Back To Africa: Benjamin Coates And The Colonization Movement In America, 1848-1880
Editorial Reviews
Book Description
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, that included 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.
At the heart of the volume is a collection of over 150 recently recovered letters, either written by Coates or addressed to him between 1848 and 1880, the years when Coates was most active in racial reform. Lapansky-Werner and Bacon have provided a far-reaching essay that places them in the context of nineteenth-century African American colonization ideas, and the editors have led a team of young scholars who annotated the letters. Taken together, the letters provide fascinating insight into the alliances and divisions within America's antislavery movement, making Back to Africa essential reading for every student of black studies, abolitionism, Quaker history, and nineteenth-century reform in general.
About the Author
Emma Lapsansky-Werner is Professor of History and Curator of Special Collections at Haverford College. Her recent publications include Quaker Aesthetics: Reflections on a Quaker Ethic in American Design and Consumption, 1720-1920, a collection of essays edited with Anne Verplanck (2002), and a contributed essay to Pennsylvania: A History of the Commonwealth, edited by Randall Miller and William Pencak (Penn State Press, 2002). 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) and Mothers of Feminism: The Story of Quaker Women in America (1986).
Back To Africa: Benjamin Coates And The Colonization Movement In America, 1848-1880,Emma J. Lapsansky-Werner,Margaret Hope Bacon,Pennsylvania State University Press,0271026847,Abolitionists,Africa,African Americans,Biography,Colonization,Correspondence,Ethnic Studies - African American Studies - General,Ethnic Studies - African American Studies - Histor,General,History - General History,History - U.S.,Social Science,Sociology,Sources,United States - 19th Century
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