A closer look
Exodusters
How did popular images of African Americans leaving the South in the 1870s reinforce and sometimes defy racial stereotypes?
by Josh Brown, The Graduate Center, CUNY (Emeritus)
Tens of thousands of African Americans left the unreconstructed South for Kansas beginning in the 1870s in search of land to own and cultivate, opportunities for independence, and greater freedom. Taking a cue from the Old Testament saga of the Jews’ flight from tyranny in Egypt, current-day commentators and reporters dubbed the migrants as “Exodusters.”
Entitled, “The New Exodus,” this April 1870 cartoon on the cover of the weekly humor magazine Puck wryly commented on the “plight” white planters now faced. After the Civil War, with the end of slavery, “it looked woefully as if the Haughty Southron [former slaveholding southerners] would have to WORK.” But soon they devised new ways—such as starvation wages and sharecropping—to assure that their former slaves’ “freedom could be unmade.” But, Puck continued, Black southerners could not endure such exploitation forever and “of course, the end had to come.” Although it employed racial stereotypes in the cover image and its accompanying description, the magazine drew a direct parallel between the Exoduster and biblical stories about oppression and freedom, concluding, “And now he has taken his banjo over his shoulder, and shaken the dust of Egypt off his big honest feet, and set out to see what the Kansas farmer will do for him.” Among the migrant family’s possessions shown in the cartoon, but unmentioned in the description, was a ballot box: a conspicuous indication that the Exodusters’ goals included exercising their right to vote.
In contrast to political cartoons, pictorial news reporting occasionally broke away from caricature to depict events involving African Americans—usually spurred by the actions of Black Americans that seemed to take the illustrated press by surprise.
For example, in April 1879, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper reported on the Exodusters, expressing surprise at their numbers and determination to leave. Deploring the ramifications of the migration on the southern economy, Leslie’s acknowledged it was clear evidence of the injustice and violence that accompanied renewed Democratic control in the region. And when Leslie’s published engraved illustrations in its April 19, 1879, issue (photographs would not be successfully reproduced until later in the century), their portrayal of the migrants shed the usual rags, condescending gestures, and exaggerated features usually seen in commercial periodicals.
On their way to Kansas, the migrants’ arrival in St. Louis via steamboat in late March 1879, was first not seen as an auspicious occasion. Leslie’s described the Exodusters’ march through the streets of the city as a “motley procession” in “miserable condition.” And yet, both in text and picture, the focus was on their dignity. “In appearance,” Leslie’s noted, “they looked like any ordinary congregation of colored people, with the exception that they were most wretchedly clad . . .” In contrast to descriptions in many press reports of the chaos of fleeing refugees, this panoramic illustration depicted an orderly procession of proud homesteaders, greeted and assisted by the city’s Black church congregants. James T. Smith, “a prominent and highly respected colored citizen of St. Louis,” captured the scene’s paramount message for Leslie’s readers: “[The Exodusters] are justified in seeking to better themselves.”
Reflection Questions
Examine “The New Exodus” Puck cover cartoon. Discuss what possessions the African American family are carrying and how some may have reinforced racial stereotypes and others challenged them.
Look closely at the Frank Leslie’s panoramic illustration of Exodusters proceeding through the streets of St. Louis. What do the picture's details suggest about the stories of the people making this journey?
Discuss how the details in the two smaller Frank Leslie’s pictures align with and contradict 1870s stereotypes in the Puck cover cartoon.
Additional Reading
Deborah Willis and Barbara Krauthamer, Envisioning Emancipation: Black Americans and the End of Slavery (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2012).
Joshua Brown, Beyond the Lines: Pictorial Reporting, Everyday Life, and the Crisis of Gilded Age America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), chap. 4.
Related Chapters
New Frontiers: Westward Expansion and Industrial Growth, 1865-1877Related Items
"The New Exodus."En Route to Kansas