What do you think?
Rate this book
Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas After Reconstruction
The first major migration to the North of ex-slaves.
318 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1986
20 people are currently reading
384 people want to read
About the author
Nell Irvin Painter
33 books401 followersNell Irvin Painter is an American historian notable for her works on southern history of the nineteenth century. She is retired from Princeton University, and served as president of the Organization of American Historians. She also served as president of the Southern Historical Association.
She was born Nell Irvin to Dona and Frank E. Irvin, Sr. She had an older brother Frank who died young. Her family moved from Houston, Texas, to Oakland, California when she was ten weeks old. This was part of the second wave of the Great Migration of millions of African Americans from the Deep South to urban centers. Some of their relatives had been in California since the 1920s. The Irvins went to California in the 1940s with the pull of increasing jobs in the defense industry. Nell attended the Oakland Public Schools.
Her mother Dona Irvin held a degree from Houston College for Negroes (1937), and later taught in the public schools of Oakland. Her father had to drop out of college in 1937 during the Great Depression; he eventually trained for work as a laboratory technician. He worked for years at the University of California at Berkeley, where he trained many students in lab techniques.
Painter earned her B.A. - Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964. During her undergraduate years, she studied French medieval history at the University of Bordeaux, France, 1962–63. She also studied abroad at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana, 1965–66. In 1967, she completed an M.A. at the University of California at Los Angeles. In 1974, she earned an M.A. and Ph.D. at Harvard University. She returned to study and earned a B.F.A. at Rutgers University in 2009. Painter has received honorary degrees from Dartmouth College, Wesleyan University, and Yale University, among other institutions.
In 1989, Painter married the mathematician Glenn Shafer, co-creator of the Dempster–Shafer theory.
(from Wikipedia)
She was born Nell Irvin to Dona and Frank E. Irvin, Sr. She had an older brother Frank who died young. Her family moved from Houston, Texas, to Oakland, California when she was ten weeks old. This was part of the second wave of the Great Migration of millions of African Americans from the Deep South to urban centers. Some of their relatives had been in California since the 1920s. The Irvins went to California in the 1940s with the pull of increasing jobs in the defense industry. Nell attended the Oakland Public Schools.
Her mother Dona Irvin held a degree from Houston College for Negroes (1937), and later taught in the public schools of Oakland. Her father had to drop out of college in 1937 during the Great Depression; he eventually trained for work as a laboratory technician. He worked for years at the University of California at Berkeley, where he trained many students in lab techniques.
Painter earned her B.A. - Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964. During her undergraduate years, she studied French medieval history at the University of Bordeaux, France, 1962–63. She also studied abroad at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana, 1965–66. In 1967, she completed an M.A. at the University of California at Los Angeles. In 1974, she earned an M.A. and Ph.D. at Harvard University. She returned to study and earned a B.F.A. at Rutgers University in 2009. Painter has received honorary degrees from Dartmouth College, Wesleyan University, and Yale University, among other institutions.
In 1989, Painter married the mathematician Glenn Shafer, co-creator of the Dempster–Shafer theory.
(from Wikipedia)
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
December 24, 2021
Good, But With A Misleading Title
This is a fine work of history about the movement of freed Blacks to leave the western states of the South for Kansas after Reconstruction proved to be little better than slavery. It gives a great deal of detail about why Black families chose to leave, the obstacles they faced, the impacts on the southern states they left, and the national reaction to their departure. What it does NOT do, literally until the Epilogue, is provide detail of what actually happened to the Exodusters once they arrived in Kansas. So, be really clear about the purpose of the book before you pick it up. It isn’t about the experience of Blacks in Kansas after they migrated. It’s about the conditions that led to the migration itself, the logistics of the actual migration, and the impact on the states that were left behind. For that, it’s excellent. But that’s not what I was expecting from the title.
This is a fine work of history about the movement of freed Blacks to leave the western states of the South for Kansas after Reconstruction proved to be little better than slavery. It gives a great deal of detail about why Black families chose to leave, the obstacles they faced, the impacts on the southern states they left, and the national reaction to their departure. What it does NOT do, literally until the Epilogue, is provide detail of what actually happened to the Exodusters once they arrived in Kansas. So, be really clear about the purpose of the book before you pick it up. It isn’t about the experience of Blacks in Kansas after they migrated. It’s about the conditions that led to the migration itself, the logistics of the actual migration, and the impact on the states that were left behind. For that, it’s excellent. But that’s not what I was expecting from the title.
