Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/93

 "PAP" SINGLETON 79

After the Cyprus disappointment Singleton was again at- tracted by the Liberian or Ethiopian movement which was being agitated in the lower South by Bishop Turner and other south- ern negroes. In furtherance of this movement in January, 1885, Singleton organized the "United Transatlantic Society" for the "great and grand purpose of migration to Africa." ^'^ All over the South the negroes were thinking of "Ethiopia" as a refuge that might soon be needed. The election of Cleveland in 1884 had caused uneasy feelings among the southern blacks, in spite of the fact that he had sent personal messages to them to assure them that slavery was not to be re-established.^® Some waves of this uneasiness reached the Kansas negroes and many of them enrolled in the United Transatlantic Society. According to the official papers of the society the movement was the result of the conviction that the relations between whites and blacks would continue to be unsatisfactory and that negroes could not expect to reach "perfect manhood" in America ; for it was clear that ex-slaves would never be accorded important positions in political or social life, and that fewer and fewer opportunities would be open to them. The negro could not accept such a con- dition; therefore, the only solution was "a national existence" apart from the whites. ^^ The society evidently intended to deal with foreign powers, for in the constitution there is a curious clause providing that "No persons shall hold any communica- tions with any foreign power .... without the authority of this organization .... and the Father of this organization, Benjamin (alias) Pap Singleton, if he be alive and sane." **

Singleton in his addresses and proclamations as "father" of the United Transatlantic Society, went to the root of the trouble. The negroes must be a separate "nation," he said; in no other way can they survive. They had been able to secure no strong- hold in America, for after emancipation "we were turned loose like so many cattle with nothing to live on," and all efforts at


 * Circular, 1886.


 * See Douglass, Life and Times, p. 651.


 * ^ North Topeka Benevolent Banner, September 24, 1887; Scrapbook, p. 61.


 * Co'nstitution of the United Transatlantic Society, 1885.