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Focus Questions:

Can we determine how many African Americans immigrated from slave holding states in the years after the Civil war?  Can we determine how many African Americans immigrated from non-slave-holding states in the years after the Civil war?  Are patterns apparent in the immigration of African Americans during the years after the Civil War? What were their states of origin?  What were their states of destination?  Did they stay at their initial destination sites and become permenant residents or did they move on to other locations.  What kinds of lands and places were they looking for?  What impact did the immigration of African Americans have on the areas to which they moved?

During the Civil War, and in the decades after it, African-Americans fled the South to the North which was seen as a beacon of hope for freedom and prosperity. Termed Exodusters (or Exodusers) after the Biblical flight of the Israelites from slavery, these Blacks settled in the major northern cities of Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, etc. They also formed smaller farming communities in northern states. The most famous of these is Nicodemus Kansas, the first all Black community west of the Mississippi.

But African Americans also farmed in areas near urban centers such as Kansas City, Kansas . Delaware Township, which comprises the southwest corner of Wyandotte County, was the home for some Black southern immigrants. The most famous migration of Blacks to Kansas from the South came during a few months in 1879 when an estimated 6,000 to 20,000 African Americans left the South for Kansas in the space of a few months.

Reaction to the large influx of blacks into Wyandotte County and the town of Wyandotte was wary. The Wyandotte Herald described the 1879 exodus in this way.

During the past ten days, a large number of colored immigrants from Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee have landed in Kansas. Nearly all of them are penniless, many are sick, and all of them are objects of sympathy. A public hearing was held at the courtroom Tuesday afternoon to take steps for their relief and to provide against spreading contagious disease. . . .

The following resolutions were adopted.

• Resolved That it is the sense of the meeting that the colored immigrants from the South, now among us, and still to come, should be aided only to such an extent as they are unable to help themselves as they tarry among us.
• Resolved That it would be very unwise in these people to stay in the towns already overcrowded with laborers, as they are, and that it will in our judgment be unsafe for them to remain long in large companies.

A Protest of the People of Wyandott, Kansas Concerning the Negro Immigration To The People of The United States:

Within the last two weeks over a thousand Negroes, direct from the South, have landed at Wyandott. None of them have money to carry them further west, or to purchase the necessary wherewithal to supply their most urgent necessities of food and shelter. Large numbers have died, and at least 5% of the whole number are sick with pneumonia and kindred complaints. In a word, over a thousand paupers have within a very short period of time been thrown into a town of about five thousand people, who are unable to properly provide for their wants.

These people are possessed of the most visionary ideas concerning what they must confront when coming to Kansas. Their sole idea seems to be to get West to go where the government land can be occupied, but they are wholly destitute of means to improve it or to sustain themselves until they can cultivate a crop. Go where they will in Kansas, they must be provided and cared for, or they will perish. We have reliable reliable information that thousands more are coming. If so, the situation will soon be a serious one for the deluded, helpless and ignorant Negroes who are blindly rushing to Kansas, and a mighty burden will be thrown on our people. They must become virtually a public charge upon the communities where they may happen to be cast.

In view of the state of facts, we, the undersigned citizens of Wyandott, Kansas denounce those who are encouraging these people to come to Kansas as really their worst enemies. We further say that the sentiments of this protest and memorials are those of the people of Kansas without regard to party and we request papers throughout the country to publish this protest and warning.

Some of the colored refugees say that they prefer living in the South to coming to Kansas, but that the whites will not sell them any land there, hence, they came to Kansas to secure homes of their own. We are authorized by Dr. McDowell to say that he will sell any of them good cotton land for $1.50 an acre and guarantee that they can catch more opossums on the land than will pay for it.

What happened? Did the African Americans stay and become permanent residents - as the white residents feared - or did they move on to other places in the north and west? The migration patterns of African Americans into various areas of the country during the years between 1875 and 1885 is a facinating area of study.  The immigration pattern of African Americans into northern states from the south is a necessary first step in answering the larger research question of how the United States was settled by immigrants.