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"Back to Africa:" The Migration of New World Blacks to Sierra Leone and Liberia Author(s): Nemata Amelia Blyden Source: OAH Magazine of History, Vol. 18, No. 3, The Atlantic World (Apr., 2004), pp. 23- 25 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Organization of American Historians Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25163679 Accessed: 10-01-2018 00:46 UTC

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Nemata Amelia Blyden

"Back to Africa:" The Migration of New World Blacks

to Sierra Leone and Liberia

Much of the work on migration in the Atlantic World has focused on population movements from Europe to the New

World. Studies that look at the migration of Africans and their descendants within the Atlantic World have similarly empha sized east to west migration patterns, concentrating on the forced

migration of Africans in the slave trade or on the indentured labor systems in the post-emancipation era. Until recently, much less attention has been paid to west to east migration patterns and much less is known about the mi gration of individuals of Afri can descent in the Atlantic world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Throughout this period, blacks voluntarily migrated within various parts of the Atlantic World. Olaudah Equiano's is the most famil iar story of an eighteenth-cen tury African who moved between worlds in the Atlan

tic. Equiano (1745-1797) wrote of his capture as a young boy and his subsequent experi ences in North America, the Caribbean, and Britain (1).

We know of Equiano's movements because he re corded them, but how many more men and women like Equiano existed? Though we now know more about the movement of Africans from region to region in the Atlantic World, there is room for more research to be done. Recent work shows that Africans and people of African descent migrated or traveled not only as slaves, but also as free people. Individuals of African heritage left the Americas for Africa and moved between places in the Atlantic World, often more than once. Further more, we now know that the movement of Africans in the Adantic

World was not predominantly a male enterprise. Although women

migrated in smaller numbers and were less likely to record their movements, they also moved within the Atlantic World. Historians are often hindered in their explorations of these movements by the fact that many migrants did not leave a record of their travels and lives. Some work has been done on the "back to Africa" movement in the

nineteenth century, particularly the emigration movement to Liberia sponsored by the American Colonization Society and the migration of New World blacks to Sierra Leone. What, if anything, distinguishes

this migration from other types of migration? What did it mean for New World blacks

to migrate to Africa? This es say explores the return migra tion of blacks in the New

World to Africa, with particu lar attention to Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Sierra Leone's origins were closely tied to the anti slavery movement in Britain. Humanitarians who were in fluential in founding the colony believed that establish ing a free settlement on the African coast would be the best way to destroy the slave trade. The colony's first im

migrant settiers were the black poor, blacks loyal to the Brit ish in the American Revolu

tion who were transported to England, later settling in Af rica in 1787. These destitute

men and women were portrayed as vagrants and seen as undesirable by a large portion of British society. Humanitarians like William

Wilberforce (1759-1833) and Granville Sharp (1735-1813) believed a return to Africa would improve their circumstances. In 1792, loyalist blacks from Nova Scotia settled in Sierra Leone, followed by maroons (runaway slaves) from Jamaica in 1800. Africans recaptured from slave ships augmented the colony's population. Sierra Leone was a

Waterfront view of Bassua Harbor in Liberia. (Watercolor by Robert K. Griffin, ca. 1856. Image courtesy the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.)

OAH Magazine of History April 2004 23

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unique social experiment. Its diversity, characterized by various African ethnicities and multicultural New World

black populations, made it an interesting place during the nineteenth century. Governed by the British, who hoped to see it grow into a model colony of pliant citizens grateful for the salvation European influence brought, the small colony turned out to be a site of friction and racial tension with its

inhabitants exhibiting unexpected individuality and inde pendence.

There were attempts to settle African Americans in Sierra Leone during the nineteenth century, but the British government was reluctant to encourage such migrations. Ironically, they argued that African American settlers would bring democratic ideals of liberty and equality, negatively influencing the blacks in their colony. A small number of African Americans, however, did settle in Sierra Leone. In 1816, the black New England merchant, Paul Cuffe, brought thirty-eight settlers to Sierra Leone. This would be the first

migration of African Americans from the United States to Africa. Over the years, Sierra Leone had its share of promi nent African American migrants such as Daniel Coker, cofounder with Richard Allen of the African Methodist

Episcopal Church, and Edward Jones, first African Ameri can graduate of Amherst College in Massachusetts, and later president of Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone, the first institution of higher education in sub-Saharan Africa.

