Black History
The Exodusters: A Picture Of Black America’s Hope After Slavery
The portrait reveals a young Black woman in the late 18th century, posing with a slight smile. Her mere presence hinted at her circumstance, that she had access to a photography studio, suggesting a station not afforded many.
But, she was not the only one. There’s the couple with the wife leaning into her husband. The small child guarded by an enormous dog. All of their photos have been on exhibit at the Black Archives Museum in St. Joseph, Missouri. The photographer is unknown, but the photographs were taken in Leavenworth, Kansas and tell the story of families who fled Jim Crow, settling in the Midwest. A white photographer named Mary Everhard purchased the negatives in the 1920s. Decades later a Chicago collector bought the negatives and started selling them to museums including The Amon Carter Museum of American Art which loaned the photos to the Black Archives.
According to the exhibit, the subjects referred to themselves as “exodusters” — African Americans who left the South after the Civil War to settle in Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma. The name comes from the exodus from Egypt during Biblical times. Most left states lining the Mississippi River and arrived by steamboats, settling in the river cities of Wyandotte, Atchison, and Kansas City. It was the first mass migration after the Civil War, and an estimated 26,000 moved to Kansas.
The photos aren’t daguerreotypes which were the earliest photographic process popularized in the United States. According to Afropunk, one of the Black photographers whose “technical roots” were traced to daguerreotypes was J.P. Ball. Ball photographed Henry H. Garnet and abolitionist Frederic Douglass. Although the photographic eye that chronicled the courageous African Americans in Leavenworth is still unknown, the lens preserved the pictorial history of a people determined to live beyond the limited reality prescribed for them.
In Arkansas a formerly all-Black school, Ouachita County Training School, has launched a national fundraising effort to restore the campus following its designation as a site on the National Register of Historic Places. One of the first corporate donations to OCTS, located in Bearden, Arkansas, came from the Katherine Anthony Foundation.
Anthony’s nephew, Steve, and CEO of Anthony Timberlands, presented a $10,000 check to the historic committee.
“We are happy to support the work of the Greater Bradley District Association and the Ouachita County Training School committee in their efforts to maintain the infrastructure and grounds of the training school, which is such an important part of the Bearden community,” Anthony said.
The National Park Service listed OCTS on the prestigious register in 2023.
“Since we received the news, we have been excited and motivated to raise the fund necessary to preserve this part of our history!” Virginia Ashley, committee president said. “We recognize the pivotal role OCTS played in educating several generations of young people who started right here and went on to contribute greatly to the Black middle class and the world.”
The gift of education
For education advocates, December holds a special place in American history. During the Christmas Season in 1952, the Supreme Court first heard arguments to eliminate segregation in the nation’s public schools. But, it took two more years before the Court issued its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education, declaring segregation unconstitutional.
During the 1950s, OCTS educated Black students in the small southern town south of Little Rock, which became known internationally for The Little Rock Nine and their efforts to integrate Central High School. In Bearden, several Rosenwald Schools had consolidated to create the larger OCTS campus that educated students from the first through the 12th grades.
“I have such wonderful memories of my days as a student at OCTS,” recalled Pearlie Newton, a retired educator and executive director of the OCTS historic committee. “My dad helped pour concrete at the campus, my husband and I met there and it was in one of the classrooms that my goal to become an educator took shape.”
Despite the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision eliminating “separate but equal” schools, OCTS remained segregated until 1971 when it merged with the white school district in the area. An association of Black Baptist churches known as the Greater Bradley District Association purchased the campus for use as its headquarters.
Pastor and Association Moderator, Verna Thompson, said, “We are excited about the renovation and look forward to holding our church services and meetings in a modernized facility that holds so much historic significance.”
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