Read
July 7, 2011An in-depth study into a subject matter that is often overlooked when analyzing the history of Africans/Black/African-American history in the United States. Very thorough and academic. I had brief knowledge of Pap Singleton though other sources and was happy to read more details about him and others during that trying time.
October 21, 2022
I was expecting a lot more from this book. It gave detailed history on the demise of Reconstruction in the South after the Civil War and the struggles that came from that demise. It dealt a lot with the politics that led to a desire for emigration. It went in depth describing the organizations and movements dealing with that emigration. It talked of the racism the permeated the South.
Where I thought the book fell short though was that it neglected talking much about the people who sought to emigrate to Kansas. There were mentions of personal stories but they were briefly mentioned.
Most disappointing for me was that when the "Exodusters" reached Kansas, the story stopped. There was no follow through as to what the emigrants had to deal with once they came to Kansas.
Some history books are fascinating glimpses into the lives of those from the past. Some history books are a recitation of dry facts. This book falls more into the second category.
Where I thought the book fell short though was that it neglected talking much about the people who sought to emigrate to Kansas. There were mentions of personal stories but they were briefly mentioned.
Most disappointing for me was that when the "Exodusters" reached Kansas, the story stopped. There was no follow through as to what the emigrants had to deal with once they came to Kansas.
Some history books are fascinating glimpses into the lives of those from the past. Some history books are a recitation of dry facts. This book falls more into the second category.
October 25, 2019
Sadly, this book didn't cover the topic I'd hoped. Based on the title, I expected it would be about black migration to Kansas and what happened to black settlers who came to the state. The entirety of the book focuses on the first of these, but says nothing about the latter. Published in 1992, it reads like Painter's PhD dissertation, dry and academic. Unless you have a need to learn the facts & details she delineates, I'd skip this one if I were you.
October 24, 2021
Learned so much!
The twerking of history of the migration of southern black people to Kansas also illuminates many otherv details about the south, politics, economics, and even charity networks. Very good
The twerking of history of the migration of southern black people to Kansas also illuminates many otherv details about the south, politics, economics, and even charity networks. Very good
January 27, 2025
A lot of background with other emigration movements than the Exoduster movement, but I was very happy that was included in this book as it gave the overall time of the 1870s and 1880s a much better context with the end of Reconstruction. I also really appreciated the short chapters
December 13, 2019
So much good information, but a little dated now.
June 23, 2021
An excellent addition to American historiography
July 6, 2021
Phenomenal book that still holds up very well almost fifty years later
July 16, 2023
Exceedingly readable, which is a rarity for an academic book. Fills a necessary gap in the bigger picture of American historiography. Highly recommend.
October 18, 2023
c 1976, reworked thesis for PhD awarded by Harvard in 1974.
This is an excellent book. It is also horrifying to read about the many many many incidents of abuse of white privilege resulting in beating, cheating, stealing and killing of black people.
Very detailed account, with many quotations, of debates on important legislation passed in this period, both in Congress and in the states. Somehow I am always shocked by the obtuse racist claims so often appearing in print at the time.
A most amazing thing is that there was an extensive official Congressional inquiry resulting in some thousand pages of oral testimony by Blacks and whites. Painter makes good use of this material [Biblio p 262]. Tho' Congress shamefully took no action on the abuses so well documented by the committee, it did save for posterity all this testimony of individual experiences of excesses of white supremacy.
Despite the title, we don't read a whole lot about Kansas, partly because not all that much got recorded about what happened there, and partly because Painter focuses very much on the REASONS Blacks from the South wanted to move to the North when Reconstruction ended [in 1877] and much of the plantation/rural South degenerated quickly into violence and lawlessness, with whites killing and rampaging with impunity.
Painter concentrates geographically on the Lower Mississippi Valley, meaning parts of Louisiana and Mississippi, as well as Tennessee, because these were the areas that produced most of the Kansas migrants. Refugees being a better term, it is argued, as people were fleeing really for their lives.
