Benjamin 'Pap' Singleton Organizes Black Migration to Kansas

Benjamin 'Pap' Singleton, a formerly enslaved man from Tennessee, began promoting Black migration to Kansas in 1873 after concluding that land ownership and political rights were impossible in the post-Reconstruction South. By 1880 he claimed to have helped settle over 7,000 people in Kansas colonies. He testified before a Senate committee in 1880, stating he had distributed over 60,000 flyers promoting migration. He called the movement 'the Providential design of God for the poor colored people