1879: The Exodusters and the St. Louis African American Community
Big Idea
The term Exoduster was given to groups of Black Americans migrating from the South to Kansas and the West during the 1870s and 80s. St. Louis was an important stop along their migration path and the St. Louis Black community provided significant support to them.
What’s important to know?
Exodusters: Exodusters were African Americans who moved from the South to Kansas and further west. They became known for building successful, self-governing communities in the West.
City Leadership: White city leadership refused to help the thousands of Black people pouring into the city along their migration route.
St. Louis’ African American Community: Black churches played a key role in organizing support for the Exodusters, showcasing their strength in leadership that would later be seen in the civil rights movement.
1: Exodusters
When Reconstruction came to a grinding halt with the election of Rutherford B. Hayes, African Americans began migrating from the Southern States specifically seeking to move to Kansas. Many theories developed at the time as to why so many, so suddenly took this dangerous journey to travel to an unknown State with very few resources to get them there. As historian Nell Irvin Painter (1976) wrote so succinctly, “Terrorism and poverty lay at the root of the Exodus” (p. 190). She further shared the words of a Black Mississippian who said the only organizing force behind this movement was ‘the blood of 5000 innocent colored martyrs calls from the ground and arouses us to action” (p. 190).
Other exodusters explained that they feared the re-emergence of slavery. As the Rev. W. D. Lynch, who worked closely with many Exodusters, noted “the mainspring of all this exodus movement’ lay in the conviction of Blacks in the South that ‘slavery is not dead, but sleeping in disguise, as [if] it were a wolf in sheep’s clothing” (p. 193).
Since the federal government had refused to intercede in the rampant lynching and violence occurring in the South, many felt they had no other choice but to move.
Leaving behind the ever-present threats of lynching and ongoing violence, they received the name because of the journey they undertook much like the ancient Israelites in their Exodus from Egypt. In this case, their promised land was the state of Kansas which had gained a reputation for being pro-Black as a result of John Brown and his rebellion.
So large was this movement that the Senate held an investigation into the migration. The minority report coming out of the investigation stated:
“In the spring of 1879, thousands of colored people, unable longer to endure the intolerable hardships, injustice, and suffering inflicted upon them by a class of Democrats in the South, had, in utter despair, fled panic-stricken from their homes and sought protection among strangers in a strange land. Homeless, penniless, and in rags, these poor people were thronging the wharves of Saint Louis, crowding the steamers on the Mississippi River, and in pitiable destitution throwing themselves upon the charity of Kansas. Thousands more were congregating along the banks of the Mississippi River, hailing the passing steamers, and imploring them for a passage to the land of freedom, where the rights of citizens are respected and honest toil rewarded by honest compensation. The newspapers were filled with accounts of their destitution, and the very air was burdened with the cry of distress from a class of American citizens flying from persecutions which they could no longer endure.” (Davis, 2008)
Aside from the brave journey they took heading north and then west, Exodusters have also become known for creating thriving self-governing communities in the West.
2: City Leadership
St. Louis stood as the critical in-between point for the Exodusters. The city stood as the line, in many minds, separating the South from Kansas. As Painter again noted, “When Exodusters reached that city they [believed] they were out of danger: they had done their part. St. Louis was like the Red Sea, explained an Exoduster, drawing a parallel between Southern Black people and the Israelites” (p. 195).
Between 1879 and 1880 alone, 20,000 Exodusters arrived in St. Louis. Many Exodusters became stranded in St. Louis when White steamboat operators refused to transport them to Kansas. When Exodusters became stranded in the city, city leaders also refused to help the migrant communities.
In March 1879, St. Louis Mayor, Henry Overstolz sent a telegram to cities south of St. Louis with the following message: “it is my duty to warn the colored people against coming to this city without money to support themselves and to pay thier way West. The City of St. Louis is wholly unable to support them or to furnish them means of reaching their destination. There are no opportunities of obtaining employment here at present, much suffering and destitution must certainly be endured by colored people coming to this city without money or friends” (Jack, 2008, pp. 47-48).
The Globe-Democrat issued their own call directly to the people of St. Louis asking for their help: “So far, little assistance has been rendered by white people, who must now bestir themselves in this cause, or remain idly by while hundreds of human beings suffer: (p. 67). Unfortunately, this did little to move the White population of St. Louis to come to the aid of Black Americans.
3: St. Louis’ Black Community
The Black communities within St. Louis rose up in response to the racist actions of White leaders to provide services and support to the hundreds of people stranded in the city. In a preview of organizational prowess later demonstrated during the civili rights movement, Black churches became the central organizing institutions helping to create the structures for providing support to the Exodusters (Jack, 2008, p. 41). In fact, Black churches played such an outsized role in the efforts that the Globe-Democrat referred to the Committee of Twenty-Five as “the Immigrant Relief Committee of the Colored Churches” (p. 41). Below are two of the Black leaders who led the effort to care for the Exodusters and enable them to reach their promised land.
