“the United States was an outlier: It freed people after the Civil War”
I know hindsight is 2020 but after the Civil War they should have sent every freed slave that wanted to go back to Africa back.
If slave importation had stopped in 1808, not many slaves in 1865 could go “back” to Africa, a place they had never been. Nevertheless, some did go to Liberia.
By the 1850s, there were few slaves who were first generation.
Remember that the British started actively stopping slave ships in the early 1800s.
The USA did try that - in 1822, the American Colonization Society began sending free people of color to the Pepper Coast voluntarily to establish a colony.
I think if the USA offered to send people to Africa, they would have had a single-digit participation level. By that time, the black people were nativized, second or later generation Americans.
Look up Liberia and Monrovia. Interesting stories.
I was there in the mid 70s and then again 20 years later. The place had deteriorated beyond belief.
Freed slaves had the option of going back to Africa, as the US had established and recognized the nation of Liberia on the African coast. Some went, and basically set up their own colony at the expense of the indigenous people.
The freed slaves that went to Liberia became the most ruthless slave owners that 0lace had ever seen. They are still fighting about it now.
“after the Civil War they should have sent every freed slave that wanted to go back to Africa back”
There were great-great-great grandchildren of slaves brought to British North America in the 1600s living in 1865, with no meaningful connection to any African kingdom or population group.
Now it’s 170 years after that.
If you want to have a conversation about separation of ADOS, it’s going to happen inside the boundaries of the United States or it isn’t going to happen at all.
Their homes are not in Africa. Most of them have American lineage going back longer than most European-descended people living in America have.
I mean, the conversation started by NOI in the 1950s is going to resurface, by force of circumstance if for no other reason. Elijah Muhammad, if I recall correctly, asked for five states.
Which ones are you willing to give up?
By that time almost all slaves had been born here and didn’t have any more connection to Africa than you do. Since families were often broken apart upon the sale of their owners’ estates and children or parents split apart and sold there wasn’t much opportunity to pass on family histories or past national, or even tribal identity.
They probably didn’t even know which African country their ancestors came from. A few did, and a few were interested in at least founding the new American colony of Liberia, but most slaves were as Americanized as the whites. Some so mixed blooded they even looked white.