"The freedpeople's struggle was against what they saw as effective reenslavement. And in fact, the forces ruling their states after Reconstruction ended did indeed set about constructing a set of laws that would make and keep nearly all of them a powerless, immobilized, landless agricultural work force." p vii
"THis political conflict between masters and [ex]slaves, so often called a racial conflict, was at bottom a conflict *between workers and employers,* between poor people and wealthy people, in which race functioned as the idiom for discussion of CLASS." "Masters believed that their former slaves, whom they had difficulty envisioning as other than slaves, would perish without the guidance and discipline of slavery to protect them from the consequences of their ignorance. Masters were also convinced that Black people would not work without compulsion." p viii
[interesting to compare Wilkerson's recent book on CASTE. All the testimony in Painter's book seems to me to support Wilkerson's claim that CASTE is a more fitting term than Racism to describe the position of Blacks in US society.]
"Southern Democratic candidates with Confederate backgrounds profited from two beliefs that have undergirded American politics since the Civil Was. First: while gov't in the interest of poor people is labeled gov't 'for special interests', gov't that serves the wealthier segments of society [meaning, in the South, planters and merchants] is claimed to be good for everyone.... Second, that men seen as 'the wealth and intelligence of the South' knew better how to govern than did the uneducated, who relied on common sense. Thus, the prosperous were claimed to be the polity's natural rulers. " p xiv
Painter's parents lived in Houston and moved when she was born to Oakland Calif.
This is an excellent book. It is also horrifying to read about the many many many incidents of abuse of white privilege resulting in beating, cheating, stealing and killing of black people.
Very detailed account, with many quotations, of debates on important legislation passed in this period, both in Congress and in the states. Somehow I am always shocked by the obtuse racist claims so often appearing in print at the time.
A most amazing thing is that there was an extensive official Congressional inquiry resulting in some thousand pages of oral testimony by Blacks and whites. Painter makes good use of this material [Biblio p 262]. Tho' Congress shamefully took no action on the abuses so well documented by the committee, it did save for posterity all this testimony of individual experiences of excesses of white supremacy.
Despite the title, we don't read a whole lot about Kansas, partly because not all that much got recorded about what happened there, and partly because Painter focuses very much on the REASONS Blacks from the South wanted to move to the North when Reconstruction ended [in 1877] and much of the plantation/rural South degenerated quickly into violence and lawlessness, with whites killing and rampaging with impunity.
Painter concentrates geographically on the Lower Mississippi Valley, meaning parts of Louisiana and Mississippi, as well as Tennessee, because these were the areas that produced most of the Kansas migrants. Refugees being a better term, it is argued, as people were fleeing really for their lives.
"The freedpeople's struggle was against what they saw as effective reenslavement. And in fact, the forces ruling their states after Reconstruction ended did indeed set about constructing a set of laws that would make and keep nearly all of them a powerless, immobilized, landless agricultural work force." p vii
"THis political conflict between masters and [ex]slaves, so often called a racial conflict, was at bottom a conflict *between workers and employers,* between poor people and wealthy people, in which race functioned as the idiom for discussion of CLASS." "Masters believed that their former slaves, whom they had difficulty envisioning as other than slaves, would perish without the guidance and discipline of slavery to protect them from the consequences of their ignorance. Masters were also convinced that Black people would not work without compulsion." p viii
[interesting to compare Wilkerson's recent book on CASTE. All the testimony in Painter's book seems to me to support Wilkerson's claim that CASTE is a more fitting term than Racism to describe the position of Blacks in US society.]
"Southern Democratic candidates with Confederate backgrounds profited from two beliefs that have undergirded American politics since the Civil Was. First: while gov't in the interest of poor people is labeled gov't 'for special interests', gov't that serves the wealthier segments of society [meaning, in the South, planters and merchants] is claimed to be good for everyone.... Second, that men seen as 'the wealth and intelligence of the South' knew better how to govern than did the uneducated, who relied on common sense. Thus, the prosperous were claimed to be the polity's natural rulers. " p xiv
Painter's parents lived in Houston and moved when she was born to Oakland Calif.
June 17, 2012
Nell Irvin Painter provides a window into the mass movement of previously enslaved Americans to Kansas, both during and after the Reconstruction period of American history. Painter writes in a manner that easy to follow, and her research is in-depth.
Read
August 26, 2009K-978.1Pai
April 12, 2024
Only got through 3/4 of this book. Read too much like a textbook and I gave up.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews