Benjamin "Pap" Singleton (1809 – 1892) was an American activist and businessman best known for his role in establishing African-American settlements in Kansas. A former slave from Tennessee who escaped to freedom in 1846, he became a noted abolitionist, community leader, and spokesman for African American civil rights. He returned to Tennessee during the Union occupation in 1862, but soon concluded that blacks would never achieve economic equality in the white-dominated South. After the end of Reconstruction, Singleton organized the movement of thousands of black colonists, known as Exodusters, to found settlements in Kansas. A prominent voice for early black nationalism, he became involved in promoting and coordinating black-owned businesses in Kansas and developed an interest in the Back-to-Africa movement.
Read more about Benjamin "Pap" Singleton: Early Life and Education, Separatism, Singleton Colonies, Exodusters, 1879-1880, Final Years, Misconceptions
Famous quotes containing the words benjamin, pap and/or singleton:
“Where there are no rights, there are no duties. To tell the truth is thus a duty; but it is a duty only in respect to one who has a right to the truth.”
—Henri Benjamin Constant De Rebecque (1767–1830)
“Sometimes I lifted a chicken that warn’t roosting comfortable, and took him along. Pap always said, take a chicken when you get a chance, because if you don’t want him yourself you can easy find somebody that does, and a good deed ain’t ever forgot. I never see papa when he didn’t want the chicken himself, but that is what he used to say, anyway.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“When the sword of rebellion is drawn, the sheath should be thrown away.”
—quoted in letter, Aug. 6, 1775, by painter John Singleton Copley on the subject of the American Revolution. British proverb.