Benjamin 'Pap' Singleton Organizes Black Migration to Kansas

Benjamin 'Pap' Singleton, formerly enslaved in Tennessee, began promoting Kansas migration in 1873 after concluding land ownership and political rights were impossible in the post-Reconstruction South. By 1880 he claimed to have distributed 60,000+ flyers and helped settle thousands in Kansas colonies. He testified before a Senate committee in 1880 that the movement was 'the Providential design of God for the poor colored people.'