[Review of] Nell Irvin Painter. Exodusters; Black Migration to Kansas After Reconstruction. and Robert G. Athearn. In Search of Canaan: Black Migration to Kansas, 1879-80

Authors

Wilson J. Moses

Orginal Publication Date

1980

Journal Title

Explorations in Ethnic Studies

Volume

3

Issue

ees/vol3/iss2

First Page

74

Last Page

75

Abstract

In 1909 Walter L. Fleming published an article on “‘Pap’ Singleton, the Moses of the Colored Exodus,” in the American Journal of Sociology. Some forty years later, Herbert Aptheker in his Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States, responded to it somewhat disparagingly. The Black Exodus was not a “spontaneous movement inspired by a Moses in the guise of the aged Benjamin Singleton.” it was “the culmination of a steady process of migration and came in response to years of preparation.” In this process “the somewhat eccent?c Singleton” was only of secondary significance. It was Henry Adams, a grass roots organizer, disassociated from the millenarian strain, represented by Singleton, whom Aptheker hailed as “the single most important person behind the 1879 exodus.”

Rights

Copyright, ​©EES, The National Association for Ethnic Studies, 1980