Back-to-Africa Movement
The Back-to-Africa Movement was a historical initiative aimed at relocating African Americans from the United States to colonies in Africa, particularly during the 19th and 20th centuries. This movement emerged in the context of the abolitionist movement, where some advocates sought to reduce the number of Black individuals in the U.S. by encouraging them to return to their ancestral homeland. The most notable early effort was led by Paul Cuffee in 1815, who facilitated the transportation of free African Americans to Sierra Leone, envisioning a thriving colony based on trade and immigration.
The movement gained traction in the 1960s, coinciding with the civil rights struggle, and was marked by differing sentiments among African Americans. While some viewed relocation as a solution to systemic discrimination, others argued for their rightful place in the U.S., emphasizing their contributions to the nation. The American Colonization Society, founded in 1816, played a significant role by establishing Liberia, which became an independent nation in 1847, although the conditions for settlers were often harsh and led to high mortality rates.
The concept of going "back to Africa" is layered with complex historical implications and has been used both positively and negatively. While some sought to reconnect with their heritage, others criticized the movement as a means to displace Black Americans from their homes. Thus, the Back-to-Africa Movement remains a significant chapter in the narrative of African American history and identity.
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Back-to-Africa Movement
The Back-to-Africa Movement was a program to voluntarily move African Americans in the United States to colonies in Africa. It originated in the nineteenth century, although African Americans have continued to move to Africa into modern times. The idea of returning to Africa was rooted in some abolitionists’ desire to have fewer black people in the United States. Later incarnations of the movement were often prompted by African American activists who actively sought to move to their ancestral home. This became quite popular during the 1960s and the struggle for civil rights. The idea of going “back to Africa” has both positive and negative connotations: the use of “go back to Africa,” for example, may be used as an insult against African Americans.
Background
Soon after the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), leaders of the new United States of America were still grappling with the question of slavery. Differences of opinion about the practice had been a stumbling block throughout the years when the Founding Fathers were creating the documents that defined the United States, and the arguments continued. By 1804, all Northern states, which had little need for slave labor, had passed legislation outlawing or providing for the eventual abolition of slavery. In the South, meanwhile, slavery remained a crucial engine of the economy. Slave labor was particularly vital to the cotton industry in the South. In 1807, Congress passed a law that abolished the African slave trade. The law did nothing to end slavery outright, but did outlaw the importation of newly enslaved people from any other place. At the time, more than four million enslaved people already lived and worked in the South. The population remained stable because children of slaves remained enslaved.
Starting in the 1820s, many groups worked to outlaw slavery in the United States. Abolitionists used tactics of British activists who had succeeded in getting Parliament to pass the Slave Trade Act of 1807, which prohibited the slave trade in the British Empire. Britain outlawed slavery completely in 1833. America’s abolition movement first appeared in Northern states, including New York and the New England region. The American Anti-Slavery Society, which was created in 1833, was led by social activist William Lloyd Garrison, who was also a journalist and publisher. He founded an abolitionist newspaper, the Liberator, which opened the eyes of many Northerners by publishing brutal first-hand accounts of slavery.
Abolitionists had varied motives for undertaking the cause. Some believed slavery was immoral. Others, such as Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, had personal experience as former slaves. Within the abolition movement, goals and actions were hotly debated. Some advocated for immediate freedom of enslaved people, while others maintained that slavery had to be phased out to prevent the Southern economy from collapsing. A number of abolitionists believed that the fastest way to end slavery was through an armed rebellion of Southern slaves—this idea terrified slaveholders and prompted many of them to eventually support back-to-Africa movements.
Among many in and out of the abolition movement, the question of what the United States might look like if slavery were outlawed loomed. Many wondered whether former slaves would stay or go somewhere else, possibly to Africa.
Overview
The first back-to-Africa project predated the formation of abolitionist societies in the United States. Paul Cuffee (or Cuffe) was a sea captain born to a freed slave father originally from Ghana and a Wampanoag Native American mother. Cuffee was born in Massachusetts in 1759 and, with his brother, inherited their father’s farm in 1772. He became a whaler, trader, shipbuilder, and ship merchant, eventually becoming likely the wealthiest black man in the United States. Cuffee wanted free African Americans and former slaves to establish a colony in Africa with an economy based on immigration and trade. He imagined African American settlers sailing to Sierra Leone, and the ship returning with marketable goods from Africa. Some of the inhabitants of Sierra Leone were former American slaves who had helped the British Army during the Revolutionary War. They had been resettled in Africa after the American colonies won.
With the support of wealthy and powerful members of the free black community, Cuffee transported thirty-eight African Americans from the United States to Sierra Leone aboard his brig, the Traveller, on December 10, 1815. The passengers ranged in age from six months to sixty years and included twenty children. The group arrived on February 3, 1816. Within a year, however, his US supporters in the black community had changed their opinion about immigration, and soon renounced the plan. Cuffee died in September 1817 with his dream unrealized.
Other supporters of resettlement in Africa formed the American Colonization Society (ACS) in 1816. The group hoped to create a colony in Africa for free black Americans, and raised support and funding to purchase land in West Africa. The first colonists landed at Sherbro Island, Sierra Leone. Many of the immigrants died due to the swampy, unhealthy conditions. The second land purchase in 1821 was for a strip of property thirty-six miles long and three miles wide along the coast of Cape Mesurado. The survivors from Sherbro Island were the first settlers there. The ACS paid for an estimated twelve thousand individuals to travel to the colony, usually in family groupings, over a forty-year period. In 1847 the colony gained its independence and became the nation of Liberia. The ACS by this time had lost support and was out of funds.
Blacks in the United States had differing opinions about moving to Africa. Many felt that they could only avoid discrimination by leaving the United States. Others believed that their hard work, and that of their ancestors, had helped build the nation, and they had every right to live in the United States. Some believed that efforts to send colonists to Africa were really meant to reduce the numbers of blacks in the United States—and in particular to rid the nation of free blacks.
Members of abolition and colonization groups also had varied reasons for lending support to these projects. Slaveholders wanted to remove free blacks to help protect the institution of slavery. Many abolitionists were strongly opposed to colonization; they thought relocation was cruel because Liberia was foreign to black Americans and the living conditions were poor. Some abolitionists also believed that black people would never be treated fairly and equally in the United States. President Abraham Lincoln supported voluntary colonization and emancipation for some time for this reason, though he changed his mind during the American Civil War.
Bibliography
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Batty, Fodei. “How to Understand the Complicated History of ‘Go Back to Africa.’” The Washington Post, 26 Apr. 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/04/26/is-go-back-to-africa-always-an-insult-heres-a-brief-history-of-american-back-to-africa-movements/. Accessed 15 July 2020.
Gates, Henry Louis. “Who Led the First Back-to-Africa Effort?” PBS, www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/who-led-the-1st-back-to-africa-effort/. Accessed 15 July 2020.
Little, Becky. “How a Movement to Send Freed Slaves to Africa Created Liberia.” History, 5 Apr. 2019, https://www.history.com/news/slavery-american-colonization-society-liberia. Accessed 15 July 2020.
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