In many ways, Sierra Leone became a model for Liberia, which was setded by African Americans under the auspices of the American Colonization Society (ACS) in 1821. This organization, founded in 1816, sent its first shipload of blacks to Africa in 1819. The Americans traveled to Africa hoping to establish a setdement on Sherbro Island near Sierra Leone. This mission proved unsuccessful and the emi grants moved to Cape Mesurado, settling what was later to become Liberia. Some African Americans from this first expedition setded in Sierra Leone, intermarrying with Africans and integrating into the colony's society. Founded with the express purpose of colonizing free blacks in Africa or anywhere outside of the United States, the ACS encouraged free blacks to take advantage of passage to Africa. Many blacks supported the organization because they believed that by emigrating they could better their condition.

The American Revolution was a watershed in race relations in the

United States, strengthening the divisions between the races as Americans were forced to confront their ideas about freedom and

democracy. By the 1790s, slavery was accepted as a suitable condition for blacks. Although revolutionary rhetoric had called for freedom and equality with God-given inalienable rights for everyone, the South needed slave labor and slavery had to be rationalized. As slavery hardened, so did the conditions for the small free black population in southern states. The necessity for racial subordination in a slave society ensured that blacks would face economic, political, and social restrictions. Though slavery had virtually ended in the North by the end of the eighteenth century, there were clear divisions between the races. Blacks continued to face discrimination and oppressive condi tions. Race was used to justify slavery as whites argued that blacks were unsuited for citizenship and freedom.

Consequently, events and conditions in the United States largely influenced African American migration to Liberia. Emigration senti

ment was fueled by the awareness that conditions within the United States would not allow African Americans to live in a racist-free nation

with the equality and liberty promised to all. Free blacks in the nineteenth century frequently reevaluated their position as Ameri cans, while those enslaved sought freedom and the ability to live lives

!l8ltK; :';" -":-T " ;^';v;"-'; - ; *- 'SV. .. * /^-My-/ ^ J

Robert K. Griffin's 1856 portrait of the Liberian senate. (Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Marian S. Carson Collection, Prints and Photographs Division.)

free of oppression. Emigrants often cited their love for America but expressed disappointment that they could not live freely in it. In their letters to the ACS, African Americans expressed the hopes they had and the frustration they felt in this era, writing of their desire to leave restrictive conditions in the United States while articulating their hope for a future in Liberia that would bring them the freedom and equality that they had never been able to achieve in America. As late as 1856, S. Wesley Jones wrote: "Liberia is the country Emphattically the Country for the Colored Race and the only Country upon this Green Earth where they may or can Enjoy social and Political Liberty which is the dearest of all Earthly Blessings" (2).

For the most part African Americans opposed the society, seeing it as a means of getting rid of them. African Americans and antislavery groups in northern states protested the ACS, pointing out that coloni zation to a foreign country would strengthen slavery. In 1818, a group of free blacks came together in Pennsylvania to declare their views on the subject, articulating the idea that the United States was their home. Although they recognized the inequalities they faced, they maintained that

if the plan of colonizing is intended for our benefit, and those who now promote it will never seek our injury, we humbly and respectfully urge, that it is not asked for by us: nor will it be required by any circumstances, in our present or future condi tion, as long as we shall be permitted to share the protection of the excellent laws and just government which we now enjoy, in common with every individual of the community (3). Blacks argued that they had helped to build the United States and

had just as much right to live in it. Others advocated colonization not in a foreign country, but rather in some part of the United States. The colonization movement, however, took off and, over the course of the nineteenth century, the American Colonization Society transported an estimated sixteen thousand emigrants to Liberia.

