USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Thousands of African-Americans made their way to Kansas and other Western states after Reconstruction. The Homestead Act and other liberal land laws offered blacks (in theory) the opportunity to escape the racism and oppression of the post-war South and become owners of their own tracts of private farmland.

Detailed explanation-2: -Most of the land went to speculators, cattle owners, miners, loggers, and railroads. Of some 500 million acres dispersed by the General Land Office between 1862 and 1904, only 80 million acres went to homesteaders. Indeed, small farmers acquired more land under the Homestead Act in the 20th century than in the 19th.

Detailed explanation-3: -Large numbers of blacks came between 1879 and 1881. These people were called Exodusters. The name comes from the exodus from Egypt during Biblical times. Most Exodusters arrived by steamboats landing in the river cities of Wyandotte, Atchison, and Kansas City.

Detailed explanation-4: -The predominantly black communities the Exodusters created provided important models of black self-government and community building in the West at the end of the nineteenth century.

Detailed explanation-5: -Exodusters was a name given to African Americans who migrated from states along the Mississippi River to Kansas in the late nineteenth century, as part of the Exoduster Movement or Exodus of 1879. It was the first general migration of black people following the Civil War.