Maryland In Africa #Blackhistorymonth - Issue #19

Feb 09, 2022

The Liberian colony’s former Governor, Joseph Jenkins Roberts, was elected Liberia’s first President. Photo from The Library of Congress

Over the last 2 to 4 years, African Americans have been resettling in parts of Africa. Some African Americans throughout history sought a relationship with Africa and its leaders. MLK, Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King, W.E.B Dubois, Sydney Poitier, and Malcolm X as well as others built relationships with African leaders because they understood that Black Americans and Africans have shared ancestry. Various African American leaders believed that they needed to build a collective resistance against imperialism.

Unbeknownst to some, there was a time in the United States when federal and local officials encouraged Black people to move back to Africa. Some free and enslaved Black people as early as the 1700s, and perhaps earlier, had voiced their desire to move to Africa because in the colonies they were considered property, and non-citizens, resulting in violence against their bodies. However, there were some Black people who strongly disagreed with moving to Africa and therefore rejected this idea. Some Northern and Southern whites (abolitionists and enslavers) agreed that it would be beneficial to send Black people to Africa because they saw no future for them in this country.

In 1862, Abraham Lincoln invited Black leaders to the White House to share with them that he thought white and Black people could not live together. "He argued that Black and white people were not capable of living together in the United States and that it was unfair to both groups to have to suffer in the other’s presence," writes Morgan Robinson. He recommended moving them to Central America or Liberia.

Additionally, white people became increasingly concerned about armed Black rebellions occurring in the colonies and the West Indies. Anchi Hoh, the program specialist in the African and Middle Eastern Division at the Library of Congress, writes that "the ACS was chartered to send freed slaves to Africa as an alternative to emancipation in the United States."

"The federal government started the colonization movement in response to slaveholder anxieties, some born from the reaction to Haiti establishing independence in 1804," wrote Jennifer Davis, a collection specialist in the Law Library's Collection Services Division at The Library of Congress.

The White House Historical Association writes:

"In August 1791, enslaved and free people of color across the colony of Saint Domingue fomented a revolt and seized control of the colony from the colonial power of France. Declaring independence on January 1, 1804, the new republic of Haiti became the world’s first Black republic and the first independent nation in the Caribbean. The Haitian Revolution is also the only successful attempt where enslaved people liberated themselves from a colonial power in the western hemisphere."

In 1816 - with the moral and financial support of Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, and white Christians - the American Colonization Society (ACS) was founded. The mission of the organization was to return enslaved and freed Black people to Liberia. The ACS sent, some scholars estimate, close to 19,000 Black people to West Africa. In honor of James Monroe, ACS members named the new community Monrovia. It became the capital of Liberia.

In 1827, following in the ACS's footsteps, a group of "loosely organized regional and county [ACS] societies in Maryland united to form a more centralized state group," according to Maryland State Archives. This group came to be known as The Maryland State Colonization Society (MSCS), which was supported by the Maryland General Assembly. Virginia, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Georgia also supported sending Black people to Africa.

The society’s support by both pro- and anti-slavery supporters prompted the Maryland General Assembly to award it an annual grant of $1,000 for the purpose of sending free blacks Marylanders to the American Colonization Society’s colony in Liberia.

However, in 1828, the program ceased sending people to Africa, but started again in 1831, following Nat Turner's rebellion in Virginia.

"Like many southern slaveholding states, horrified Maryland legislators immediately instituted new laws to regulate and restrict the movement and activities of both free blacks and slaves," according to the Maryland Archives. "Since colonization in Africa seemed to be a solution to this problem, the Maryland General Assembly reinstated its appropriation to settle free black Marylanders in Liberia during the 1831-1832 legislative session, committing itself to paying the society an annual sum of $10,000 for twenty years."

These Black Marylanders were first resettled in and outside of Monrovia, the ACS's settlement. However, former Black Marylanders said they had little say in the governance of that community. A group of people called the Board of Managers, who oversaw the resettlement project, moved some of them from Monrovia to what would later be known as Maryland in Liberia. And in 1957, they voted to be annexed from Liberia. The community became Maryland County.

"MSCS funded the passage of emigrants from Maryland to Liberia, provided them with housing and farm land upon arrival, and supplied enough food stores to last for the six or so months that new arrivals needed to acclimate to the new region and its diseases," accorinding to the Maryland Archives.

Members of the Maryland Colonization Settlement had their own vision of the settlement. These white members wanted these Black communities to be an example of flourishing Christian agrarian societies.

Settling in Africa wasn't easy. Newcomers caught all kinds of diseases and perhaps brought new diseases to Africa. The residents would go on to struggle economically. They would also find themselves fighting with the indigenous Africans.

"In 1856, Maryland in Liberia found itself in a war with the neighboring native peoples over trade policies and territory," according to the Maryland Archives. "The new nation was forced to request military aid from the Republic of Liberia, which had formed in 1847 from the American Colonization Society’s settlement. After peace was restored, in 1857, Maryland in Liberia citizens voted in favor of annexation to Liberia, becoming Maryland County."

The MSCS would continue to send Black people to Maryland County in Liberia. However, in 1862, a year before the emancipation proclamation, for many reasons, the society ceased its activity. That same year, the ACS finally dissolved. In 1864, Maryland, a border state, chose to free enslaved Black people. You can read more about this history here and here. Here is a book on African-Americans and Africa.

You can also watch this mini-documentary on Maryland County