African Americans in Africa

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African Americans in Africa
Regions with significant populations
Flag of Sierra Leone.svg  Sierra Leone 100,000 (descendants) [1]
Flag of Liberia.svg  Liberia 150,000 (descendants) [2]
Flag of Ghana.svg  Ghana 9,000 [3] [4]
Flag of South Africa.svg  South Africa 3,000 [5]
Flag of Ethiopia.svg  Ethiopia 600–800 [6]

The history of African-American settlement in Africa extends to the beginnings of ex-slave repatriation to Africa from European colonies in the Americas.[ citation needed ]

Contents

History

Ex-enslaved

The immigration of African Americans, West Indians, and Black Britons to Africa occurred mainly during the late 18th century to mid-19th century. In the cases of Liberia and Sierra Leone both were established by freed enslaved people who were repatriated to Africa within a 28-year period.[ citation needed ]

However, other ex-enslaved people were repatriated from other European territories and colonies. The Tabom people are descendants of Afro-Brazilian ex-slaves who were either voluntarily or forcefully deported by the Portuguese to Africa (some of them being deported following the Bahia Malê Revolt in 1835); they constitute a minority ethnic group on the coastal regions of modern-day Ghana and Togo. [7]

Back-to-Africa movement

Following the abolition of slavery in the United States and elsewhere in the Americas, numerous movements for African-American settlement in Africa sprung up and fluctuated in popularity, many of them involving the colonies – Maryland in Africa, Kentucky in Africa, Mississippi in Africa, and others – that would combine to create Liberia. African-American abolitionist and Army officer Martin Delany supported a project for African-American immigration to Liberia later in his lifetime. However, it declined by the end of the 19th century following a string of hoaxes and fraudulent activities associated with the movement.[ citation needed ]

Beginning in 1787, the British government made their first attempt to settle people in Sierra Leone. About 300 Black Britons, known as the Black Poor of London, were settled on the Sierra Leonean peninsula in West Africa. Within two years, most members of the settlement would die from disease or conflict with the local Temne people. In 1792, a second attempt at settlement was made when 1,100 freed slaves established Freetown with support from British abolitionist Thomas Clarkson. Their numbers were further bolstered when over 500 Jamaican Maroons were transported first to Nova Scotia, and then to Sierra Leone in 1800. [8] The descendants of freedmen are the Sierra Leone Creole people.

The Back-to-Africa movement achieved popularity again with Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey and his Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, who advocated racial pride amongst African-Americans in the United States and pressed for repatriation of slave descendants to Liberia and Sierra Leone. The movement fell apart by the end of the 1920s, but influenced both the Nation of Islam and the Rastafari movement; the latter, a Jamaican that saw Haile Selassie I, the emperor of Ethiopia, as a reincarnation of Jesus and Garvey as a patron saint, managed to secure a settlement in Shashamane, which exists to this day and constitutes over 200 individuals out of an urban population of around 95,000.[ citation needed ]

People

Ghana

Another African-American settlement is concentrated in Accra, Ghana, which has nearly 10,000 African-American residents, primarily originating from the United States and Jamaica, who reside in the country on work permits, with a few on permanent resident status. Accra has long attracted African-American tourists since the country became the first African country to gain independence from the United Kingdom in 1957 (W. E. B. DuBois settled in Ghana in his last years and is buried in Accra), and the government has made controversial overtures to gain more African-American residents and tourists, including enacting a right of abode law in 2001. [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] Organizations have been established to support African-American residents in Ghana, including the African-American Association of Ghana.

As of 2019, there were 4,000 Jamaicans living in Ghana along with the estimated 5,000 African-Americans who have moved to the country in recent decades. [14]

Liberia

Americo-Liberian people, [15] are a Liberian ethnic group of African American, Afro-Caribbean, and Liberated African descent. A similar ethnic group to the Americo-Liberians are the Sierra Leone Creole people, who shared similar ancestry and related culture. [16] Americo-Liberians trace their ancestry to free-born and formerly enslaved African Americans who emigrated in the 19th century to become the founders of the state of Liberia. They identified there as Americo-Liberians.

Sierra Leone

Some African Americans, following resettlement in Canada, also participated as founding settlers in Sierra Leone and other recaptive repatriates settled in present-day Côte d'Ivoire. [16] Their descendants are the Sierra Leone Creole people.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of Liberia</span>

Liberia is a country in West Africa founded by free people of color from the United States. The emigration of African Americans, both freeborn and recently emancipated, was funded and organized by the American Colonization Society (ACS). The mortality rate of these settlers was the highest among settlements reported with modern recordkeeping. Of the 4,571 emigrants who arrived in Liberia between 1820 and 1843, only 1,819 survived (39.8%).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Creole peoples</span> Ethnic groups formed from mixed cultural and linguistic ancestry

Creole peoples may refer to different ethnic groups around the world. The term has been used with various meanings, often conflicting or varying from region to region.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gullah</span> African American ethnic group in south United States

The Gullah are an African American ethnic group who predominantly live in the Lowcountry region of the U.S. states of South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida within the coastal plain and the Sea Islands. Their language and culture have preserved a significant influence of Africanisms as a result of their historical geographic isolation and the community's relation to their shared history and identity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sherbro Island</span> Place in Southern Province, Sierra Leone

Sherbro Island is in the Atlantic Ocean, and is included within Bonthe District, Southern Province, Sierra Leone. The island is separated from the African mainland by the Sherbro River in the north and Sherbro Strait in the east. It is 32 miles (51 km) long and up to 15 miles (24 km) wide, covering an area of approximately 230 square miles (600 km2). The western extremity is Cape St. Ann. Bonthe, on the eastern end, is the chief port and commercial centre.

