.
"The Great Negro Exodus." Harper's Weekly, May 17, 1879, 386, Kansas Historical Society.
Worrall, Henry. “Exodusters in Floral Hall, Topeka.” Illustration, Harper’s Weekly, July 5, 1879, 532, E185.1879*8. Newsbank.
William Reynolds v. The Board of Education of the City of Topeka, LXVI Thomas
Emmett Dewey 2 (1903).
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Johnson, Daniel M., and Rex R. Campbell. Black Migration in America: A social demographic history. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1981.
Painter, Nell I. Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas after Reconstruction. New York: Random House, Inc., 1976.
The first part of this book looks into African American political activity during the pre-Civil War and Civil War periods. He uses this part of the book to show that blacks, even while in slavery, used their position to gain rights from their slaveholders. These rights included the right to farm their own plots, sale of their produce, and to visit neighboring plantations. This was also the period
Hunter begins her analysis by integrating the experiences of African-American women workers into the broader examination of political and economic conditions in the New South. According to Hunter, the period between 1877 and 1915 is critical to understanding the social transformations in most southern cities and complicating this transformation are the issues of race, class, and gender. The examination of the lives of black domestic workers reveals the complexity of their struggles to keep their autonomy with white employers and city officials. For example, African-American women built institutions and frequently quit their jobs in response to the attempts by southern whites to control their labor and mobility. Hunter carefully situates these individual tactics of resistance in the New South capitalist development and attempts by whites to curtail the political and social freedoms of emancipated slaves.
Analyzing the narrative of Harriet Jacobs through the lens of The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du bois provides an insight into two periods of 19th century American history--the peak of slavery in the South and Reconstruction--and how the former influenced the attitudes present in the latter. The Reconstruction period features Negro men and women desperately trying to distance themselves from a past of brutal hardships that tainted their souls and livelihoods. W.E.B. Du bois addresses the black man 's hesitating, powerless, and self-deprecating nature and the narrative of Harriet Jacobs demonstrates that the institution of slavery was instrumental in fostering this attitude.
This historical document, The Frontier as a Place of Conquest and Conflict, focuses on the 19th Century in which a large portion of society faced discrimination based on race, ethnicity, and religion. Its author, Patricia N. Limerick, describes the differences seen between the group of Anglo Americans and the minority groups of Native Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanics Americans and African Americans. It is noted that through this document, Limerick exposes us to the laws and restrictions imposed in addition to the men and women who endured and fought against the oppression in many different ways. Overall, the author, Limerick, exposes the readers to the effects that the growth and over flow of people from the Eastern on to the Western states
• Simms, William Gilmore. "The Marion Family," in Southern and Western Monthly Magazine. Vol. 1 (1845): pp. 209--215.
4. Excerpt from Senate Report 693, 46th Congress, 2nd Session (1880). Posted on PBS.org December 19, 2003. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/reconstruction/sharecrop/ps_adams.html
The Great Migration was a huge relocation of African Americans from the Southern states of the United States to northern and Midwestern cities. This occurred between the years of 1910 and 1970. Over 6 million African Americans traveled to Northern cities during the migration. Some northern city destinations were Richmond, D.C, Baltimore, New York, and Newark. Western and Midwestern destinations were those such as Los Angelos, San Francisco, St. Louis, Chicago, and Detroit. During this time period and previous years, Jim Crow laws in the South were greatly in affect and causing African Americans a rough time due to the racism they faced. After Reconstruction had ended, white supremacy had taken it's toll in the South and Jim Crow had taken over.. The North, Midwest, and West of the United States began to face a shortage in industrial laborers due to World War I beginning and putting an end to immigration of Europeans to the United States. African Americans felt that heading north was their escape from harsh laws and unsatisfactory economic opportunities. Many people, including teenagers, from the South would write letters to the Chicago Defender asking for help to come North and find work because in the South it was hard to make a living. Some migrants already had family members in the North. For example, James Green, an elderly man who migrated at a young age from Goldsboro, North Carolina, had an aunt who lived in New York, who wanted him to be with her. He and his wife moved to New York, after his return from the air force. Because
Luchins, Abraham S. "The Rise and Decline of the American Asylum Movement in the 19th
"SUPPLEMENT to the Pennsylvania Gazette. No. 2106." Copy of a letter from Governor Bernard to the Earl fo Hillsborough. The Pennsylvania Gazette, May 1769.
Krause, Paul. The Battle for Homestead, 1890-1892: Politics, Culture, and Steel. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992. ISBN 0-8229-5466-4
Since the beginning of slavery in the America, Africans have been deemed inferior to the whites whom exploited the Atlantic slave trade. Africans were exported and shipped in droves to the Americas for the sole purpose of enriching the lives of other races with slave labor. These Africans were sold like livestock and forced into a life of servitude once they became the “property” of others. As the United States expanded westward, the desire to cultivate new land increased the need for more slaves. The treatment of slaves was dependent upon the region because different crops required differing needs for cultivation. Slaves in the Cotton South, concluded traveler Frederick Law Olmsted, worked “much harder and more unremittingly” than those in the tobacco regions.1 Since the birth of America and throughout its expansion, African Americans have been fighting an uphill battle to achieve freedom and some semblance of equality. While African Americans were confronted with their inferior status during the domestic slave trade, when performing their tasks, and even after they were set free, they still made great strides in their quest for equality during the nineteenth century.
Although early nineteenth century Kansas was vast in territory, the land was mostly unpopulated. This cheap abundant land along with the dream of a better life lured farmers from the east to start their lives in Kansas. Many people were driven to pack their belongings and start their westward bound journey. Floyd Benjamin St...
Correspondence of John C. Calhoun. J. Franklin Jameson, ed. Annual Report of the American Historical Association 1899. II. 1900.
Many African American men and women have been characterized as a group of significant individuals who help to exemplify the importance of the black community. They have illustrated their optimistic views and aspects in a various amount of ways contributing to the reconstruction of African Americans with desire and integrity. Though many allegations may have derived against a large amount of these individuals, Crystal Bird Fauset, Jacob Lawrence, and Mary Lucinda Dawson opportunistic actions conveys their demonstration to improve not only themselves but also their ancestors too. Throughout their marvelous journeys, they intend to garnish economic, political, and social conditions with dignity and devotion while witnessing the rise of African Americans. The objective of this research paper is to demonstrate the lives of a selected group of African American people and their attributions to the black community.
Scott, J.W. The Black Revolts: Racial Stratification In The U.S.A.: The Politics Of Estate, Caste,