Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/95

 "PAP" SINGLETON 8l

A year later the blacks at Topeka planned a birthday party for the old man. The celebration was to be held in a park and five cents admission fee charged. Pap at once announced that all who desired to assist him entertain his friends on his birth- day might send donations — "anything in the way of eatables," he said, "will be kindly received." He invited the higher gov- ernment officials at Washington to attend his party, and some of them sent polite regrets which he had printed in the local news- papers. He made out a programme and put the Kansas notables — governor, mayors, preachers — down for speeches. They did not come, but the party was a success. One hundred guns were fired at sunrise and a hundred more at sunset; "John Brown's Body" was sung, everybody had a good time, and Pap made $50 clear.^^ The next year a barbecue on his birthday netted him $274.25. In 1884 the negroes of St. Louis gave him a celebra- tion, and so it was until he died at Topeka in 1892 at the age of eighty-three. At all of his celebrations Singleton gloried in his title of "father (or Moses) of the exodus," and as the years passed his achievements were greatly magnified by himself and others. For instance, the St. Louis and Topeka newspapers in the late 8o's declared that Singleton brought 82,000 negroes out of the South ; this was about ten times the actual number.

It is usually asserted that the "exodus" failed. But did it really fail ? Most of the negroes were discouraged and returned to the South. The weak ones who remained in Kansas went to the wall, the stronger ones who remained did well, as negroes usually do when in small numbers surrounded by whites and incited by white example, competition, and public opinion to exertions not known in the "black belt." Kansas, too, was on a business basis; the "black belt" was not so and could not be; the industrious negro in the "black belt" would be "eaten up" by visiting friends and relations, while in Kansas he might hope to enjoy more of the fruits of his labor. The negroes certainly had to work harder in Kansas, but that was what they needed, and some succeeded because they had to work who would have been loafers in Missis- sippi. Then, too, on the race question a radical state became

"Circular, 1882; Scrapbook, pp. 41, 43, 45.