History of the African American repatriation movements to Liberia, Sierra Leon, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.
BY DOPPER0189, BLACK KOS MANAGING EDITOR
Oh! Thou sweet land of the free,
You paved the way so others could find their ways
Where men of letter fought for a better day,
And find solutions without delay.
I first heard about the idea of African repatriation listening to reggae music as child. The idea of African repatriation plays heavily into the beliefs of the Rastafari. Marcus Garvey who later became a prominent booster of African repatriation, is an official national hero of Jamaica so I also learned a lot about the movement from my early education.
The African American repatriation movement to Africa had three major waves.
The first wave came with the founding of the ACS or the American Colonization Society (later renamed The Society for the Colonization of Free Colored People of America). The ACS was established in 1816 by Robert Finley of New Jersey. The ACS was the primary vehicle supporting the return of free African Americans to what they hoped was greater freedom in Africa.
Among the ACS’s accomplishments was helping 1821 to found the colony that later became the Republic of Liberia as a place for freedmen. Freedmen were American blacks, pre-Civil War who were not slaves. Among its American supporters were prominent individuals such as Charles Fenton Mercer, Henry Clay, John Randolph, and Richard Bland Lee. Paul Cuffee, (1759 – 1817) a Quaker businessman, sea captain, patriot, and abolitionist, was an early advocate of settling freed blacks in Africa. He gained support from black leaders and members of the US Congress for an emigration plan that became known as repatriation.
Henry Clay, a Congressman from Kentucky was critical of the negative impact slavery had on the Southern economy. He viewed the repatriation of blacks in Africa as being preferable to emancipation in America, believing that "unconquerable prejudice resulting from their color, they never could amalgamate with the free whites of this country. It was desirable, therefore, as it respected them, and the residue of the population of the country, to drain them off". Clay argued that because blacks could never be fully integrated into U.S. society due to "unconquerable prejudice" by white Americans, it would be better for them to emigrate to Africa.
The powerful evangelical leader Reverend Finley suggested at the inaugural meeting of American Colonization Society that a colony be established in Africa to take free people of color, the majority of whom were born free, away from the United States. Finley meant to colonize "(with their consent) the free people of color residing in our country, in Africa, or such other place as Congress may deem most expedient. Thus the organization, the Society for the Colonization of Free Colored People of America, quickly established branches throughout the United States, and was instrumental in the establishment of the colony of Liberia.
First in 1811 and later in 1815, Paul Cuffee not only financed but captained successful voyages to the British ruled colony of Sierra Leone in West Africa. The settling of Sierra Leone in the 1800s was rather unique. The majority of settlers was made up of displaced Africans who were brought to the colony after the British abolition of the slave trade in 1807. In the beginning most were liberated from pirate slave ships trying to outrun the British blockade of the slave trade. Sierra Leone was also were following the American Revolution, nearly 1200 of the Black Loyalists (Blacks who fought on the side of the British) who had settled and founded Birchtown, Nova Scotia, crossed the Atlantic to built the colony of Sierra Leone and the settlement of Freetown in 1792. In Nova Scotia Canada they had faced harsh winters and racial discrimination. Still later a number of West Indians (especially Jamaicans) who were considered to be too “unruly” were also deported there.
Into this Sierra Leone of repatriated black people, Paul Cuffee helped get African-American immigrants established. Although Cuffee died in 1817, his efforts inspired the American Colonization Society (ACS) to initiate further settlements. The ACS was a coalition made of both Evangelicals and Quakers who supported abolition but also Chesapeake slaveholders. These dispirit groups found common ground in support of "African repatriation". The abolition believed blacks would enjoy more economic freedom in Africa than in the U.S. The slaveholders opposed state or federally mandated abolition, but saw repatriation as a way to remove free blacks whom they saw as threats to start slave rebellions.
