QUESTION: The object, then, was to find out the best places in the South where you, could live?.

HENRY ADAMS: O, no, sir not then we just wanted to see whether there was any State in the South where we could get a living and enjoy our rights.

QUESTION: Was the object of that committee at that time to remove your people from the South, or what was it?.

Henry Adams, like others, had hoped to start a colony of African Americans in Liberia, though ran into difficulties and turned his attention to the West for a possible escape from the South. Then, I went to the MSU Library website to search for Black History databases, where I then explored the Oxford African American Studies Center which led me to a primary source: Testimony of Henry Adams before the Senate Select Committee Investigating the “Negro Exodus”. From here, I learned that a lot of newly freed Black people searched for a place to live outside of the South due to white resentment, many going to Kansas in a movement referred to as the “Exodus to Kansas”. After this, I decided to turn to Google to get a wider scope of ideas of ways to formulate my question, and after searching “Where did African Americans migrate to after the emancipation proclamation”, this lead me an exhibition on the Library of Congress’ website on the “Reconstruction and Its Aftermath”, specifically a portion named “ The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship“.

This, unfortunately did not give me many results. I fooled around with a few different databases such as ProQuest, searching for things such as “movement/migration after the Emancipation Proclamation”. While conducting research on this, I had a hard time figuring out how to word my question in a way that would give me results for primary and secondary sources that might give insight into the places that Black migration occurred.

While reading Unrequited Toil by Calvin Schermerhorn, I found myself interested in the question of where freed slaves relocated to after slavery was abolished in the United States.