ABSTRACT
Topeka of the early 1950s was quite different from Topeka, Kansas, today. In the early 1950s, Topeka was a city of seventy-nine thousand citizens, with an African American population of 7 percent, or a little more than five thousand people. The African American population lived in four sections of Topeka: Mudtown, an area earlier known as Redmonsville, The Bottoms, and Tennessee Town. This last area of Topeka, Tennessee Town, was settled in the late 1870s by approximately three thousand exodusters, as the former slaves were called (McConnell 1995). The exodusters had left the Mississippi Valley, often sponsored by White church congregations, with promises of cheap land and their safety in the western states.