Starting in 1821, thousands of free black Americans moved to Liberia from the United States. Over the next two decades, the colony continued to grow and establish economic stability. Then in 1847, the legislature of Liberia declared the nation an independent state. Critics have said the ACS was a racist society, while others point to its benevolent origins and only later takeover by men with visions of an American empire in Africa. The Society closely controlled the development of Liberia until its declaration of independence. By 1867, the ACS had assisted in the movement of more than 13,000 black Americans to Liberia. From 1825 to 1919, it published the African Repository and Colonial Journal. After 1919, the society had essentially ended, but it did not formally dissolve until 1964, when it transferred its papers to the Library of Congress.
The Liberian constitution and flag were modeled after those of the United States. On January 3rd, 1848 Joseph Jenkins Roberts, a wealthy, free-born black American from Virginia, was elected as Liberia's first president after independence. Liberia is Africa's first and oldest republic, and kept its independence during the European colonial era. Liberia is the only African republic to have self proclaimed independence without gaining independence through revolt from another nation (Ethiopia also remained independent but was an empire). Today Americo-Liberians, who are descendants of African American, make up 2.5%. Congo people, descendants of repatriated Congo and Afro-Caribbean slaves who arrived in 1825, make up an additional estimated 2.5%.
As I mentioned before the Liberian colonization effort was the result of various motives. Free blacks, freedmen, and their descendants, encountered widespread discrimination in the 19th century United States. Whites generally perceived black freedmen as both a social burden on society and a threat to white workers, because they undercut wages. Some abolitionists believed that blacks could never achieve full equality in the United States and would be better off living Africa. Many slaveholders were worried that the presence of free blacks would encourage slaves to rebel.
Despite being antislavery, some Society members were openly racist and frequently argued that free blacks would be unable to assimilate into the white society of America. John Randolph, a famous slave owner, called free blacks "promoters of mischief." At this time, about 2 million African Americans lived in America of which 200,000 were free persons of color (with limited legal rights).
But the black repatriation movement wasn't restricted to returning to Africa. After the Haitian Revolution and 1804 independence, the leaders of Haiti took the opportunity to reshape their country's identity. One of the early leaders of Haiti, President Jean Pierre Boyer, envisioned a country welcoming to all of those of African descent. President Boyer promoted brotherhood, equality and citizenship to all those whom immigrated to Haiti. Furthermore, he believed that bringing free African-Americans to Haiti would stimulate the country's economy and strengthen diplomatic relations with the United States.
In January 1824, President Boyer offered incentives to encourage free African-Americans to immigrate to Haiti. President Boyer offered free passage, land grants, and financial support upon arrival. By August of 1824, several African Americans accepted President Boyer's to move to Haiti.
One of the largest groups left from Philadelphia and settled in the town of Samaná, now part of the Dominican Republic. Haiti and the Dominican Republic are on the same Caribbean island of Hispaniola, and at the time were one nation Haitian troops had liberated the Dominican Republic from Spain (although the Dominican Republic later rebelled against Haitian rule).
Jonathas Granville and the Reverend Loring D. Dewey were two of the main proponents of African Americans immigrating to Haiti. Dewey was a member of the American Colonization Society, a group whose primary goal was to facilitate the return of free African Americans to Africa. The Rev. Robert Finley, a Presbyterian minister, had helped form the ACS based on his belief that Africans would never be fully integrated into the U.S. Rev. Finley believed free blacks were a threat to the nation's well-being.
Although Finley believed returning blacks to Africa was the best option (helping more than 12,000 African Americans immigrated to Liberia) it became increasingly logistically difficult to send the emigrants to West Africa as the trips were longer and thus more expensive. When Reverend Dewey heard of President Boyer's plans to repopulate Haiti, he began to correspond with Boyer. Dewey then coordinated the immigration of African Americans to Haiti in 10 locations on the island (including Samaná).
