64 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
the blacks. In the South, after the failure to acquire land, the situation of the race was, he thought, precarious. He had no confidence in the new ruling class of whites that came after the carpetbaggers; they were not as friendly to the negroes as was the old master class which had been put out of politics after 1865 ; there was danger of helpless, hopeless serfdom. "Conditions might get better," said Pap, "a hundred years from now when all the present generation's dead and gone, but not afore, sir, not afore, an' what's agoin' to be a hundred years from now aint much account to us in this present o' de Lord." The only remedy, he decided, was for the blacks to quit the South and go to a new country where they would not have to compete with whites. "I had studied it all out," he said, "and it was clar as day to me. I dunno how it come to me; but I spec it was God's doin's. Any- how I knowed my people couldn't live thar The whites
had the lands and the sense an' the blacks had nothin' but their freedom, an' it was jest like a dream to them." ^
Singleton now turned his thoughts to Kansas as the most promising place for the settlement of home-seeking blacks. There were several reasons for this choice. In the first place, the history of Kansas appealed powerfully to the negroes. Besides, railroad- building in Missouri, Arkansas, and Kansas had attracted num- bers of Tennessee negroes as laborers and these sent back reports of the fine western lands open to settlement. Beginning with 1869 ^ f^w negroes went to Kansas each year to open small farms on the fertile prairies. In 1871, after finding that lands in Ten- nessee were too high priced for the blacks to purchase, Singleton's Real Estate and Homestead Association turned its attention to Kansas. An "exploring committee" was sent to "spy out" the land.^ A favorable report was made and a slight migration fol- lowed. In 1872 another committee sent to Kansas reported that negroes would do better to stay in Tennessee. Singleton then went himself to Kansas in 1873 ^^ representative of the Tennes-
• Interviews, in Singleton's Scrapbook, pp. i6, 21 ; Senate Report No. 693, Pt. 3, 46th Congress, 2d Session, p. 379.
- In every southern state there was a similar movement among the negroes
between 1870 and 1880.
