What is "exodusters"

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 1879. It was the first general migration of blacks 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.