Back to Africa

There were disagreements regarding the meaning of the "Back to Africa" ​​movement, some were sympathetic, some were apathetic, and some were against it. The basic sympathy is, of course, "solidarity among black people", which is apathetic according to many references because it has been in America since birth, the American language, American culture, the American climate, and all of America. And those who disagree according to many references also mainly come from the upper-middle class.

There are also those who suspect that it was just a colonial ploy to expel the black people, or a movement to politicize the members of the KKK. Some even accuse Marcus Garvey of being in the lead. In fact, for some people, Marcus Garvey is considered a hero because he voiced the spirit of national solidarity. But people wonder, why did Marcus, who was black and founded his movement in Jamaica, finally move to New York?.

Launch https://www.reference.com/history/back-africa-movement-b6675c50102225e6. Marcus Garvey in the early 20th century whose goal was to help all African Americans return to Africa. Garvey initially founded the movement in Jamaica but eventually moved to New York to direct it. The movement supports the idea that African Americans will never have true civil rights and equality in the United States and therefore need to move to Africa.

From his headquarters in Harlem, New York, Marcus Garvey gave a speech to African Americans suggesting they move to Africa for liberation. He and his organization, the Universal Negro Improvement Association, attracted many interested followers. Over time, this movement grew to spur one of the largest African-American mass migrations in history. The concept even spread to other regions such as South America, Great Britain, and the Caribbean. Marcus Garvey, a 20th-century political activist, and black nationalist, members of the Rastafari movement, and other African Americans supported the movement, but few actually left the United States.

In the late 18th century, thousands of Black Loyalists joined the British military forces during the American Revolutionary War. In 1787, the British Empire established a settlement in Sierra Leone called the "Province of Freedom", starting a long process of settling African Americans who had previously been enslaved in Sierra Leone.

In the same years, several African-Americans launched their own initiative to return to Africa, and by 1811, Paul Cuffee--a wealthy New England African-American/Native-American shipper, had transported several members of the group known as the "Free African Community" to Liberia. During these years too, some free African Americans moved to Haiti, where the slave revolution had affected the free black nation of 1800. On November 18, 1803, Haiti became the first country to gain independence through a slave revolt.

In the years that followed, Liberia was founded by free people of color from the United States. The emigration of both free and recently freed African Americans was funded and organized by the American Colonization Society (ACS), which hoped that slavery could end as an institution, without releasing millions of former slaves into American society. The death rate of these settlers is the highest in human history recorded accurately. Of the 4,571 emigrants who arrived in Liberia between 1820 and 1843, only 1,819 survived.

Most African-Americans have freed people looking for opportunities. Many freed blacks from the South migrated to the industrial North in search of work, while others moved to the surrounding Southern states. But no one and anywhere wants it; they are seen as foreigners who, by working less, take jobs from citizens. Whites were not used to sharing space with blacks in contexts outside of slavery. Many do not believe that free blacks have a place in America. And in the North, many whites believed that blacks could not achieve equality in the United States and therefore encouraged their emigration to Africa, even though most were born in the US and had never seen Africa.

Such sentiments are not exclusive to Northerners. One proponent of the colonization movement, Solomon Parker of Hampshire County, Virginia, is quoted as saying: "I do not agree that my Black man or person will ever be released to remain in the United States. I am against slavery and also against freeing black people to live in the United States. live in our Country and sincerely hope that the time is near when our Land will be rid of them."

The unrest eventually hit the free states in waves, usually in urban areas where there was the immigration of blacks from the South. The peak of these riots occurred in 1819, with 25 riots recorded, resulting in many injuries and fatalities.

Although the riots continued into the 1830s. The return to Africa movement was seen as a solution to this problem by both groups, with more support from the white population than the black population. Blacks often viewed them with skepticism, especially among the middle class, who feared that the colonization movement was a ploy to deport freed African Americans to limit their efforts against slavery.

Shortly after the founding of the American Colonization Society, 3,000 free blacks gathered at a church in Philadelphia and issued a declaration declaring that they would "never secede voluntarily from the nation's slave population." Similarly, black leaders, such as James Forten, who previously supported the Colonization Movement, changed their minds as a result of widespread black resistance to the idea.

American Colonization Society

The American Colonization Society (ACS) was an early proponent of the idea of ​​resettling American-born blacks in Africa. Founded in 1816 by Charles Fenton Mercer, it consisted of two core groups: abolitionists and slave owners. Abolitionist members believed in liberating African slaves, along with their descendants, and giving them the opportunity to return to Africa. Members of slave owners believed that free blacks were endangering the slavery system and tried to drive them out of America through migration.

From the very beginning, the American Colonization Society struggled to garner support from within the free black community.

