The history of African-American settlement in Africa extends to the beginnings of
ex-slave repatriation to
Africa from European colonies in the Americas.
History
Ex-slaves
The immigration of
African Americans
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...
,
West Indians, and
Black Britons
Black British people are a multi-ethnic group of British citizens of either List of ethnic groups of Africa, African or Afro-Caribbean people, Afro-Caribbean descent.Gadsby, Meredith (2006), ''Sucking Salt: Caribbean Women Writers, Migration, a ...
to Africa occurred mainly during the late 18th century to mid-19th century. In the cases of
Liberia
Liberia (), officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country on the West African coast. It is bordered by Sierra Leone to Liberia–Sierra Leone border, its northwest, Guinea to its north, Ivory Coast to its east, and the Atlantic Ocean ...
and
Sierra Leone both were established by freed slaves who were repatriated to Africa within a 28-year period.
However, other ex-slaves were repatriated from other European territories and colonies. The
Tabom people are descendants of
Afro-Brazilian ex-slaves who were either voluntarily or forcefully deported by the Portuguese to Africa (some of them being deported following the
Bahia Malê Revolt in 1835); they constitute a minority ethnic group on the coastal regions of modern-day
Ghana and
Togo.
Back-to-Africa movement
Following the
abolition of slavery in the United States and elsewhere in the Americas, numerous movements for African-American settlement in Africa sprung up and fluctuated in popularity, many of them involving the colonies –
Maryland in Africa
The Republic of Maryland (also known variously as the Independent State of Maryland, Maryland-in-Africa, and Maryland in Liberia) was a country in West Africa that existed from 1834 to 1857, when it was merged into what is now Liberia. The area ...
,
Kentucky in Africa
Kentucky in Africa was a colony in present-day Montserrado County, Liberia, founded in 1828 and settled by American free people of color, many of them former slaves. A Kentucky state affiliate of the American Colonization Society, members raised mo ...
,
Mississippi in Africa
Mississippi-in-Africa was a colony on the Pepper Coast (West Africa) founded in the 1830s by the Mississippi Colonization Society of the United States and settled by American free people of color, many of them former slaves. In the late 1840s, so ...
, and others – that would combine to create Liberia. African-American abolitionist and Army officer
Martin Delany supported a project for African-American immigration to Liberia later in his lifetime. However, it declined by the end of the 19th century following a string of hoaxes and fraudulent activities associated with the movement.
Beginning in 1787, the British government made their first attempt to settle people in Sierra Leone. About 300
Black Britons
Black British people are a multi-ethnic group of British citizens of either List of ethnic groups of Africa, African or Afro-Caribbean people, Afro-Caribbean descent.Gadsby, Meredith (2006), ''Sucking Salt: Caribbean Women Writers, Migration, a ...
, known as the ''
Black Poor
Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white have ...
'' of London, were settled on the Sierra Leonean peninsula in West Africa. Within two years, most members of the settlement would die from disease or conflict with the local
Temne people. In 1792, a second attempt at settlement was made when 1,100 freed slaves established Freetown with support from British abolitionist
Thomas Clarkson. Their numbers were further bolstered when over 500
Jamaican Maroons were transported first to Nova Scotia, and then to Sierra Leone in 1800. The descendants of
freedmen are the
Sierra Leone Creole people.
The Back-to-Africa movement achieved popularity again with
Jamaican activist
Marcus Garvey and his
Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, who advocated racial pride amongst African-Americans in the United States and pressed for repatriation of slave descendants to Liberia and Sierra Leone. The movement fell apart by the end of the 1920s, but influenced both the
Nation of Islam
The Nation of Islam (NOI) is a religious and political organization founded in the United States by Wallace Fard Muhammad in 1930.
A black nationalist organization, the NOI focuses its attention on the African diaspora, especially on African ...
and the
Rastafari movement; the latter, a Jamaican that saw
Haile Selassie I, the emperor of
Ethiopia, as a reincarnation of
Jesus and Garvey as a patron saint, managed to secure a settlement in
Shashamane, which exists to this day and constitutes over 200 individuals out of an urban population of around 95,000.
People
Ghana
Another African-American settlement is concentrated in
Accra
Accra (; tw, Nkran; dag, Ankara; gaa, Ga or ''Gaga'') is the capital and largest city of Ghana, located on the southern coast at the Gulf of Guinea, which is part of the Atlantic Ocean. As of 2021 census, the Accra Metropolitan District, , ...
, Ghana, which has nearly 10,000 African-American residents, primarily originating from the United States and Jamaica, who reside in the country on work permits, with a few on permanent resident status. Accra has long attracted African-American tourists since the country became the first African country to gain independence from the
United Kingdom in 1957 (
W. E. B. DuBois
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois ( ; February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American-Ghanaian Sociology, sociologist, Socialism, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanism, Pan-Africanist Civil and political civil rights activist. Bor ...
settled in Ghana in his last years and is buried in Accra), and the government has made controversial overtures to gain more African-American residents and tourists, including enacting a
right of abode law in 2001. Organizations have been established to support African-American residents in Ghana, including the African-American Association of Ghana.
As of 2019, there were 4,000 Jamaicans living in Ghana along with the estimated 5,000 African-Americans who have moved to the country in recent decades.
Liberia
Americo-Liberian people,
[Cooper, Helene, ''The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood'' (United States: Simon and Schuster, 2008), p. 6] are a Liberian ethnic group of
African American,
Afro-Caribbean
Afro-Caribbean people or African Caribbean are Caribbean people who trace their full or partial ancestry to Sub-Saharan Africa. The majority of the modern African-Caribbeans descend from Africans taken as slaves to colonial Caribbean via the ...
, and
Liberated African descent. A similar ethnic group to the Americo-Liberians are the
Sierra Leone Creole people, who shared similar ancestry and related culture.
[Liberia: History, Geography, Government, and Culture](_blank)
Infoplease.com Americo-Liberians trace their ancestry to free-born and formerly enslaved African Americans who emigrated in the 19th century to become the founders of the state of Liberia. They identified there as Americo-Liberians.
Sierra Leone
Some African Americans, following resettlement in Canada, also participated as founding settlers in
Sierra Leone and other recaptive repatriates settled in present-day
Côte d'Ivoire
Ivory Coast, also known as Côte d'Ivoire, officially the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, is a country on the southern coast of West Africa. Its capital is Yamoussoukro, in the centre of the country, while its largest city and economic centre is ...
.
Their descendants are the Sierra Leone Creole people.
See also
*
Back-to-Africa movement
*
Diaspora tourism
Tourism is travel for pleasure or business, and the commercial activity of providing and supporting such travel. The World Tourism Organization defines tourism more generally, in terms which go "beyond the common perception of tourism as being ...
*
Door of Return
*
Genealogy tourism (Africa)
*
Return to roots
*
Right of return (Ghana)
*
Year of Return, Ghana 2019
The Year of Return, Ghana 2019 is an initiative of the government of Ghana – along with the U.S.-based Adinkra Group – that is intended to encourage African diasporans to come to Africa (specifically Ghana) to settle and invest in the continent ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Afro-American Settlement In Africa
African-American history
African and Black nationalism
Repatriated Africans
Repatriated slaves
People of Liberated African descent
African diaspora history
Pre-emancipation African-American history
African-American repatriation organizations