History Lessons: Contextualizing Black Emigration of the Nineteenth Century
The context of the nineteenth century in the United States of America spurred a number of social and political movements and ideologies by African-Americans that responded to the brutal oppression of slavery and sub-citizenship endured during that period. Among northern communities of free Blacks, covert gatherings of southern slaves, meetings of federal government officials, and societies of abolitionists, individuals voiced their thoughts and opinions on potential solutions that could, in their respective interests, address and alleviate the condition of the Negro in America. A number of prospective solutions included the idea of Black emigration and the creation of settlements outside of the United States. In response to the efforts by the American Colonization Society in 1816—efforts to create settlements in Liberia and Sierra Leone for free Blacks—a number of Africans in America gravitated to three major camps regarding the idea of emigration: (1) rejection of colonization in fav