18thVirginia
Major
- Joined
- Sep 8, 2012
We read and discuss Reconstruction in the South and sometimes reference the Great Migrations that occurred as black people left the South. One place that some journeyed to was Nicodemus, Kansas. As situations in the South didn't improve as much as expected during the Civil War, some black citizens looked around for other opportunities. A land developer named W. R. Hill started trying to attract black settlers from Tennessee and Kentucky to come out to Kansas and acquire land through homesteading it.
Joining Hill in the efforts to establish this new community was a black man, Rev. W. H. Smith. Together they formed the Nicodemus Town Company and began to solicit new settlers through handbills distributed throughout the South. One of the men who handed out these flyers was called the "Moses of the Colored Exodus" and those black refugees from the South came to be known as "Exodusters."
Benjamin "Pap" Singleton, a former slave who traveled the South handing out handbills advertising settlement in Nicodemus.
Joining Hill in the efforts to establish this new community was a black man, Rev. W. H. Smith. Together they formed the Nicodemus Town Company and began to solicit new settlers through handbills distributed throughout the South. One of the men who handed out these flyers was called the "Moses of the Colored Exodus" and those black refugees from the South came to be known as "Exodusters."
Benjamin "Pap" Singleton, a former slave who traveled the South handing out handbills advertising settlement in Nicodemus.
Last edited: