Back To Africa
Back To Africa; Africa is not only the continent of origin of people of African descent. It is also the tangible location for a romanticized idea of “home.” Generation after generation, people from across the African Diaspora left the places where slavery forced them to live and work to return to the Motherland. Many more wanted to return.Early Back-to-Africa movements made uneasy alliances with white colonialists hoping to get rid of emancipated African Americans at the end of slavery. In pursuing their freedom in places like Liberia and Sierra Leone, African American colonists often exerted power over the Africans native to those places.
By Digital Collections, The New York Public Library. (still image) , 1890-1896.
In the 20th century, the African homeland was at the center of Pan-Africanism, the political and cultural belief that all people of African descent should be unified. Intellectuals across the Black world and leaders including many of the first presidents of newly decolonized African nations believed that Africa should be a home for all African people. Today, tourism brings thousands of African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans to various parts of Africa, and many permanently reside there.
"Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities, August 13, 1920"
Marcus Garvey ( 1887- 1940) was a Jamaican-born Black nationalist leader who founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). Dubbed the “Black Moses,” Garvey rose to popularity in Harlem, New York. He preached pride in African histories and cultures and kinship between all people of the African Diaspora regardless of where they lived. Garvey wanted to establish a Black nation in Africa. His support of racial separatism was controversial among other Black leaders at the time. Believing that economic prosperity was essential, Garvey backed restaurants, shops, and established several businesses including the Negro World newspaper, The Negro Factories Corporation, and the Black Star Line — a shipping company developed to transport goods and people to the Continent. Black Star Line eventually became the focus of a mail fraud case against Garvey in 1922, which ultimately led to his incarceration and deportation from the U.S. Later, Garvey continued to work with the UNIA, but the organization was unable to regain its former glory.
"Keystone View Company, restored by Creator:Adam Cuerden , 1920"
Back-to-Africa sentiments emerged as soon as the first Africans were enslaved and forced from their homes. By the 1820s, colonists and abolitionists established Sierra Leone and Liberia and promoted African American emigration there. Paul Cuffee is credited with initiating the first Black-led Back-to-Africa campaign. He was a seaman, entrepreneur, and one of the wealthiest African Americans during his lifetime. Initially, Cuffee worked with Quakers and the American Colonization Society (ACS) to recruit African Americans to Sierra Leone, which already was home to a settlement of Black people who had fought for the British in the American Revolutionary War. In 1815, he traveled to Sierra Leone with 38 African Americans ranging in age from babies to elders. Cuffee eventually distanced himself from the ACS because it encouraged emigration to rid the U.S. of free African Americans. Nevertheless, Cuffee still believed in the promise of emigration for freedom and in opportunities for trade and development in Africa.
"By Engraved for Abrm. L. Pennock by Mason & Maas., From a drawing by John Pole, M.D., of Bristol, 1812.