Back to Africa

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The touchy subject of

Race

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Key concepts
Racism and racists



The Back to Africa movement is the expression of a desire to repatriate black people from the Americas — namely the descendants of slaves — to their ancestral homes in Africa.

Contents

[edit] Sierra Leone

The first instance of black repatriation to Africa was the British colony of Sierra Leone, where former Maroons from Jamaica who had been settled in Nova Scotia were resettled starting at the turn of the eighteenth century.

[edit] Liberia

Starting in 1822, the American Colonization Society (ACS) transported 13,000 freedmen from the United States to Liberia as way to deal with the "problem" of a growing number of free black people in the United States. The ACS developed out of the concerns of two diametrically-opposed groups: African-Americans who saw a return to Africa as a way to escape life in a racist society, and white racists who saw free blacks as a threat to a white nation.

[edit] The Universal Negro Improvement Association

In the 1920s, the pan-African activist Marcus Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), an organization that worked to improve living conditions for black people worldwide, promoted the economic independence of black communities, advocated for the independence of black nations, and planned for a return of black people to Africa. An important part of the UNIA's mission was the Black Star Line, a steamship line that would transport black people back to Africa.

[edit] Rastafari

The Rastafari movement has deep roots in the Back-to-Africa ethos; while a relatively small number of Rastas have settled in Shashemene, Ethiopia, Rastafari culture is in large part based on the idea of a cultural and spiritual turn from Babylon to Zion.

[edit] Today

Occasionally white supremacists make demands for the deportation of all remaining African Americans; these demands are often responses to the call for de facto equality rather than merely de jure, including meaningful protection from racist institutions like the police and economic justice in the form of reparations.


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