Journey of Hope: The Back-to-Africa Movement in Arkansas in the Late 1800sUniversity of North Carolina Press, 2004 - 268 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. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
One The Liberia Exodus Arkansas Colony 18771880 | 13 |
The 1880s | 33 |
Copyright | |
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ACS reel 136 Africa African Americans African emigration AME Church American Colonization Society April Arkan Arkansas emigrants Arkansas Gazette Arkansas refugees Arkansas's arrived August back-to-Africa movement Baptist beria Bishop Henry Bishop Turner black Americans black Arkansans black citizens Black Exodus black farmers black population black-majority Blyden Brewerville Christian Civil club coffee color Conway County Coppinger December Democrats election emigration to Liberia February Forrest City Helena Henry McNeal Turner Horsa immigrants Indianapolis Freeman January John Johnsonville July kansas labor land late Laurada leaders letters Liberia Liberia Exodus Little Rock lynchings March Methodist missionary Mississippi Monrovia Morrilton Negro newspaper November October Oklahoma organized Ormond Wilson Phillips County Pine Bluff pinger Plumerville political president race Redkey reported Republican Reverend Ridgel September settlers Sherrill ship Smith South Carolina southern Stanford tion United University Press Voice of Missions vote voters Washington William Woodruff County Yates and Porterfield York