Jonathas Granville who was a Haitian-born black living in the US. was sent on behalf of Boyer to recruit more African Americans to immigrate to Haiti. In June of 1824, he traveled to Philadelphia and New York, where he distributed some of the money allocated by Haitian President Boyer to pay passage for blacks to Haiti. The Rev. Dewey wrote extensively in local newspapers through out the USA touting the social status and quality of life of those who had immigrated to Samaná. In March of 1835, the North Star in Danville, Vt., reported, "The government appears to have realized every promise made by Mr. Grenville and about 270 of the immigrants are located at Samaná, where land has been given to them, on which some are already at work to improve, and are much encouraged to be industrious."
After the end of the US Civil War and black emancipation the political energy and white financial support for African repatriation quickly faded. But a new second wave of back-to-Africa movement arose in 1877 as Reconstruction ended. African Americans especially in the American South faced extreme violent acts of racial terrorism from groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. Interest among the South's black population in African repatriation noticeably peaked during the 1890’s, the same time period when racial terrorism peaked in the US. This was the period the greatest number of US lynchings took place.
The continued oppressions of segregation, discrimination, and violence directed at African Americans, instilled a belief that they would never achieve true equality in America. This again attracted many African-American to Pan-African emancipation in their motherland.
But not long after this second boom, the repatriation movement again declined. Also a series of high profile hoaxes and frauds became associated with the movement. But the most important reason for the decline in the back-to-Africa movement cited by historian Washington Hyde was that the "vast majority of those who were meant to colonize did not wish to leave the US. Most free blacks simply did not want to go "home" to a place from which they were now generations removed. America, not Africa, was their home and they had little desire to migrate to a strange and forbidding land not their own."
The last surge of African American repatriation arose about three decades after the second wave. The combination of disillusionment from blacks who had migrated to the North combined with the frustrations of urban life set the scene for a new back-to-Africa movement in the 1920s. Blacks who fled North only to find similar levels of racism became attracted to an organization the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) established by the Jamaican born Marcus Garvey. The bedrock of Garvey’s support was Blacks who had migrated to Northern States from the South who although better off financially remained socially at the bottom of society.
Garvey developed a program to improve the conditions of ethnic Africans "at home and abroad". On August 17th 1918, he began publishing the widely distributed Negro World newspaper in New York. Garvey working as an unpaid editor used the Negro World as a platform for his views. By June 1919, the membership of the organization had grown to over two million. Many reasons lie behind this growth. These included the Harlem Renaissance, the large number of West Indians immigrating to New York, and the appeal of the slogan "One God, One Aim, One Destiny," to black veterans of the World War I.
On June 27th 1919, the UNIA set up its first business, incorporating the Black Star Line of Delaware with Garvey serving as President. By September of that year, Black Star Line acquired its first ship. A great amount of fanfare surrounded the relaunch of the S.S. Yarmouth as it was rechristening as the S.S. Frederick Douglass . The UNIA rapid growth garnered world wide attention. Black Star Line also launched a winery, using grapes harvested in Ethiopia. During it’s first year Black Star Line's stock sales brought in $600,000. But during the next two years it had numerous problems; mechanical breakdowns ships, and poor record keeping. The Black Star Line s officers were eventually accused of mail fraud.
The UNIA held its international convention in 1921 at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Organizations such as the Universal Black Cross Nurses, the Black Eagle Flying Corps, and the Universal African Legion were also represented at the convention. Garvey attracted more than 50,000 people to the event. The UNIA grew to have between 65,000 to 75,000 due paying members supporting its funding.
The UNIA began advancing ideas to promote social, political, and economic freedom for black people. On July 2nd 1921, the East St. Louis riots broke out. A few days later on July 8th 1921, Garvey delivered an address, entitled "The Conspiracy of the East St. Louis Riots", at Lafayette Hall in Harlem. During the speech, he declared the riot was "one of the bloodiest outrages against mankind", condemning America's claims to represent democracy when black people were victimized "for no other reason than they are black people seeking an industrial chance in a country that they have labored for three hundred years to make great". It is "a time to lift one's voice against the savagery of a people who claim to be the dispensers of democracy". By October, rancor within the UNIA had begun to set in.
