Answer – The Exodusters were the African-Americans who moved away from the Southern states to Western states like Colorado, Oklahoma and Kansas after the Civil War to flee Jim Crow oppression.

Explanation:

Slavery was abolished in the United States as the Civil War ended, and the African-American population was granted suffrage rights as well as the rights to hold land. However, the Southern Democrats of the former Confederacy were not eager to allow such reform to take place. As Reconstruction failed, discriminatory Jim Crow legislation began to be passed in several of these states, making it difficult for the formerly enslaved African-American population to practice their new rights as citizens. 

Throughout American history, stretching back to colonial days, various Homestead Acts had been passed to make land ownership by citizens easier and to encourage settlement. These laws still stood, but the state governments of the former Confederate states kept their African-American populations from taking advantage of them. Meanwhile, states to the West such as Colorado and Oklahoma, and in particular Kansas, began to appear more favorable to them. Thus, they began moving to these states in the late 1800’s, with the migration peaking in 1879. Those who undertook this mass migration came to be known as the exodusters (after the biblical Exodus).

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