Back to Africa – Benjamin Coates and the Colonization Movement in America, 1848–1880

Benjamin Coates was one of the best-known white supporters of African colonization in nineteenth-century America. A Quaker businessman from Philadelphia and a sometime officer of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, he was committed to helping black Americans relocate to West Africa. This put him at the center of a discourse with abolitionists at home and abroad, including such leading thinkers as Joseph Jenkins Roberts, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Henry Highland Garnet, Frederick Douglass, Alexander Crummell, George L. Stearns, and William Coppinger.

Creative and restless, cantankerous and charismatic, these men and women dominated the struggle to end slavery and to achieve respect for African Americans. Back to Africa sheds new light on these remarkable personalities and their tireless efforts at reform.

Emma J. Lapsansky-Werner is Professor of History and Curator of Special Collections at Haverford College.

Margaret Hope Bacon is the author of numerous books, including One Woman's Passion for Peace and Freedom: The Life of Mildred Scott Olmsted (1993).