All Colored
People That Want To Go To Kansas
United States. All Colored People That Want to go to Kansas, September 5th, 1877.
(Broadside. Schomburg Center, Photographs and Prints Division.)
Once slavery was abolished, Africans throughout the hemisphere deserted the plantations and moved to cities or frontier areas in search of greater freedom and better job opportunities. The largest movement by African Americans from the Southern United States was to the Midwest. Broadsides such as this describing opportunities for land and jobs were circulated throughout the South. By 1879, over 7000 African Americans had arrived in Kansas. These "exodusters" also made their way to Iowa, Missouri and Nebraska.