Edwin P. Kilroe, Assistant District Attorney in the District Attorney's office of the County of New York, began an investigation into the activities of the UNIA. He never filed charges against Garvey or other officers. After being called to Kilroe's office numerous times for questioning, Garvey wrote an editorial on the assistant DA's activities for the Negro World. Kilroe had Garvey arrested and indicted for criminal libel but dismissed the charges after Garvey published a retraction.
Garvey also established a business, the Negro Factories Corporation. Garvey had plans to develop the manufacturing in every big U.S. industrial center with substantial black populations. As well as in Central America, the West Indies, and Africa. His plans included a grocery chain, restaurants,and a publishing house.
Convinced that black people should have a permanent homeland in Africa, Garvey sought to develop Liberia. Garvey launched the Liberia program in 1920. He intended to build colleges, industrial plants, and railroads as part of a Liberian industrialization program. But Garvey had to abandon the program in the mid-1920s after opposition from European powers with Liberian interests. In response to the American presses suggestions that he wanted to take all ethnic Africans back to Africa, he snarkly retorted, "We do not want all the Negroes in Africa. Some are no good here, and naturally will be no good there."
Unfortunately Garvey’s success at raising capital and organizing blacks, began drawing unwarrented attention. In a memorandum dated October 11th 1919. Edgar Hoover of The Bureau of Investigation or BOI (the FBI’s name prior to 1935), wrote to Special Agent Ridgely: "Unfortunately, however, he [Garvey] has not as yet violated any federal law whereby he could be proceeded against on the grounds of being an undesirable alien, from the point of view of deportation."
Sometime around November 1919, the BOI began an investigation into the activities of Garvey and the UNIA. Toward this end, the BOI hired James Edward Amos, Arthur Lowell Brent, Thomas Leon Jefferson, James Wormley Jones, and Earl E. Titus as its first five African-American agents. BOI attempted to find grounds to deport Garvey as "an undesirable alien". After the U.S. Post Office and the Attorney General joined the investigation a charge of mail fraud was brought against Garvey in connection with stock sales of the Black Star Line. The accusations centered on the fact that the corporation had not yet actually purchased the ship which had appeared in a BSL brochure emblazoned with the name "Phyllis Wheatley" (after the African-American poet). The prosecution stated that a ship pictured with that name had not been purchased by the BSL and still had the name "Orion" at the time; thus the misrepresentation of the ship as a BSL-owned vessel constituted fraud. These charges ignore the facts that the brochure had been produced in anticipation of the purchase of the ship. The BSL actually had a contract to buy the ship. None the less, "registration of the Phyllis Wheatley to the Black Star Line was thrown into abeyance as there were still some clauses in the contract that needed to be agreed." In the end, the ship was never registered to the BSL.
When the trial ended on June 23rd 1923, Garvey had been sentenced to five years in prison. Upon his release the US deported him to Great Britain. The UK which was worried his support and international alliance with the then developing Rastafarian movement and their “Negus” (a mythical black king whose coming would free all black people) would eventually undermine British control of the Caribbean and West Africa. Great Britain worked to crush the remains of his organization. Under attack by both the US and UK government the UNIA quickly faded, destroying the last major American based African repatriation organization.
Sources:
Wikipedia: Back-to-Africa movement
The Price of Liberty: African Americans and the Making of Liberia. — Claude A.Clegg III
Back to Africa: The Colonization Movement
From North America to Hispaniola: First Free Black Emigration and Settlements in Hispaniola — Dennis R Hidalgo
Black Past: MARCUS GARVEY
Wikipedia: Marcus Garvey
Wikipedia: Sierra Leon
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NEWS ROUND UP BY DOPPER0189, BLACK KOS MANAGING EDITOR
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Dr. Abraham runs the Kedren Community Health Center in South L.A., whose population is heavily black and brown. The County overlooked the Health Center in the vaccine distribution, but Dr. Abraham pounded on doors until he got their attention ... and the vaccines came.
