Thread by @Millenarian22

Thread on the Exodusters, a group of African-American refugees who fled the end of Reconstruction in the South & moved to the "Promised Land" of Kansas in 1879 & 1880. They contributed to an increase in the African-American population of KS from 17,108 in 1870 to 43,107 in 1880:

Despite the increase of 25,999 African-Americans in KS, the % of the KS population that was African-American actually fell slightly, from 4.7% in 1870 to only 4.3% in 1880. This was because the White population of KS absolutely exploded, from 346,377 in 1870 to 952,155 in 1880!:

Many Exodusters migrated from Louisiana, where political violence was unbearable in the aftermath of the Compromise of 1877. Federal troops had been withdrawn, & paramilitary groups like the "White League" were attacking the Black population & suppressing the vote with impunity:

Kansas was an appealing target for migration as it was relatively nearby, land could be acquired through homesteading, & was more welcoming to Black immigrants, as it had fought hard to be a free-state during the "Bleeding Kansas" days of the 1850s & was the home of John Brown.

The trip to Kansas was difficult for Exodusters, as many steamboat operators refused to carry migrants across the Mississippi river, leaving them stranded. The Black community of St Louis ended up having to come to the rescue of the migrants, paying to ferry them across the river

During the 1870s & 1880s the Exodusters & other Black migrants purchased over 20,000 acres of land in KS & founded at least 19 colonies & settlements. Squatters, railroads, & speculators had taken much of the best land, so Blacks often settled in the difficult to farm KS uplands.

The difficulty of farming in these areas left many Exodusters destitute years after their arrival in KS. Many of the settlements & colonies failed, although a few survived, such as Nicodemus KS, which today is one of the few Democratic precincts in otherwise very GOP Western KS:

However, at the time of the Exoduster movement African-Americans were solidly Republican voters, & many Democrats accused the GOP of funding the migration of some Exodusters to swing states like CO & IN (rather than KS, which was a solidly Republican state) in order to gain votes

As the first general migration of African-Americans after the Civil War, the Exoduster movement foreshadowed the much larger & longer lasting Great Migration that would begin in 1916, which saw >6,000,000 African-Americans migrate from South to North, vs. only ~40,000 Exodusters.