Afro-Caribbean people or African Caribbean are Caribbean people who trace their full or partial ancestry to native Africans. The majority of the modern Afro-Caribbean people descend from the Africans taken as slaves to colonial Caribbean via the trans-Atlantic slave trade between the 15th and 19th centuries to work primarily on various sugar plantations and in domestic households. Other names for the ethnic group include Black Caribbean, Afro or Black West Indian or Afro or Black Antillean. The term Afro-Caribbean was not coined by Caribbean people themselves but was first used by European Americans in the late 1960s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black Loyalist</span> Slaves who sided with the Loyalists for freedom

Black Loyalists were people of African descent who sided with the Loyalists during the American Revolutionary War. In particular, the term refers to men who escaped enslavement by Patriot masters and served on the Loyalist side because of the Crown's guarantee of freedom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Back-to-Africa movement</span> Political movement in the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries

The back-to-Africa movement was a political movement in the 19th and 20th centuries advocating for a return of the descendants of African American slaves to the African continent. The movement originated from a widespread belief among some European Americans in the 18th and 19th century United States that African Americans would want to return to the continent of Africa. In general, the political movement was an overwhelming failure; very few former slaves wanted to move to Africa. The small number of freed slaves who did settle in Africa—some under duress—initially faced brutal conditions, due to diseases to which they no longer had biological resistance. As the failure became known in the United States in the 1820s, it spawned and energized the radical abolitionist movement. In the 20th century, the Jamaican political activist and black nationalist Marcus Garvey, members of the Rastafari movement, and other African Americans supported the concept, but few actually left the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edward Wilmot Blyden</span> Liberian educator and politician (1832–1912)

Edward Wilmot Blyden was an Americo-Liberian educator, writer, diplomat, and politician who was primarily active in West Africa. Born in the Danish West Indies, he joined the waves of black immigrants from the Americas who migrated to the country. Blyden became a teacher for five years in the British West African colony of Sierra Leone in the early twentieth century. His major writing were on pan-Africanism which later became influential throughout West Africa, attracting attention in countries such as the United States as well. He believed that Zionism was a model for what he termed Ethiopianism, and that African Americans could return to Africa and help in the rebuilding of the continent.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black Nova Scotians</span> Black Canadians descended from American slaves, black Indigenous people, or freemen

Black Nova Scotians are Black Canadians whose ancestors primarily date back to the Colonial United States as slaves or freemen, later arriving in Nova Scotia, Canada, during the 18th and early 19th centuries. As of the 2021 Census of Canada, 28,220 Black people live in Nova Scotia, most in Halifax. Since the 1950s, numerous Black Nova Scotians have migrated to Toronto for its larger range of opportunities. Before the immigration reforms of 1967, Black Nova Scotians formed 37% of the total Black Canadian population.

Jamaican Maroons descend from Africans who freed themselves from slavery on the Colony of Jamaica and established communities of free black people in the island's mountainous interior, primarily in the eastern parishes. Africans who were enslaved during Spanish rule over Jamaica (1493–1655) may have been the first to develop such refugee communities.

Major John Jarrett was a Jamaican Maroon leader of the Maroons of Cudjoe's Town in Jamaica. He was most likely named after a neighbouring planter with a similar surname.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nova Scotian Settlers</span> Historical ethnic group that settled Sierra Leone

The Nova Scotian Settlers, or Sierra Leone Settlers, were African Americans who founded the settlement of Freetown, Sierra Leone and the Colony of Sierra Leone, on March 11, 1792. The majority of these black American immigrants were among 3,000 African Americans, mostly former slaves, who had sought freedom and refuge with the British during the American Revolutionary War, leaving rebel masters. They became known as the Black Loyalists. The Nova Scotian settlers were jointly led by African American Thomas Peters, a former soldier, and English abolitionist John Clarkson. For most of the 19th century, the Settlers resided in Settler Town and remained a distinct ethnic group within the Freetown territory, tending to marry among themselves and with Europeans in the colony.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1846 Liberian independence referendum</span>

An independence referendum was held in Liberia on 27 October 1846. The result was 52% in favor, with independence being declared on 26 July 1847.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Liberia–Sierra Leone relations</span> Bilateral relations

Liberia – Sierra Leone relations refers to the historical and current relationship between Liberia and Sierra Leone. The two countries signed a non-aggression pact in 2007 when Sierra Leonean President Ernest Bai Koroma took office. In January 2011, an African diplomat described relations as "cordial".

