Benjamin "Pap" Singleton

A Kansas Portrait

He was born a slave in 1809, but after 37 years of bondage Benjamin Singleton escaped to freedom. He made Detroit his home and operated a secret boardinghouse for other escaped slaves. Following emancipation, Singleton returned to his native Tennessee.

After the Civil War, African Americans in the South enjoyed the rights and privileges of American citizenship. But when the federal troops were removed, their rights were no longer secure. The Ku Klux Klan emerged to strike terror and death to Blacks who refused to submit to their will. A sharecropping system virtually re-enslaved Black tenant farmers.

Because Kansas was famous for John Brown's efforts and its struggle against slavery, Singleton considered the state a new Canaan, and he, like a "Black Moses," would lead his people to the promised land. Singleton traveled through the South organizing parties to colonize in Kansas. In 1873 nearly 300 Blacks followed him to Cherokee County and founded "Singleton's Colony." Others settled in Wyandotte, in Topeka's Tennessee Town, and in Dunlap Colony near present Emporia. Singleton advocated the organized colonization of Blacks in communities like Nicodemus, first settled in 1877. Between 1879 and 1881, however, the organized movement gave way to an "Exodus" in which tens of thousands of oppressed and impoverished Southern Blacks fled to Kansas and other Northern states. Many came unprepared but most who remained ultimately improved the quality of their lives and made important contributions to the state and the communities in which they lived.

Known affectionately as "Pap," Benjamin Singleton died in 1892. Through his last years he took great comfort and pride in the role in played as "Father of the Negro Exodus."