Affidavit of Daniel Parker regarding the Negro Exodus

Citation Information:  “Affidavit of Daniel Parker regarding the Negro Exodus.” From Herbert Aptheker, editor, A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States (New York, 1951), p. 722.

My name is Daniel Parker; my age is about twenty-nine years; I have been living for the last few years on Widow Crane’s place, about 3 miles from Delta, Louisiana; made a very bad living; paying $10 an acre rent; the colored people in the South received no favors at all from the white people; the reason I left the South was we had organized a club to get a reduction in rent, and I had been made president of the club, on Widow Crane’s place; I was accused of teaching the people to leave the South, and heard that threats had been made against my life; I was afraid they would make away with me at night; a young man had lived right next me moved in Tensas Parish, told me that the bulldozers along in August or September, 1878, came into that parish and killed and slaughtered men there just for fun; his name was Ed. Danby; I said, “Ed, do you go round there now and tell the people how to vote?” He said no, he had taken to preaching now-if he told the people how to vote there would be a man short there … I want to go to Topeka, Kans.; my wife and two children are down in Madison Parish; I had to leave without them … the landowners in the South did everything they could to prevent us from leaving … .

Senate Report 693, 46th Cong., 2nd Sess., part 3, p. 51.