Journey of Hope : The Back-to-Africa Movement in Arkansas in the Late 1800s (The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture)
Editorial Reviews
Review
"A poignant portrait of the overlooked back-to-Africa movement in the American South.
(W. Fitzhugh Brundage, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, editor of Booker T. Washington and Black Progress)"
"Anyone interested in the lives of poor black men and women will find this a compelling read.
(James H. Meriwether, author of Proudly We Can Be Africans: Black Americans and Africa, 1935-1961)"
Book Description
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.
Journey of Hope : The Back-to-Africa Movement in Arkansas in the Late 1800s (The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture)
Journey of Hope: The Back-to-Africa Movement in Arkansas in the Late 1800s (The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture),Kenneth C. Barnes,The University of North Carolina Press,0807855502,1847-1944,19th century,Africa - General,Africa - West,African Americans,Arkansas,Colonization,Emigration & Immigration,Ethnic Studies - African American Studies - General,Ethnic Studies - African American Studies - Histor,History,History - General History,Liberia,Sharecroppers,Social Science,Sociology,United States - State & Local - South,Black studies,History of specific racial & ethnic groups,Immigration & emigration,Liberia; American Colonization Society; free and liberated American slaves; Arkansas; back-to-African movement; African migration,Social Science / African-American Studies,c 1800 to c 1900
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