Black freedom after the Civil War
History books say that the South established the Confederacy and fought the Civil War for "States' Rights." Translation: States' rights to keep people as property. As soon as the war was over, and the southern states had rejoined the country, they quickly set to work enforcing their 'states' rights' again, writing new laws restricting the movement of the newly-freed black people in their midsts. As early as 1865, the year the war ended, "black codes" were being written and enacted.
https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/black-codes
These laws limited the choices that free black people could legally make, and if a black person broke a law (that they likely had never been informed about), or even appeared to come near the line, the consequences were grave. "Between 1880 and 1950, an African-American was lynched more than once a week for some perceived breach of the racial hierarchy." (smithsonianmag)
But the north star pointed the way to opportunity.
While Field Order 15 was reversed after Lincoln's assassination, his Homestead Act of 1862 stayed on the books for years -- because it also benefitted white people. The Act, passed in 1862 during the war, was a strategic move designed to give the Union a competitive edge in agriculture over the south. It gave any citizen the opportunity to claim 160 acres of land to own and establish their own farm. This meant that poor white families could finally start their own farms, when before, they could not have competed with southern plantation bosses, who had massive farms and an enslaved workforce. The Union also passed the National Banking Act, established the federal Department of Agriculture, and passed the Pacific Railroad Act, all during the war. These moves all had the aim of making the north strategically advantageous through more attractive opportunities in agriculture, better economic opportunities, and potentially even by draining population from the south.
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-ushistory/chapter/government-during-the-war/
The adoption of the 14th amendment in 1868 meant that free black people were legal citizens of the United States, and could thus start to take advantage of the Homestead Act. New railroad lines meant that travel through the northern states was feasible. Finally, after 200 years of slavery in North America, black Americans had a way out. The first mass migration was the Exodusters movement of 1879, in which as many as 40,000 free black people left the south for opportunities in the north. Over the next several decades, millions of free black people would do the same, a movement that later became known as The Great Migration.
It was a tainted freedom, however.
As a natural continuation of the brutal and bloody work of Lewis and Clark, later President Andrew Jackson, and the cavalry of the U.S. Army, the genocide against native American tribes continued beyond the Civil War. The Homestead Act granted citizens (of the country that had existed for a few generations only) a righteousness to claim land in places west of the Mississippi River only recently established as "states." Formerly, and probably for thousands of years, this had been the territory of the Kickapoo, Kaw/Kansa, Pawnee, Comanche, Oto, Osage, Wichita, Kiowa, Iowa, Escanxaques, and other indigenous tribes. While black families were just starting to experience the taste of freedom, the first Americans, who had known nothing but freedom for as long as their histories had existed, now were forced to experience restriction. Many of the claims made under the Homestead Act by both black and white families were in Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Colorado. While poor white families and newly free black families were moving in and expanding, Native Americans were moving out and contracting.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/long-lasting-legacy-great-migration-180960118/
Farming the prairie was rarely a profitable prospect. The exodusters who had the best success were the ones who moved to cities and towns, where they established new businesses, joined church communities, and found work for family members. https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/the-gilded-age/american-west/a/the-homestead-act-and-the-exodusters
Kansas was particularly appealing to newly freed black people, as the state became known for its abolition efforts by John Brown and others.
The exodusters were not a monolith; some of the black Americans moving west had almost no money and possessions, while some groups had resources for farming and establishing other types of businesses. Settlements like Nicodemus sought to attract people with resources and funds to develop the town, and discouraged the influx of poor migrants.
http://npshistory.com/publications/nico/promised-land-solomon.pdf
In places like Topeka, people without many physical assets soon found themselves with the valuable resource of a new network — a burgeoning black community. By 1907, Topeka had 71 churches, 29 of which were home to black congregations.
The Lytle Family
The Lytle Family One Exoduster, John Lytle, born into slavery but freed by the 13th amendment, was a barber and later a salesman in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Though he and his family were free, they had limited opportunities for land, worship, and education in Tennessee. Reconstruction had failed to deliver the equality it promised, and in fact, local and national racist policymaking, as well as outright mob violence — escalated in the 1870s, especially in Tennessee.
In 1882, John and Mary Ann Lytle heard the call of the Exodusters, and uprooted their family of five from Tennessee and moved to Kansas. In Topeka, John established a barbershop at 207 S. Kansas Avenue. He went on to serve on the city’s police force, and was politically active in the state’s Populist Party. John Lytle became one of the most well-known black men in Topeka of his day, and his influence opened up opportunities for his children, too.
His daughter Lutie got her first job as an assistant enrolling clerk for the state legislature in 1895, almost 20 years before women could vote in Kansas. Lutie went on to work for several black newspapers in the area, and cultivated an interest in the law.
Crediting her experience in Topeka working for the legislature, Lutie Lytle went on to become the first black woman law professor in the U.S.
John and Mary Ann's son Charles also went into barbering and law enforcement like his father, but became better known as the owner of Lytle’s Drug Store at 112 SE 4th Street many years later. (https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-102-issue-5/i-shall-talk-to-my-own-people-the-intersectional-life-and-times-of-lutie-a-lytle)
Lytles in the 1950s
By 1956, the Lytle family had grown to almost 20 members in Topeka, even with Lutie and her family settling elsewhere. Lytle’s Barber Shop was even listed in the Green Book entry for Topeka (https://www.cjonline.com/news/20190306/history-guy-green-books-suggest-topeka-was-more-welcoming-to-african-americans-than-other-kansas-cities) at that time. Though John had passed away in 1933, by all measures he had established a successful and comfortable home for his family in Topeka.
Urban Renewal changed all of that, though.
In 1958, Lytle’s Drug Store was closed and vacated in order for the city to clear the land for urban renewal.
The demolition crews came and went, leaving bare earth in their path.
While the city worked to relocate some of the families and businesses from The Bottoms to the newly-established Highland Park area, these stores and services would never have seen the same level of success that they had experienced downtown. Location is the first rule of business. It was a throwaway option proffered by city leadership to try and appease the poor families it radically displaced.
Ten years later, in 1966, not a single Lytle remained in Topeka.
The departure of the Lytle family is a tiny example of the unfathomable loss caused by urban renewal.
Black newspapers
From the late 1800s through the turn of the century, there were more than 20 different black newspapers established in Topeka, including The Colored Citizen, The Plaindealer, and The State Ledger. These were not just sources of news - but also sources of jobs, touchpoints in social networks, and galvanizing political forces. Black newspapers were an important part of the rapid expansion of rights and recognition that black Americans built around the tumultuous turn of the 20th century.
Notes on 1898 Indian Congress
Refer also to Joslyn Art Museum Omaha exhibit by Wendy Red Star.
Largest gathering of Indian tribes of its kind to date. Less than 10 years after the end of the Indian Wars. Edward Rosewater, editor of Omaha Bee, main ethnologist + organizer for event. James Mooney, USFG ethnological consultant.
Frank A. Rinehart photographs.
Indian Wars / conflicts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_Wars#Last_conflicts
Wizard of Oz author super racist
author L. Frank Baum wrote: "The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries, we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth."[47]