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.