help with history (3) due in 48 hours

due in 48 hours

attached

Discussion 6, “American History Through Southern Eyes”

Student must answer at least four questions below:

1. In what ways did cotton impact southern slavery?

2. What is the significance of the “cotton-gin?”

3. What is the significance of share-cropping in the documentary?

4.

 

How did cotton influence African American art?

5. How did cotton impact southern women in the 1800s?

6. Who is Eli Whitney?

7. How did the cotton economy impact the stability of the African American family after slavery?

8. What is the significance of Augusta, Georgia and its relationship to cotton in the 1800s?

9.  What is the significance of England and its relationship to cotton in the 1800s? 

Quiz 4: The Migration of New World Blacks to Sierra Leone and Liberia

Students must answer all of the questions below after reading the attached article:

OAHMagazineBackToAfrica

1. What is the overall point of the article?

2.  Who are the major characters?

3.  Why did the free Blacks choose to return to Africa?

4. How did free Blacks pay for their return to African/

5. What countries did free Blacks return to?

6. How many African Americans returned to the 

7. Why do you think most African Americans did not want to return to Africa?

8. What are the major conclusions of this particular article?

9.  When did these events in the article take place?

10. Why do you think the issues in this article are not taught or addressed in high schools, middle schools, or elementary schools?

Discussion 7: Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson

Student are required to answer the four questions below briefly, after viewing the document below:

1.  Who was Jack Johnson, and what were his challenges growing up?

 

2.  What is the setting (location and time period) in which Johnson lived?

 

3.  What is Johnson’s claim to fame in African American history, and why do some historians consider him outstanding today?

 

4.  How is Johnson relevant to today, to Texas, and to you?

“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
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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

Leone” in Moving On: Black Loyalists in the Afro-Atlantic World. John W.
Pulis, ed. New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1999.
-. West Indians in West Africa, 1808-1880: the African Diaspora in Reverse.

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

African-American Experience

African-American Mosaic

The American Colonization Society

Roll of Emigrants 1820-1843,1-* Liberian History Page

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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Textbooks & Teaching

OAH Magazine of History April 2004 25

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• Contents

23

24

25

• Issue Table of Contents

Magazine of History, Vol. 18, No. 3, The Atlantic World (Apr., 2004), pp. 1-72

Front Matter

From the Editor: Introduction, Definitions, and Historiography: What Is Atlantic History? [pp. 3-7]

Yellow Jack and Geopolitics: Environment, Epidemics, and the Struggles for Empire in the American Tropics, 1650-1825 [pp. 9-13]

Conquests of Chocolate [pp. 14-17]

German-Speaking Immigrants in the British Atlantic World, 1680-1730 [pp. 19-22]

“Back to Africa:” The Migration of New World Blacks to Sierra Leone and Liberia [pp. 23-25]

Lesson Plans

Disease in the Atlantic World, 1492-1900 [pp. 27-32]

Caffeine Culture before Starbucks: Shared Interests, Outlooks, and Addictions in Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World Coffeehouses [pp. 33-37]

How and Why They Came: Narratives of Migration [pp. 38-42]

New York Was Always a Global City: The Impact of World Trade on Seventeenth-Century New Amsterdam [pp. 43-49]

Teaching American History with Documents from the Gilder Lerhman Collection

Suppressing American Slave Traders in the 1790s [pp. 51-55]

Teaching “Talking History”

Tea, Porcelain, and Sugar in the British Atlantic World [pp. 56-59]

America on the World Stage

The Declaration of Independence in World Context [pp. 61-66]

Internet Resources

Investigating the First Thanksgiving [pp. 68-69]

History Headlines [pp. 70-71]

Back Matter