Museum program to focus on 'Exodusters'

The Exodusters: African-American migration to Putnam County in the late 19th century. (Courtesy photo)

Putnam County Museum will present the program, "The Exodusters: African-American Migration to Putnam County in the late 19th Century," a talk by Lydia Marshall on Saturday, July 9.

The 11 a.m. program is free and open to the public at the museum, 1105 N. Jackson St., Greencastle.

"I wouldn't go back to North Carolina for $500. I'll never go back unless I die and the birds eat me and carry me back ... I want all my people to leave the South and come here; they can do so much better here, and be free men." -- Willis Staten, Exoduster migrant to Greencastle, 1880.

Lydia Marshall

Tens of thousands of African Americans left the U.S. South in the late 1870s and early 1880s. They settled in a variety of northern and western states, including Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois and Indiana. Hundreds of such migrants -- who were called "Exodusters" after the biblical Exodus -- came to Putnam County.

Rev. John Clay, of Greencastle's African Methodist Episcopal Bethel Church, and George Langsdale, editor of the Greencastle Banner, helped many settle in the county.

Exodusters came in search of available farm work, good wages and the opportunity to exercise their right to the vote. Not all county residents welcomed the political change that came with the arrival of so many Republican-voting African Americans.

The Exoduster migration's political consequences in both Indiana and Kansas eventually led to a U.S. Senate investigation. This talk focuses on Exodusters' triumphs and trials. It will also include a summary of ongoing archaeological research on Exoduster migrants in 19th-century Putnam County.

Marshall is assistant professor of anthropology at DePauw University. She has completed archaeological research in Kenya, Tanzania, Alaska, New Jersey and Wisconsin.

For further information about this program call the Putnam County Museum at 653-8419.