The back to Africa movement was significant in many ways. Both Sierra Leone and Liberia were social experiments of a sort that had never been tried before. The historical origins of both these places can be put in the context of the movement to end the slave trade and

24 OAH Magazine of History Apr/7 2004

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slavery. In England, debates about ending slavery in British colonies, particularly in the West Indies, often cited Sierra Leone as an example of the capacity of former slaves to govern themselves, while in the United States, the ann'slavery movement grew strong in direct re sponse to the ACS and its calls for black emigration. Furthermore, the repatriated setders in Liberia and Sierra Leone were the humanitarian's hope for spreading antislavery sentiments among indigenous African populations. The two colonies were envisioned as new communities without slavery, the victims of slavery themselves equipped to take charge of their own lives. They were to be Christian, self-governing societies that would spread Christianity to the whole of Africa. Al though Sierra Leone remained under the auspices of the British government, Liberia became an independent nation in 1847. More negatively, particularly in the case of Liberia and at some periods in the case of Sierra Leone, the origins of these places also lay in the desire to alleviate the problem of a growing free black population in the United States and Britain. In that sense, historians cannot speak of the history of modern slavery and emancipation without recognizing the complexity and centrality of Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Sierra Leone and Liberia offer excellent case studies for looking at issues of emancipation and freedom, and how these concepts were internalized and defined by those who experienced them in the nineteenth century. The meaning of migration for New World blacks, particularly to their ancestral homeland of Africa, was significant. Proponents of emigration often cited the need to "civilize" and Christianize Africans. They believed that the only way to end the slave trade was to spread Christianity in Africa. "I believe also," wrote Alphonso M. Sumner, "that the success of colonization promises the only reasonable hope of civilization and Christianizing the natives; and that the abolition of the slave trade cannot be hoped for upon any other ground, while a market exists in any country" (4). As people of African descent, African Americans saw it as their special duty to "uplift" Africa. These migrations, however, can also be seen nega tively, in that they shared the coercive features of so many other Adantic crossings by Europeans and Africans alike. African Ameri cans often left the United States understanding that they had no chance of participating fully in that society, and in that respect were forced to go. Nonetheless, in some ways all migrants to Africa made a choice to participate in this reverse migration. Unlike their ancestors who had been shackled and put on slave ships, New World migrants walked onto the decks of ships not knowing what to expect on the other side, but with minds and bodies unfettered.

Endnotes i. On the controversy surrounding Equiano's origins, see Vincent Carretta,

"Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa? New Light on an Eighteenth Century Question of Identity," Slavery and Abolition 20 (December 1999): 96-105.

2. Letter from S. Wesley Jones, Tuscaloosa, Alabama to Rev. William Mclain, November 7, 1856 in Letters Received by the American Colonization Society, October to December, 1856, no. 176 cited in "Letters to the American Colonization Society [Part 3]," in Journal of Negro History 10 (April 1925): 206-35.

3. Resolutions and Remonstrances of the People of Colour Against Colonization to the Coast of Africa (Philadelphia, PA: s.n., 1818), 5-6.

4. Alphonso M. Sumner to Mclain, July 6, 1848.

Bibliography Blyden, Nemata Amelia. "Edward Jones: An African American in Sierra

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Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2000. Jenkins, David. Black Zion: The Return of Afro-Americans and West Indians to

Africa. London, Wildwood House, 1975.

Miller, Floyd. The Search for a Black Nationality: Black Emigration and Coloni zation, 1787-186}. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1975.

Sanneh, Lamin O. Abolitionists Abroad: American Blacks and the Making of Modern West Africa. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

Shick, Tom W. Behold the Promised Land: A History of Afro-American Settler Society in Nineteenth-Century Liberia. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univer sity Press, 1980.

Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961.

West, Richard. Back to Africa: A History of Sierra Leone and Liberia. London: Cape, 1970.

Wiley, Bell, ed. Slaves No More: Letters from Liberia 1833-1869. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1980.

Williams, Walter L. Black Americans and the Evangelization of Africa, 1877-1900. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982.

Web Sites Africans in America <http://www.pbs.org/> African-American Experience <http://www.history.org/Almanack/life/Af_amer/aalife.cfm> African-American Mosaic <http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african/intro.html> The American Colonization Society <http://www.denison.edu/~waite/liberia/history/acs.htm> Roll of Emigrants 1820-1843,1-* Liberian History Page <http://www.geocities.eom/Athens/Atrium/3770/e.html>

Nemata Amelia Blyden is an assistant professor of African History at George Washington University, specializing in African and African Diaspora his tory. She is particularly interested in women in nineteenth-century Liberia.

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