During the late 1840s and early 1850s, the formation of the independent state of Liberia split almost uniform voices against colonialism. The Fugitive Slaves Act of 1850 gave the United States government sufficient powers to recapture fugitive slaves. After its endorsement, many black leaders promoted emigration and colonization to countries that would provide and protect their rights.

Nonetheless, some black critics were outspoken against the Back-to-Africa movement and the activities of the American Colonization Society.

A report from the conference of free black politics in New York warned: "all kinds of ruses and ruses will be used to lure people [to the colony] ... the independence of its inhabitants; the pleasures and privileges of its citizens, will be depicted in bright colors, to deceive you."

According to the Encyclopedia of Georgia History and Culture, "since 1820, black Americans have begun to return to their ancestral homelands through the auspices of the American Colonization Society."

In 1847, the American Colonization Society founded Liberia, a land to be inhabited by blacks returning from the United States. Between 1822 and the American Civil War, the American Colonization Society had migrated about 15,000 free blacks back to Africa.

Notable members of the American Colonization Society include Thomas Buchanan, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, Abraham Lincoln, James Madison, Daniel Webster, John Marshall, and Francis Scott Key. All were white and most were Southerners. Moreover, most were slave owners.

Liberia (after the arrival of Europe), with Sierra Leone, began neither as a native state nor as a European colony. With the departure of the first ship to Africa in 1820, the American Colonization Society established a settlement for free black Americans on the coast of West Africa. The first American ships weren't sure where they were headed. Their plan was to either follow the path the British had taken or simply take a chance on where they were going to land. At first, they followed the British route before and reached the coast of Sierra Leone. After leaving Sierra Leone, the Americans slowly reached the more southerly parts of the African coastline.

The Americans finally managed to find a suitable place to establish their colony, up to what the British called the Grain Coast (the name of this area refers to the type of ginger spice used for flavoring medicine, Aframomum delegate). Along the Grain Coast, local African tribal chiefs willingly gave plots of land to America. Over the course of twenty years, a series of fragmented settlements sprang up on the quiet coast of Liberia. Along with the difficulty of obtaining sufficient land, life turned out to be difficult for these early settlers. The disease was widespread, along with food shortages. The hostile tribes put the settlers into a big fight, destroying some of their new settlements. Nearly 50% of the new settlers died in the first twenty years after their arrival in Liberia.

Liberia declared independence on July 26, 1847. Newly arrived African Americans in Liberia experienced many challenges, including broken family ties, a very high death rate from disease, and a difficult period of adjustment. A group of 43 African Americans from Christiansburg, Virginia set out for Liberia in 1830, but many died. "Eighty percent of emigrants died within ten years of landing there, most of the malaria victims; another ten percent fled the colony, with the majority fleeing to Sierra Leone." Survivors of this adjustment period, in Liberia, became fond of the country.

Black interest in Liberian emigration emerged when the Civil War promised an end to slavery and a change in the status of black Americans. About 7,000 enslaved people were freed by their masters, so at that time free African Americans left the US to escape racism and have more opportunities (mainly because they had lost all hope of achievement). And while in addition to the dangers of racism, white terrorists from the KKK were also one of the reasons they left America.

In the 1830s, the movement became increasingly dominated by Southern slave owners, who did not want free blacks and saw their sending to Liberia as a solution. Emigration of free blacks to Liberia increased in particular after the Nat Turner rebellion of 1831.

However middle-class blacks were more determined to live as black Americans, and many of the rural poor gave up on the United States and looked to Liberia to build a better life. Liberia promises freedom and equality; it was also an opportunity for a better life for black Southern farmers. Moreover, the Liberian government offers 25 acres of land for free for each immigrant family, and 10 acres for one adult, who comes to the Black republic.

In the early 19th century, Liberia evoked mixed images in the minds of black Americans. They see Liberia as a destination for black families who left the United States in search of a better way of life, returning to their ancestral lands in Africa.

As researcher Washington Hyde notes, "Black Americans—who during slavery lost their native language and much of their native culture, acquired a distinctly American, English-speaking Christian identity, and had no clear idea of ​​where exactly the rest of the world was the world. The African continent their ancestors came from—was regarded by indigenous Liberians as foreign settlers. Having African ancestry and being black is definitely not enough. Indeed, their settlement in Liberia has much in common with contemporary white settlements. The American frontier and the struggles of the settlers with Native American tribes. The Liberian experience can also be seen as anticipating Zionism and Israel—with Jews alike seeking redemption through a return to their ancestral lands.

Liberian Americans took a century and more to truly be accepted as one of the Liberian ethnic groups. All of which of course contributes to the vast majority of black Americans rejecting the Return to Africa option and instead choosing to seek equal rights in America."

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