Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/82

 68 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

In the midst of earth's dominion Christ has promised us a kingdom Not left to other nations And we've surely gained the day.

Three colonies were founded by Singleton, Johnson, and DeFrantz, and to these most of the negroes who went to Kansas in 1876-78 were conducted. Dunlap Colony was in the Neosho Valley in Morris and Lyon counties ; Singleton Colony in Chero- kee County in the southeastern corner of the state, and Nicodemus Colony in the northwestern part of the state in Graham County. Singleton Colony, already referred to as having been settled in 1874, was soonest in good condition. Here, by 1878 the negroes had paid for 1,000 acres of land, good cabins had been erected, cows and pigs were common, and shade trees and fruit trees were growing.^® The climate here was better suited to the negro than that of the other colonies. Dunlap Colony, also founded in 1874, grew slowly and was in good condition in 1878. In that year there were at Dunlap 200 negro families, two churches and a school, and the settlers had purchased 7,500 acres of government land.^'' In all the colonies the negroes took up homesteads on government land or bought railroad and university lands on long credit at low prices.^'^

Nicodemus, the third colony and later the largest, was in less prosperous condition in 1878. Prominent Topeka negroes were promoting this colony, and in 1877 ^t was being "boomed" as a negro paradise. It was, the promoters claimed, "the largest colored colony in the United States." A town company was incorporated and a fee of five dollars entitled one to membership in the company and to a town lot. Churches were to be built by the company, and no saloons were tolerated. The promoters invited "our colored friends to come and join us in this beautiful Promised Land."^^ But a migration of negroes reached Nicode-

" Singleton's testimony in Senate Report No. 693, Pt. 3, 46th Congress, 2d session, p. 379. Dunlap was called "Singleton" Colony.

"Dunlap Colony circular, 1878.

"Circular, Kansas Freedmen's Relief Association, 1879; Topeka Colored Citizen, June 28, 1879.

"Nicodemus circular, 1877; Singleton's Scrapbook, pp. 8, 28.