Existing comment:
Membership certificate in the American Colonization Society. In all, about 15,000 African Americans settled in Liberia, the largest organized migration out of the United States in its history.
Liberia:
The colonization movement aimed to send free African Americans to colonize Africa, particular a part of West Africa since known as Liberia. To some whites, this way was a way to be rid of free blacks; to others it fulfilled a moral duty to return these people to their ancestral homelands, while sending Christians who could spread the faith. To some blacks, it offered an escape from racism and the possibility of re-enslavement. About 15,000 blacks went to Liberia, many of them from Virginia. Colonization, however, was too expensive to be a solution to Virginia's race problem.
The free blacks who founded Liberia ironically patterned their society after the American South, even introducing slavery and the slave trade. Their flag was red, white, and blue, with one star and twelve stripes. Their elite lived in white-columned mansions and danced Virginia reels. West African natives called them "white men" and called the capital of Monrovia "the American place." The Liberian experiment reminds us that not all slavery was based on race. |