via Wikipedia
Through the Homestead Act of 1862, the U.S. government was practically BEGGING ordinary citizens to settle acres of land across Arkansas, Kansas, and Oklahoma.
The opportunity seemed worth every risk and it was Benjamin “Pap” Singleton, a formerly enslaved carpenter, who would lead the migration into the unknown.
Singleton knew that the Homestead Act would provide 160 acres of land to anyone willing to put in hard work and brave untold dangers.
And so his loyal group of “Exodusters” - formerly enslaved families who intimately knew hard work and were hungry to put it towards a chance to prosper on their own terms - set out to tame the land.
Despite high hopes, the 200 initial settlers Singleton had galvanized to desert the Deep South were met with the same discrimination they had fled.
Yet, through his Edgefield Real Estate and Homestead Association, Singleton inspired 20,000 Black people to press on into the rumored utopias that awaited in Kansas and Oklahoma between 1877 to 1879!
Sadly, neither state lived up to any expectation of prosperity, as yellow fever outbreaks and bad crop yields forced most to surrender the homestead dream in favor of more secure, low-wage jobs.
Still, the legacies of Pap Singelton and his Exodusters live on centuries later as predominately Black communities grew and continue to remain vibrant in midwestern cities like Topeka, Kansas, Tulsa, Oklahoma, and St. Louis, Missouri.