The next hurdle was figuring out how to get South L.A. residents to the Health Center ... a tall order, given that many had no Internet to make appointments and no transportation. Dr. Abraham got all hands on deck and he and his staff went out to the community and helped people make appointments and then made sure they had a way of getting to the Center.
He's also put his psychologist hat on ... explaining to residents why the vaccine was so essential.
The upshot ... he's created a model that can become a shining light of equity in the distribution of vaccines.
One other thing ... he's also made it a party, with music and dancing to make sure people don't get frustrated and scared and bail.
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Being poor, black and from sub-Saharan Africa is the hardest thing you can ever be. But that is what I am.
Before Covid-19 came, extreme poverty had largely become a problem of only one part of the world – sub-Saharan Africa. According to the World Bank in 2018, the region was projected to host more than 90% of the world’s extreme poor by 2030.
That means that more than 400 million people were expected to live on less than $1.90 (£1.40) a day a decade away from now, in sub-Saharan Africa alone, before the arrival of Covid-19.
And as the pandemic devastated every country across the world, it unleashed the most profound economic pain on the poor. Even in the post-pandemic world, the poor are still the people who will have the lowest level of resilience, and little or nothing to count on in the rebuilding process.
Africa itself isn’t created equal. More than 70% of the extreme poor in the region, according to the World Bank, live in only 10 of the 46 countries that comprise sub-Saharan Africa. My country, Uganda, is one of those 10. Uganda is even among the five poorest countries worldwide.
I am a farmer who has spent most of my life in extreme poverty, here in eastern Uganda, and I really want to see some change. At this point, though, I am inclined to believe this may be impossible because of white people, and black people, globally. Why?
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A bumper crop of graphic novels and comic books melds African culture and science fiction, with influences as wide-ranging as space travel, Caribbean folklore and Janelle Monáe. New York Times: Beyond ‘Black Panther’: Afrofuturism Is Booming in Comics
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This year, fans of Afrofuturism will see a bumper crop of comics and graphic novels, including the first offerings of a new line devoted to Black speculative fiction and reissues of Afrofuturist titles from comic-book houses like DC and Dark Horse.
Afrofuturism, whether in novels, films or music, imagines worlds and futures where the African diaspora and sci-fi intersect. The term was coined by the writer Mark Dery in 1993 and has since been applied to the novels of Octavia Butler (“Kindred”), the musical stylings of the jazz composer Sun Ra and more recently films such as “Get Out” and “Black Panther,” which presented a gorgeously rendered vision of the technologically advanced, vibranium-powered nation of Wakanda.
“Afrofuturism isn’t new,” said Ytasha L. Womack, a cultural critic and the author of “Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture,” a primer and history of the movement and aesthetic. “But the plethora of comics and graphic novels that are available is certainly a new experience.”
Graphic novels published in January included “After the Rain,” an adaptation of a short story by the Nigerian-American author Nnedi Okorafor, and “Infinitum,” a tale of African kings and space battles by the New York-based artist Tim Fielder.
This month marks the long-awaited return of the “Black Panther” comics written by Ta-Nehisi Coates, which the National Book Award-winning author began in 2016, as well as the latest installment of “Far Sector,” a series written by N.K. Jemisin and inspired by the actor and musician Janelle Monáe, about the first Black woman to become a member of the intergalactic Green Lantern Corps.
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Opposition and civil society groups installed Joseph Mécène Jean-Louis, 72, the oldest member of Haiti’s Supreme Court, late Sunday as president for two years.
In a video shared on social media, Jean-Louis, sitting next to a Haitian flag, said he accepts “the choice of the opposition and civil society to be able to serve my country as provisional president of the ruptured transition.”
The installation was immediately condemned by Haitian Justice Minister Rockefeller Vincent, who called it an “illegal and unconstitutional” move “under the manipulation of anti-democratic and putschist forces.” Undeterred opposition leaders began referring to Moïse as the “ex-president” and “defacto” chief of state. But some analysts believe Haitians, disillusioned by decades of bad governance and cynical about politics, are unlikely to back the judge in his claim.
