<Tr> <Td> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> </Td> </Tr> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> <P> 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 1872 . It was the first general migration of black people following the Civil War . The movement received substantial organizational support from prominent figures, Benjamin Singleton of Tennessee and Henry Adams of Louisiana . As many as forty thousand Exodusters left the South to settle in Kansas, Oklahoma and Colorado . </P> <P> The number one cause of black migration out of the South at this time was to escape racial violence or "bulldozing" by white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the White League, and widespread repression under the Black Codes, discriminatory laws that rendered blacks second - class citizens after Reconstruction . Vigilantes operated with almost total impunity, and no other issue was of more importance to the majority of southern blacks living in the countryside . Given the extreme level of discrimination and violent intimidation blacks faced in the rural South, the Exodusters can more accurately be described as refugees . </P>

What name was given to african american who moved to the great plains