For a history of Afro-Caribbean people in the UK, see British African Caribbean community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sierra Leone Creole people</span> Ethnic group of Sierra Leone

The Sierra Leone Creole people are an ethnic group of Sierra Leone. The Sierra Leone Creole people are descendants of freed African-American, Afro-Caribbean, and Liberated African slaves who settled in the Western Area of Sierra Leone between 1787 and about 1885. The colony was established by the British, supported by abolitionists, under the Sierra Leone Company as a place for freedmen. The settlers called their new settlement Freetown. Today, the Sierra Leone Creoles are 1.2 percent of the population of Sierra Leone.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Easmon family</span> Sierra Leone Creole family

The Easmon family or the Easmon Medical Dynasty is a Sierra Leone Creole medical dynasty of African-American descent originally based in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The Easmon family has ancestral roots in the United States, and in particular Savannah, Georgia and other states in the American South. There are several descendants of the Sierra Leonean family in the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as in the Ghanaian cities of Accra and Kumasi. The family produced several medical doctors beginning with John Farrell Easmon, the medical doctor who coined the term Blackwater fever and wrote the first clinical diagnosis of the disease linking it to malaria and Albert Whiggs Easmon, who was a leading gynaecologist in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Several members of the family were active in business, academia, politics, the arts including music, cultural dance, playwriting and literature, history, anthropology, cultural studies, and anti-colonial activism against racism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Americo-Liberian people</span> Ethnic group of Liberia

Americo-Liberian people, are a Liberian ethnic group of African American, Afro-Caribbean, and liberated Africans. Americo-Liberians trace their ancestry to free-born and formerly enslaved African Americans who emigrated in the 19th century to become the founders of the state of Liberia. They identified themselves as Americo-Liberians.

The African-American diaspora refers to communities of people outside of the United States of African descent who previously lived in the United States. These people were mainly descended from formerly enslaved African persons in the United States or its preceding European colonies in North America that had been brought to America via the Atlantic slave trade and had suffered in slavery between the years of 1526 and 1865. The African-American diaspora was primarily caused by the intense racism and views of being inferior to white people that African Americans have suffered through driving them to find new homes free from discrimination and racism. This would become common throughout the history of the African-American presence in the United States and continues to this day. The spreading of the African American diaspora would begin as soon as slaves were brought over to the New World and would first become a large movement during the American Revolution and into the 19th century by escaping slave owners for a chance at freedom and through serving in both the British and colonial army for their freedom. Canada would abolish slavery in 1803 opening its doors for freemen and fugitive slaves from the states resulting in thousands migrating there to escape slavery. Today many African Americans especially women are leaving the U.S. for an easier life in places like South Africa, Mexico, and the Caribbean.

References

  1. Walker, James W. (1992). "Chapter Five: Foundation of Sierra Leone". The Black Loyalists: The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, 1783–1870 . Toronto: University of Toronto Press. pp.  94–114. ISBN   978-0-8020-7402-7. Originally published by Longman & Dalhousie University Press (1976).
  2. "Liberia, the unsuccessful return of African descendants". Lisapo ya Kama. 19 January 2018.
  3. Essa, Azad. "Why some African Americans are moving to Africa". www.aljazeera.com.
  4. "What does the word Jamaica mean in Ghana? – SidmartinBio". www.sidmartinbio.org. Retrieved 15 December 2021.
  5. Walker, Kenneth (20 April 2010). "The Discomfort of African Americans in South Africa". The Root.
  6. Thomas Page, for (28 October 2015). "Meet the Rastafarians of Ethiopia - CNN". CNN.
  7. von Hesse, Hermann W.; Yarak, Larry W. (2018). "A Tale of Two "Returnee" Communities in the Gold Coast and Ghana: Accra's Tabon and Elmina's Ex-Soldiers, 1830s to the Present". The International Journal of African Historical Studies. 51 (2): 197–217. ISSN   0361-7882.
  8. Sivapragasam, Michael (June 2018). After the treaties: a social, economic and demographic history of Maroon society in Jamaica, 1739-1842 (Thesis). University of Southampton. pp. 136–154.
  9. Essien, Kwame,"The Atlantic Diaspora: African American Communities in Ghana, 1980 to 2005". Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Atlanta Hilton, Charlotte, NC, 15 December 2013.
  10. Mensah, Ishmael, "Marketing Ghana As A Mecca For The African-American Tourist", GhanaWeb, 10 June 2004.
  11. "Ghana and The Right to Abode For African Americans" Archived 2017-04-24 at the Wayback Machine . ChickenBones.
  12. "Ghana's New Money", Time magazine , 21 August 2006.
  13. Lydia Polgreen, "Ghana's Uneasy Embrace of Slavery's Diaspora", The New York Times , 27 December 2005.
  14. "'Jamaica is my love, Ghana is my sweetheart' - With similar culture, climate, Sinclair urges countrymen to turn eyes to West Africa". jamaica-gleaner.com. 19 June 2019. Retrieved 15 December 2021.
  15. Cooper, Helene, The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood (United States: Simon and Schuster, 2008), p. 6
  16. 1 2 Liberia: History, Geography, Government, and Culture, Infoplease.com