Journey of Hope: The Back-to-Africa Movement in Arkansas in the Late 1800sUniv of North Carolina Press, 2005 M10 12 - 288 pages Liberia was founded by the American Colonization Society (ACS) in the 1820s as an African refuge for free blacks and liberated American slaves. While interest in African migration waned after the Civil War, it roared back in the late nineteenth century with the rise of Jim Crow segregation and disfranchisement throughout the South. The back-to-Africa movement held great new appeal to the South's most marginalized citizens, rural African Americans. Nowhere was this interest in Liberia emigration greater than in Arkansas. More emigrants to Liberia left from Arkansas than any other state in the 1880s and 1890s. In Journey of Hope, Kenneth C. Barnes explains why so many black Arkansas sharecroppers dreamed of Africa and how their dreams of Liberia differed from the reality. This rich narrative also examines the role of poor black farmers in the creation of a black nationalist identity and the importance of the symbolism of an ancestral continent. Based on letters to the ACS and interviews of descendants of the emigrants in war-torn Liberia, this study captures the life of black sharecroppers in the late 1800s and their dreams of escaping to Africa. |
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... brought these emigrants here? Was it the push of an increasingly hostile American South or the pull of an ancestral continent? Although answers are rarely certain, the message I heard in thousands of letters written by aspiring ...
... brought these emigrants here? Was it the push of an increasingly hostile American South or the pull of an ancestral continent? Although answers are rarely certain, the message I heard in thousands of letters written by aspiring ...
Page 5
... brought settlers to Liberia, which remained a colony of the ACS for the next twenty-five years. The society's resident agent in Monrovia presided over the colony, assisted by an elected council of settlers. The emigration of free blacks ...
... brought settlers to Liberia, which remained a colony of the ACS for the next twenty-five years. The society's resident agent in Monrovia presided over the colony, assisted by an elected council of settlers. The emigration of free blacks ...
Page 10
... brought sudden change to their political status, a black migration movement took root quickly and sprouted in the last three years of the 1870s. The day after President Hayes withdrew federal troops from South Carolina, John ...
... brought sudden change to their political status, a black migration movement took root quickly and sprouted in the last three years of the 1870s. The day after President Hayes withdrew federal troops from South Carolina, John ...
Page 14
... brought Democrats into control of both the statehouse and legislature. But the Democratic takeover did not mean the end of black political power, as in some other southern states. No evidence suggests a decline in black voting or ...
... brought Democrats into control of both the statehouse and legislature. But the Democratic takeover did not mean the end of black political power, as in some other southern states. No evidence suggests a decline in black voting or ...
Page 15
... Hill was a. majority Jefferson County for the first post-Reconstruction General Assembly classes and nationalities brought clothing, baskets of provisions.” Nonetheless,. ~~ ...
... Hill was a. majority Jefferson County for the first post-Reconstruction General Assembly classes and nationalities brought clothing, baskets of provisions.” Nonetheless,. ~~ ...
Contents
1 | |
13 | |
The 1880s | 33 |
Liberia Fever 18881891 | 49 |
The Crisis of 1892 | 75 |
Five Troublemakers | 91 |
Six Missions | 107 |
Seven The Meaning of Africa | 123 |
Eight The Last Voyages | 135 |
Nine In Liberia | 149 |
Conclusion | 177 |
Notes | 195 |
Bibliography | 245 |
Index | 259 |
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Common terms and phrases
ACS reel African African Americans agent American Annual appeared applicants Arkansas arrived asked August Baptist became Bishop black Americans brought called Christian Church citizens City civilization claimed club Colonization color Conway Coppinger correspondence County December Democrats discussion early election emigration Exodus farmers February Gazette Henry hope immigrants interest interview James January John July June kansas labor land late later leaders leave letters Liberia Little Rock lived lynchings March meeting migration missionary Missions Monrovia months moved movement Negro newspaper North November October Office organized party Phillips political population president Printing race received Recorder refugees reported Republican returned Ridgel September settlers ship Smith Society South southern Stanford tion took town traveled Turner United University Press Voice vote wanted Washington women wrote York
Popular passages
Page 1 - Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
Page 133 - What though the spicy breezes Blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle, Though every prospect pleases, And only man is vile ; In vain with lavish kindness The gifts of God are strown ; The heathen in his blindness Bows down to wood and stone.
Page 230 - Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974); Leslie Howard Owens, This Species of Property: Slave Life and Culture in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976); Herbert G.
Page 197 - Report and testimony of the Select Committee of the United States Senate to Investigate the Causes of the Removal of the Negroes from 102 Negroes the Southern States to the Northern States.
Page 83 - With no sacredness of the ballot there can be no sacredness of human life itself. For if the strong can take the weak man's ballot, when it suits his purpose to do so, he will take his life also. . . . The...
Page 240 - Bittle and Gilbert Geis, The Longest Way Home: Chief Alfred C. Sam's Back-to-Africa Movement (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1964); J. Ayo Langley, "Chief Sam's African Movement and Race Consciousness in West Africa...
Page 198 - Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863—1877 (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 176-280.