Encyclopedia

This interactive encyclopedia offers teachers and students access to terms, people, and events related to the history of Slavery in America. Many entries include reference material and some of the biographies on prominent figures contain suggestions for teaching as well as links to related sections of this site. The encyclopedia will continue to grow throughout the course of this project.

Kansas Exodus: The migration of 20,000 to 40,000 blacks, traveling by riverboat or following the Chisholm Trail on foot, from Mississippi to Kansas in the 15 years after the end of Reconstruction. The migration began in 1879 and is known as the Exodus of 1879 or the Exoduster Movement. Frustrated by the onset of legalized Jim Crow and the impoverishment of sharecropping, most of the black migrants pooled family assets and purchased small farms or town lots. Several all-black communities were established, places where African Americans formed their municipal governments and practiced self-rule. Nicodemus, Kansas, named for an African prince brought to the American colonies as a slave but who later purchased his own freedom, still exists today. In the 1880s, blacks purchased more than 20,000 acres of land in Kansas. This migration continued into the 1890s as thousands of African-American farmers moved to Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Colorado. By 1900, more than 55,000 African Americans lived in Oklahoma in 25 black communities--Langston City in Oklahoma was one such place. But, times were often difficult, and many of the migrants faced severe winter storms, droughts, and white hostility. In the end, far greater opportunities existed in the West for southern blacks than were possible at home. They could more easily become landowners, and many of them participated in most aspects of the westward movement--panning for gold in California, serving as Indian scouts and as so-called Buffalo Soldiers in the army, and working for the transcontinental railroads.

Kelly, Leiotine: (1920 - ) In 1984, Leiotine Kelly was the first African-American woman, and the second female, elected as a bishop in the Methodist Church. Kelly was the daughter and sister of Methodist ministers, married twice, received her BA from Virginia Union, and became a teacher. In 1976, she received her master's degree from Wesley Theological Seminary and was ordained, and received her first appointment as the pastor of Asbury-Church Hill United Methodist Church in Richmond, Virginia. As bishop, she is the chief administrator and spiritual leader of over 100,000 Methodists in Nevada and California.

Kelsey, Lula Spaulding: (?-?) A successful businesswoman and political activist from North Carolina who founded the Salisbury Colored Women's Civic League. The league joined with white women's organizations in the state to organize clean-up drives and health and sanitation education for African Americans. Kelsey served as Treasurer for the North Carolina Mutual, was the first licensed female mortician in the state, and the sole proprietor of a successful funeral home business.

Kennedy, Stetson: 1916: Folklore collector, labor organizer, and Civil Rights activist who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan and exposed its members in 1946. He is the author of numerous books dealing with human rights including, The Klan Unmasked, Southern Exposure, Jim Crow Guide, and After Appomattox: How the South Won the War.

Kentucky State University: A school whose origins began in 1886, when John Henry Jackson, leader of the Colored Teacher's State Association, lobbied the Kentucky State Legislature to establish a State Normal School to prepare African-American teachers to teach in the black public schools of Kentucky. Although a number of towns vied for the school, the residents of Frankfort pooled $1,500 to purchase a site overlooking the town and won the State's approval. Jackson, along with one other teacher and a matron for female students, staffed the school, which consisted of a single four-room building with chapel. It opened its doors to 55 students in 1887. With help from the second Morrill Land Grant of 1890, the school was able to expand its curriculum and add a high school. In 1902, its name changed to Kentucky Normal Industrial College for Colored Persons. Through the early 20th century, the school continued to emphasize teacher training, discontinued its high school, and changed its name again to Kentucky State College for Negroes. After Kentucky ruled to desegregate its schools, the college became Kentucky State College and enrolled its first white student in 1954. In 1972, the school achieved university status. Today KYSU has a racially balanced student body of over 1,500 students and offers degree programs in 36 fields.

King, Jr., Martin Luther: (1929-1968) The preeminent civil rights activist and a winner of the Noble Peace Prize, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1929, the son and grandson of Baptist ministers at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. He received his doctorate in systematic theology at Boston University and accepted the pastorate of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. It was in this position, in 1955, that King amalgamated forces to lead the Montgomery Bus Boycott after it had been sparked by Rosa Parks's refusal to vacate her seat on a municipal bus in favor of a white passenger. In 1957, King and other religious leaders established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). King was widely known for his exceptional ability as an orator and proponent of Christianity and Gandhian non-violent strategies/protests. He also wrote a number of books including: Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story and Why We Can't Wait. During the Kennedy administration King led the Birmingham protests and the 1963 March on Washington D.C. in which he gave his now famous "I Have a Dream" speech. In 1964, he was selected as both Time magazine's "Man of the Year" and also as the Noble Peace Prize recipient. In 1965, King led the Selma to Montgomery March. During the 1960s, increasing tension began to arise between King and younger and more radical African-American civil rights protestors, including Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee while working on behalf of a strike by municipal garbage workers.

Knights of Pythias: Founded on February 19, 1864 in Washington D.C. by Justus Henry Rathbone and nine other men, it traces its historical and symbolic roots to a time before Christ and the friendship of Damon and Pythias. The Knights of Pythias is a social brotherhood and fraternal organization dedicated to principles of friendship, charity, and benevolence. Rathbone served as the organization's first chancellor and by 1900, over half a million men had joined the Knights of Pythias. The Knights is the first Order ever chartered by an Act of Congress, and its motto "Peace through understanding," is a testimony to its hope for healing up the wounds of the Civil War.

Knoxville College: A college, founded in 1875 by the Board of Freedmen's Mission of the United Presbyterian Church, to educate African Americans to be teachers in black schools. It came into being in response to the State of Tennessee's first public school statute, passed in 1873, which read, "the public schools shall be free to all persons, but white and colored persons shall not be taught in the same school but in separate schools under the same general regulations as to management, usefulness and efficiency," thus necessitating the establishment of black schools staffed by black teachers. Initially, the school included both an elementary and high school division in order to provide a laboratory school for its student teachers and to give any African American a beginning education. By 1931, Knoxville College discontinued its elementary and high school divisions to concentrate entirely upon teacher and liberal arts education. Desegregation in the 1950s drained Knoxville College of many potential students, but in recent years it has reorganized and is attempting to diversify. The school currently enrolls approximately 300 students and offers bachelor's degrees in 24 fields.

Kola: Cola acuminate and Cola nitida. Trees were native to western Sudan, and their fruit, the Kola nut, became the principal ingredient used in making modern cola drinks. During the slave trade, kola nuts were given enslaved Africans to suppress their hunger and thirst. They were used also as a medicine of sorts. A transatlantic slaver wrote: "The seed, brought in a Guinean ship from that country, is called 'bichy' by the Colomanty and is eaten and used for pains in the belly."

Ku Klux Klan: A secret society whose ultimate goal is to establish white supremacy. Founded in 1866 at Pulaski, Tennessee, the Ku Klux Klan violently attacked and intimidated African Americans and white Republicans (carpetbaggers and Union League members). Ex-Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest (1862-77), who had massacred black and white Union soldiers at Fort Pillow, was elected its first Grand Wizard. The organization's name is thought to have come from the Greek word for circle (kuklos) and the English word for clan, although some historians and folklorists speculate that it might have had its origins in the phantom Indian chieftain named Clocletz. This spiritual figure was believed, in slave times, to have roamed the Alabama woods hunting for escaped slaves. The Clocletz Indians were indeed an historic people used for that purpose--and many blacks identified the word with terror and capture.