New Directions in the Study of African American Recolonization

This volume closely examines the movement to resettle black Americans in Africa, an effort led by the American Colonization Society during the nineteenth century and a heavily debated part of American history. Some believe it was inspired by antislavery principles, but others think it was a proslavery reaction against the presence of free Black people in society.

Moving beyond this simplistic debate, contributors link the movement to other historical developments of the time, revealing a complex web of different schemes, ideologies, and activities behind the relocation of African Americans to Liberia. They explain what colonization, emigration, immigration, abolition, and emancipation meant within nuanced nineteenth-century contexts, looking through many lenses to more accurately reflect the past.

Contributors: Eric Burin | Andrew Diemer | David F. Ericson | Bronwen Everill | Nicholas Guyatt | Debra Newman Ham | Matthew J. Hetrick | Gale Kenny | Phillip W. Magness | Brandon Mills | Robert Murray | Sebastian N. Page | Daniel Preston | Beverly Tomek | Andrew N. Wegmann | Ben Wright | Nicholas P. Wood A volume in the series Southern Dissent, edited by Stanley Harrold and Randall M. Miller

A volume in the series Southern Dissent, edited by Stanley Harrold and Randall M. Miller



Publication of the paperback edition made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Beverly C. Tomek, associate provost for curriculum and student achievement and associate professor of history at the University of Houston-Victoria, is the author of Colonization and Its Discontents: Emancipation, Emigration, and Antislavery in Antebellum Pennsylvania. 


Matthew J. Hetrick is a history teacher at The Bryn Mawr School.