Atlantic Passages

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Murray
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Differences ◽  
The United States ◽  
West African ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
The West ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Free People Of Color ◽  
American Colonization Society ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Free People

Established by the American Colonization Society in the early nineteenth century as a settlement for free people of color, the West African colony of Liberia is usually seen as an endpoint in the journeys of those who traveled there. In Atlantic Passages, Robert Murray reveals that many Liberian settlers did not remain in Africa but returned repeatedly to the United States, and he explores the ways this movement shaped the construction of race in the Atlantic world. Tracing the transatlantic crossings of Americo-Liberians between 1820 and 1857, in addition to delving into their experiences on both sides of the ocean, Murray discusses how the African neighbors and inhabitants of Liberia recognized significant cultural differences in the newly arrived African Americans and racially categorized them as “whites.” He examines the implications of being perceived as simultaneously white and black, arguing that these settlers acquired an exotic, foreign identity that escaped associations with primitivism and enabled them to claim previously inaccessible privileges and honors in America. Highlighting examples of the ways in which blackness and whiteness have always been contested ideas, as well as how understandings of race can be shaped by geography and cartography, Murray offers many insights into what it meant to be black and white in the space between Africa and America.

Racial Segregation under Slavery

Social Forces ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Ruef
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Racial Segregation ◽  
The United States ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Free People Of Color ◽  
Economic Competition ◽  
Black Populations ◽  
Residential Distribution ◽  
Architectural Survey ◽  
Free People

Abstract Social demographers and historians have devoted extensive research to patterns of racial segregation that emerged under Jim Crow and during the post-Civil Rights era but have paid less attention to the role of slavery in shaping the residential distribution of Black populations in the United States. One guiding assumption has been that slavery rendered racial segregation to be both unnecessary and impractical. In this study, I argue that apart from the master–slave relationship, slavery relentlessly produced racial segregation during the antebellum period through the residential isolation of slaves and free people of color. To explain this pattern, I draw on racial threat theory to test hypotheses regarding interracial economic competition and fear of slave mobilization using data from the 1850 Census, as well as an architectural survey of antebellum sites. Findings suggest that the residential segregation of free people of color increased with their local prevalence, whereas the segregation of slaves increased with the prevalence of the slave population. These patterns continue to hold after controlling for interracial competition over land or jobs and past slave rebellions or conspiracies.

“Your Views Cross the Atlantic”

2021 ◽  
pp. 195-222
Author(s):  
Robert Murray
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
The United States ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Free People Of Color ◽  
Racial Identities ◽  
Ability To Act ◽  
Racially Ambiguous ◽  
Free People

Chapter 5 examines the overwhelming rejection of colonization by free people of color in the United States, the evolution of the colonization societies, and the agency of the settlers in enacting these changes. For the majority of African Americans rejected colonization’s principal arguments. Those few who saw potential in Liberia emphasized the performative possibilities of the colony, the ability to act in ways previously denied to them on account of race. Significantly, the small number of African Americans who willingly chose to emigrate to Liberia were often racially ambiguous. They saw opportunity in the undefined and evolving racial identities offered by moving to Liberia. The chapter also examines the settlers’ roles in changing the colonization societies. For many settlers, there was no difference between abolition and colonization. Settlers worked with colonizationists committed to black uplift and attempted to drive out those who did not favor such reforms; they changed how the societies’ governed their colonies.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Robert Murray
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Free People Of Color ◽  
American Colonization Society ◽  
American Society ◽  
Free People

The introduction summarizes the content of the chapters and places the research in a broader context. This book focuses on the experiences and beliefs of the African American settlers and Africans in the colony of Liberia and on its earliest years as a republic after independence in 1847. Readers will notice that while Murray examines Liberia and Liberians broadly, he often focuses his analytical gaze upon the independent colony of Maryland in Liberia, established by the Maryland State Colonization Society (MSCS) in 1834. The MSCS desired to shift colonization in a more antislavery direction and did not believe it could accomplish this goal within the confines of the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Color (the American Colonization Society or ACS).

Documenting Citizenship

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor
Keyword(s):  
Federal Government ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Travel ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Free People Of Color ◽  
State Laws ◽  
Department Of State ◽  
Dred Scott ◽  
Free People ◽  
The U.S

Chapter 4 tells the story of how, between 1834 and the 1860s, the U.S. Department of State refused to grant free people of color official passports for international travel. During a period when passport policy was still nascent, by rejecting black applicants, the federal government illustrated how travel and citizenship were inextricably linked in the United States. At the same time that African Americans could not get passports, state laws and customs required some people of color to carry a series of identification papers best thought of as racialized surveillance documents, including slave passes, black sailors’ passports, and free papers. Demonstrating how fundamentally raced the idea of carrying papers was to white Americans, when white people traveled abroad, they consistently grumbled about having to show their papers. For colored travelers, however, the passport was an object of desire because it denoted U.S. citizenship. In the late 1840s and early 1850s, by pushing the federal government to address racial restrictions for acquiring the U.S. passport, colored travelers rendered the question of black citizenship a matter of national import almost a decade before the 1857 Dred Scott decision did the same.

The Protestant Episcopal Church, Black Nationalists, and Expansion of the West African Missionary Field, 1851–1871

1988 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. R. Oldfield
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
The United States ◽  
West African ◽  
Second Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Episcopal Church ◽  
American Missionaries ◽  
Protestant Denominations ◽  
The Church

One of the most boldly conceived assaults on benighted Africa during the nineteenth century was that undertaken by mainline Protestant denominations in the United States. With the brash confidence characteristic of the age, hundreds of American missionaries were dispatched from New York and Baltimore to convert the heathen tribes of Africa and wrest a continent from ruin. If the experience of the Protestant Episcopal church is at all typical, however, these efforts not infrequently aroused suspicion and open hostility. In fact, Episcopal penetration of Liberia in the second half of the second century was remarkable for a long and bitter contest with black nationalists who were intent on using the church as a vehicle for their own personal and racial ambitions.

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