In the 1820s Liberia began as a colony of the American Colonization Society, a private organization composed of whites who believed that the black race’s destiny was in Africa, not in the United States. Liberia became a republic in 1847 and ranked with Haiti and Ethiopia as the world’s only independent black-ruled nations. The existence of Liberia provoked a heated debate among African Americans prior to the Civil War. Emigrationists advocated a return to Africa, where they hoped to have a life free of racism and discrimination. In contrast, anti-emigrationists believed that it was their duty to remain and fight not only for greater inclusion in American life but also to eradicate slavery. Before 1860, the majority of immigrants to Liberia were slaves who were freed on the condition that they leave the country. During the Civil War, Edward W. Blyden, who emigrated years earlier from the Danish West Indies to Liberia, visited the United States and encouraged immigration to that land. But interest in emigration waned during the war and its aftermath, as many hoped that emancipation would lead to the attainment of civil and political rights.
Those hopes, however, ebbed as Radical Reconstruction gradually ended and white supremacists gained control of the South. The desire to emigrate to Africa was spurred by intimidation and atrocities perpetrated against former slaves by southerners determined to deprive blacks of the civil and political rights acquired during Reconstruction. The Liberian Exodus Joint Stock Steamship Company was organized in 1877 by Martin Delany and others in Charleston, South Carolina, but its ship—captained by an incompetent white—made only one voyage and in 1878 was seized for the payment of debts.
Interest in African emigration increased during the 1890s because of the proliferation of Jim Crow laws and the denial of the vote to African Americans. Henry McNeal Turner, a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, championed a back-to-Africa movement. He argued that Africa and specifically Liberia was the home of the American black and that life there would restore the dignity of African Americans. He viewed American democracy as hypocrisy and even considered the U. S. Constitution “a dirty rag, a cheat, a libel” that “ought to be spit upon by every Negro in the land.” Turner believed that a limited emigration of 5,000-10,000 persons a year was feasible, and his visit to Africa in 1891 on behalf of the AME Church resulted in a series of glowing, optimistic reports on Africa’s potential for immediate development by American blacks. While Turner persuaded many, his scheme was widely criticized by blacks such as Benjamin Tucker Tanner. When Turner issued a call in November 1893 for a national convention to meet in Cincinnati to discuss repatriation outside of the United States, the majority of the delegates opposed emigration.
Despite the rosy views, migrants faced difficulties in getting to, and prospering in, Africa. Transportation was costly (approximately $100 per passenger), and schemes to provide it cheaply were often abortive, ill planned, and fraudulent. In 1890 Democratic senator Matthew Butler of South Carolina proposed a bill to provide free transportation for all blacks who departed the South to become citizens of another country. Although the bill had support among southern conservatives it never had any chance of passing Congress. The all-black Afro-American Steamship and Mercantile Company was formed in 1893 to operate steamship service to Liberia, but it was soon dissolved, since few blacks were either able or willing to purchase $10 shares. Investors were reluctant because hustlers constantly cheated trusting African Americans into buying bogus tickets to Liberia for three dollars or some other ridiculously low price. In Arkansas, ignorant but hopeful emigrants gave thousands of dollars to two anonymous preachers who put 410 individuals on a train to Brunswick, Georgia, to meet a nonexistent ship. In 1895 would-be emigrants to Liberia were stranded in Florida waiting for free transportation. In Louisiana, defrauded persons were promised transportation to Africa for one dollar. In 1894 four whites formed the International Migration Society to capitalize on black southern interest in Liberia. Potential emigrants would pay a one-dollar membership fee and one dollar monthly until they contributed $40 to pay for steamship passage and provisions. Most of the Society’s income came from forfeited payments, but it did at least transport some passengers to Liberia.
Even after successfully securing transportation to Liberia, there was no guarantee that settlers could expect success as pioneers. Charles H. J. Taylor, who was a U. S. diplomat in Liberia for four months, was so negative that he—with some exaggeration—suggested there ought to be a law imprisoning for 10 years anyone who encouraged immigration to the “black land of snakes, centipedes, fever, miasma, . . . ignorance, poverty, superstition and death.” Taylor’s bleak words seem appropriate for the shipload of passengers that arrived in Monrovia, Liberia, in 1895 under
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The auspices of the International Migration Society. No one knew that they were coming, no provisions were available for them in Monrovia, and several died soon after their arrival. In addition, there was political unrest because the dominant “mulatto clique,” as the dark-skinned Edward W. Blyden termed it, was resented by “pure Negroes.” Indeed, Blyden, convinced that mulattoes were troublemaking “vipers” and realizing that they would be a part of any African-American migration, renounced his earlier stand and concluded that “no greater evil could befall Africa or the Negro. . . than an exodus of Negroes from the United States.”
A few other voyages to Liberia in the late 1890s repeated the failures of previous voyages. Many died from diseases or were quickly disillusioned by their pioneer experience. The International Migration Society folded in 1899 only to be followed in the 20th century by other back-to-Africa proposals, including Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association’s aborted effort to repatriate African Americans to Liberia in the 1920s.
Further reading: Hollis R. Lynch, Edward Wil-mat Blyden:Pan-Negro Patriot, 1832-1912 (London: Oxford University Press, 1967); Floyd J. Miller, The Search for a Black Nationality: Black Emigration and Colonization, 1787-1863 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975): Edwin Redkey, Black Exodus: Black Nationalists and Back to Africa Movements, 1890-1910 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1969).
—William Seraile
World History
