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. Between and nearly African Americans followed him to Kansas. Some lived in "Singleton's Colony" in Cherokee County. Singleton advocated the organized colonization of blacks in communities in Kansas and testified about the "Exodusters" before a committee of the U. Living in a large Union camp for fugitive slaves, he made a living building cabinets and coffins.
While peddling his products in the late s, Singleton became convinced that his mission was to help his people improve their lives and urge them to acquire farmland in Tennessee. However, whites would not sell productive land to them, and he soon took up another tactic, preaching to them to go west to farm and own federal homestead lands. He began scouting land in Kansas in the early s and returned to the south to organize parties to colonize Kansas.
By , Singleton and his associates had formed the Edgefield Real Estate and Homestead Association in Tennessee, which steered more than 20, black migrants to Kansas between and Many of those who came were unprepared and soon left the area, leaving in their wake dozens of ghost towns. But, for those who stayed, they improved the quality of their lives and made important contributions to the state and the communities in which they lived. In , Singleton was called to testify before Congress regarding the alarming migration of blacks from the South.
In , he used his reputation to bring together blacks into an organization called the Colored United Links in Topeka , Kansas. The objective was to combine the financial resources of all African-Americans to build black-owned businesses, factories, and trade schools.
Two barriers prevented Singleton from achieving his goal in Tennessee: high land prices and well-founded concerns about racial discrimination and unchecked violence in the post-Reconstruction South.
Stymied, Singleton started to explore the possibility of moving a large number of people to Kansas, a state that had more reasonable land prices and an undeniable reputation for freedom in the African American imagination. Kansas, with the promise of inexpensive land, racial solidarity, and supposedly better treatment for African Americans, seemed like an ideal place for creating a black Canaan. Singleton and Columbus Johnson, an associate with the Edgewood Real Estate and Homestead Association, visited Kansas in and toured several potential sites for African American farming colonies.
Singleton used the Edgewood Real Estate Association to drum up interest in migration to Kansas, holding revival-style information and promotion meetings for his agricultural colonies on July 31 and August 1, in Nashville. Singleton then led his first company of colonists to Baxter Springs in Cherokee County, Kansas, in , and the following year conveyed an even larger group from Nashville to Dunlop County, Kansas.
Migrants from Kentucky settled Nicodemus, Kansas, just a few months before families arrived in Baxter Springs. Pioneering settlers at Nicodemus, Baxter Springs, and Dunlop were just the first wave of African American migrants to flee the post-Reconstruction South.
Singleton had mixed feelings about the Exodusters. Singleton envisioned his communities as places of racial solidarity, but even so, the farm colonies operated on thin margins and would not be able to accommodate large numbers of additional, unplanned immigrants. With his communities established, Singleton moved into Topeka, Kansas , in the early s, and began work on an urban, industrial equivalent to his agricultural colonies.
Singleton called his new organization the United Colored Links.
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