Colonization

Early Colonization Movements

As early as the colonial era, there were calls for the return of blacks to Africa. Such schemes were [Page 206]motivated by a number of negative assumptions about African Americans that were commonly held by the white majority. These included the white belief that blacks were morally lax and that they would “infect” whites with their supposed moral corruption. Many whites feared that the continued presence of African Americans in their communities would lead to wide-spread sexual relations and intermarriage between blacks and whites. Other arguments advanced against the maintenance of a black presence in America included the notion that blacks had a tendency toward criminal behavior. Many whites also felt that African Americans were not mentally capable of handling the responsibilities of citizenship. Still others feared that free blacks would take jobs from white Americans.

Whites were not alone in seeking colonization of Africa by black Americans. Many African Americans themselves believed that they would never receive equal treatment in the United States and thought that emigration to Africa offered their best chance to live as free and equal citizens. Some were also drawn to the prospect of Christianizing and “civilizing” African blacks, whom they considered little better than savages.

By 1714, these various arguments supporting the idea of colonization resulted in some of the first public demands for the return of blacks to Africa. Despite the honorable performance of many African Americans in the American Revolution, that war was followed by an even more vocal call for promoting black expulsion from the newly formed United States. Those who favored such a plan included some of the greatest heroes of the revolution, including Thomas Jefferson. Some of these plans envisioned a gradual freeing of American slaves as a prerequisite to African colonization. Others left slavery intact while seeking to send away only free blacks.

One of the first African Americans to champion black colonization of Africa was Paul Cuffe, a sea captain and free black businessman who was one of the richest African Americans of the early nineteenth century. Cuffe helped some forty free blacks resettle in Sierra Leone, a colony established by Great Britain in 1815 as a destination for that nation's unwanted black population. A year after the founding of Sierra Leone, a group of religious reformers in the United States founded the American Colonization Society (ACS). It would become the first colonization project to receive widespread public support.

The American Colonization Society grew from public sentiment that arose during the War of 1812 that white Americans would never accept blacks as their equals. Its supporters included many prominent figures in the early history of the United States, including Francis Scott Key (who wrote the “Star Spangled Banner”); Henry Clay, perhaps the most renowned member of the U.S. Congress; and future president Andrew Jackson. By 1820, the Society had raised enough money from private sources to settle its first group of 86 families in Liberia on the West Coast of Africa. Eventually, the American Colonization Society would resettle more than 11,000 African Americans in Africa, half of them freed slaves. Most black Americans, however, had no desire to go back to a homeland with which they were by now completely unfamiliar. By the early 1840s, the Society had lost its original momentum, and the number of African Americans moving to Liberia had slowed to a trickle.

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