Rev. Moses Dickson
The Reverend Moses Dickson was outspoken abolitionists who in 1846 established a secret society, the Knights of Freedom, to organize a nation-wide rebellion against slavery.
He worked with John Milton Turner and Charlton Tandy to found the Lincoln Institute in 1868 and then in 1879 worked with Charlton Tandy to establish the Committee of Twenty-Five, which brought together a list of the cities who’s who among Black leaders (p. 46).
Charlton H. Tandy
Tandy was a lawyer, abolitionist, and state militia leader during the Civil War. He also helped establish Lincoln Institute after the Civil War. In the 1870s he helped desegregate horse-drawn street cars in St. Louis. He was elected president of the Committee of Twenty-Five and oversaw the work of its multiple sub-committees. At times, Tandy attracted criticism as he toured the South and North seeking additional funds for the organization coming to the aid of so many. It seems from contemporaneous records that many of the more educated, elite Black leaders found him “illiterate, inexperienced, and unknown” and thus found him rather off putting (p. 228). Regardless of his tenor or rhetorical ability, his determination to aid the Exodusters made him their tireless advocate and fundraiser. His efforts helped to raise awareness and to bring more White benefactors into the philanthropic circle mostly being supplied by St. Louis’ Black churches (p. 230).
The resolution committee produced a stirring document outlining why the Black community was so invested in helping the Exodusters reach their destination. They wrote: “Whereas, in the exercise of their inalienable rights some of our people are emigrating from their present homes, seeking new homes and protection in the far West, and whereas the matter is one of great importance and moment to us as a race, and whereas it requires time for the careful and correct consideration of these matters” (Jack, 2021, p. 42). The right to live where they wanted to live was an inalienable right and the African American community in St. Louis was going to fight to defend this.
Committee of Twenty-Five
Through the Committee of Twenty-Five, also known as the Colored Relief Board, the Black communities in St. Louis came together, used their hard won dollars and their church buildings to house, feed, and provide the resources needed for these families to move on to Kansas or establish themselves in St. Louis (Painter, 1976, p. 230).
Your Turn
What did the Exodusters seek by moving from the South to Kansas? How did the Black communities within St. Louis equate support for the Exodusters with inalienable rights?
-
Explore a variety of Reconstruction materials from the Library of Congress.
Explore primary sources from Facing History & Ourselves here.
Watch the PBS documentary series, Reconstruction: America after the Civil War from Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Listen to the Slate podcast with Jamelle Bouie and Rebecca Onion on the reconstruction era.
Listen to Seizing Freedom, a podcast docudrama, hosted by historian Kidada E. Williams.
Explore primary source documents related to the Exodusters from the Digital Public Library of America
-
3-Week Lesson Plan on the Reconstruction Era from Facing History & Ourselves (grades 9-12).
iCivics Education Lesson Plan on Reconstruction (grades 6-8).
Learning for Justice lesson plans on the Reconstruction Era (middle and high school).
NEH EDSITEment materials on the Reconstruction Era.
Zinn Education Project lessons on reconstruction (middle and high school)
-
General Resources:
STL History Minute about the Exodusters from the Missouri History Museum
Books & Articles:
Jack, B. (2008). The St. Louis African American Community and the Exodusters. University of Missouri Press.
Archives:
Research primary source materials at the State Historical Society.
Charlton H. Tandy Papers at the State Historical Society of Missouri.
Museums & Parks:
Read about reconstruction in Missouri from the National Park Service.
-
Du Bois, W.E.B. (1935). Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880. New York.
Emberton, C. (2016). Unwriting the Freedom Narrative: A Review Essay. Journal of Southern History 82: 377–94.
Hunter, T. (1997). To ’Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors after the Civil War. Harvard University Press.
Jeffries, H. (2009). “Conditions Unfavorable to the Rise of the Negro: The Pursuit of Freedom Rights before the Civil Rights Era,” in Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama’s Black Belt. New York University Press. pp. 7–38.
Kelley, R. D. G. (2002). Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. Beacon.
Painter, N. I. (1977). Exodusters : Black migration to Kansas after Reconstruction (1st ed.--). Knopf.
Williams, K. E. (2012). They Left Great Marks on Me: African American Testimonies of Racial Violence from Emancipation to World War I. New York University Press.
-
Davis, D. Exodus to Kansas: The 1880 Senate Investigation of the Beginnings of the African American Migration from the South. Prologue Magazine, Vol. 40, No, 2. National Archives.
Jack, B. (2008). The St. Louis African American Community and the Exodusters. University of Missouri Press.
Painter, N. I. (1977). Exodusters : Black migration to Kansas after Reconstruction (1st ed.--). Knopf.