Benjamin Pap Singleton, New Afrikan Exodusters, Land Liberation

Описание: Benjamin “Pap” Singleton (1809–1900) was a formerly enslaved abolitionist, land organizer, and Black nationalist visionary whose work laid early foundations for New Afrikan self-determination. Born enslaved in Davidson County Tennessee near Nashville, Singleton escaped bondage and dedicated his life to the liberation of Black people through land ownership, migration, and independent political power.

Singleton became the leading architect of the Exoduster Movement of the 1870s, organizing thousands of formerly enslaved Black people to leave the post-Reconstruction South and establish independent Black settlements in Kansas, including Dunlap Colony. For Singleton, land was not simply economic security—it was the material basis of freedom, dignity, and nationhood. He believed Black people could only be free outside white domination by controlling territory, labor, and governance.

Beyond Kansas, Singleton’s vision was explicitly nationalist and internationalist. He explored plans for an independent Black nation on the island of Cyprus, viewing it as a strategic base for African-descended people to govern themselves beyond U.S. racial terror. He also supported the idea of an all-Black independent state in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), where Black settlers, Indigenous nations, and freedpeople could build autonomous institutions outside white supremacist control.

Singleton’s ideas directly prefigure the ideological lineage of Black nationalism from Delany to Garvey and find modern expression in the Republic of New Afrika (RNA) and the New Afrikan Independence Movement. His insistence on land as the foundation of freedom, mass migration as a political strategy, and the necessity of independent Black nationhood align squarely with the RNA demand for self-determination and sovereignty in the Black Belt South.

Benjamin Pap Singleton stands as a 19th-century New Afrikan pathfinder—an early revolutionary who understood that liberation required more than civil rights. It required land, territory, and nationhood.

From the Land to the Sea — New Afrika Will Be Free.
FTL.


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