Narratives of African-Americans in Kansas, 1870-1992. Beyond the Exodust Movement

Author:	Gordon, Jacob
Year:	1993
Pages:	312
ISBN:	0-7734-9350-6 978-0-7734-9350-6
Price:	$219.95

This is the first account of the Black experience of the migration into Kansas drawn from the offspring of Black settlers. Some of their ancestors came as slaves during the time of the "Bleeding Kansas" struggle to determine if Kansas would be free or slave. Others came during the Civil War and afterwards when "Exodusters" streamed to Kansas by the thousands to establish such settlements as Nicodemus and Dunlap, to serve as "Buffalo Soldiers" at Fort Riley and Fort Larned and to expand the sub-communities of Kansas City and Topeka through the 20th century. This primary source volume addresses the historical and contemporary lives of African Americans in Kansas and the impact of the African American presence on Kansas history.

Reviews

"The material reveals a unique cultural perspective about an historical era that has been viewed from the dominant view of early European settlers in this country, while noting also some common human and environmental conditions experienced by most settlers at the time. . . . may be especially useful to graduate and undergraduate students in Black studies programs, multicultural education courses, ethnographic research courses, and social science courses such as anthropology, sociology, psychology, and social work. Students in those programs and courses may be challenged to conduct additional analyses of the narratives to determine variations in the exodusters' experiences and a conceptual basis for some of the intergenerational differences noted by Dr. Gordon." -- Edith Freeman