Seeking a Hoosier Home: Black Migration to Indiana and the Politics of Belonging

miles from Indianapolis with a population of around ten thousand. Home to DePauw University, the unassuming nature of this quiet Hoosier college town belies the heated controversy that engulfed the state and the nation when over two hundred southern blacks left their homes in 1880 to settle in Greencastle. Prompted by the systematic oppression they experienced in their home state of North Carolina, these men and women were part of larger phenomenon known as the Exoduster Movement. Former slaves across the South left the place of their birth behind in order to build new lives for themselves and their families in the West and Mid-West. For many, the ultimate goal was Kansas, but for a contingent from North Carolina, the beacon of a better life shone brightest in Central Indiana. The movements of these nascent Hoosiers and their Exoduster colleagues were part of a wider shift in the politics and values of the nation as a whole. It is no coincidence that black migration sentiment and the Exoduster movement came to a head in the late 1870s and early 1880s. This was at a time when the efforts of Congressional Reconstruction had been abandoned. Southern leaders reasserte