He was in hiding Monday and Moïse still ruling from the National Palace.
The attempt at creating a parallel government came after government officials announced the arrest of 23 people, including Supreme Court Judge Yvickel Dabrésil, on Sunday, in what authorities are calling an attempted murder and coup against Moïse. The president’s detractors and civil society groups contend the embattled leader’s term ended Feb. 7. Moïse, a 52-year-old entrepreneur, disagrees and has said he still has a year left in office.
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A historian tells how he located a hero of the abolition movement in Brazil. In Brazil, slavery came to an end because of popular mobilization, People going through the streets protesting Slate: Finding the Sea Dragon’s Tomb
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Francisco José do Nascimento was a man of the sea.
A 19th century fisherman of indigenous and African descent, Nascimento was appalled by the slave trade in his home state of Ceará, Brazil. In his job as a jangadeiro, work that is intricately associated with poverty, Nascimento was required to carry enslaved Africans and other goods onto the ships that would eventually sell them elsewhere in the country. The disgust inspired him to organize a strike in the port of Fortaleza, one of the largest cities in Brazil, amongst his fellow fishermen and port workers in August 1881. The strike effectively ended the slave trade in Brazil, and symbolized a shift in the abolitionist movement where more common folk were beginning to push back against the institution.
Less than three years later, in March 1884, enslavement was abolished in Ceará—four years before the rest of the country. Nascimento was lauded as a national hero and his name was placed into Brazil’s Book of Steel, officially honoring him as such. He became one of the few Black faces of the country’s abolitionist movement to be remembered.
Nascimento became known as Dragão do Mar, which translates to the Sea Dragon, a nickname that evokes an air of mythology around him. But the location of his grave was lost until mid-July 2020 when Licínio Nunes de Miranda, a historian and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Florida, found it in the São João Batista cemetery in Fortaleza.
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Nobody wants to think they’re Judas, but deep down everyone knows they could be. The name of the man who betrayed Jesus for a bag of silver coins, then died in infamy, is synonymous with the most despicable impulses of the human heart: cowardice, disloyalty, deceit, and avaricious malice. A Judas kisses your cheek and then stabs you in the back, and not because he’s standing on some principle or advancing a cause, even a misbegotten one. All he cares for is himself.
Judases populate literature and history, their arc familiar and stomach-churning. But a Judas requires a Jesus, a messiah figure who the powerful see as a threat to the established social order. Betraying a friend is one thing; betraying a savior is an order of magnitude more dastardly, and the results far more tragic.
And so, this ancient archetype is a snug fit for the historical events that Judas and the Black Messiah sets out to recount. Director Shaka King co-wrote the screenplay with Will Berson, from a story by Berson and the Lucas brothers, Keith and Kenneth Lucas. All four come from comedy backgrounds, which at first could seem an odd fit for this historical account. But the combination works beautifully, and the filmmakers’ foundation in comedy — so dependent on rhythm and timing — may go a long way toward explaining why Judas and the Black Messiah feels so alive.
The “Messiah” part of the story comes straight from the FBI’s own 1968 Cointelpro memo, in which director J. Edgar Hoover set as the program’s explicit aim to “Prevent the RISE OF A ‘MESSIAH’ who could unify, and electrify, the militant black nationalist movement.” Hoover notes that Malcolm X could have been that figure, if he hadn’t been assassinated, and that “Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael and Elijah Muhammed all aspire to this position,” though Muhammed, he wrote, was too old to really be a threat.
So it’s no surprise that Hoover’s gaze eventually came to rest on 21-year-old Fred Hampton, charismatic chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party, who was assassinated in a raid on his home by police and FBI on December 4, 1969. That raid was partly enabled by William O’Neal, an FBI informant who had worked his way up the Black Panther ladder to become the Illinois chapter’s head of security and a trusted member of the party.
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