X-Nico

5 unusual facts about American Colonization Society


Byron Sunderland

Sunderland served on the executive committee of the American Colonization Society.

Israel Pickens

In addition to politics, Pickens participated in the American Colonization Society and was interested in scientific research.

James McCune Smith

He gathered supporters to go to Albany and testify to the state legislature against proposed plans to support the American Colonization Society, which had supported sending free blacks to the colony of Liberia in Africa.

Ralph Randolph Gurley

Ralph Randolph Gurley (May 26, 1797 – July 30, 1872) was a clergyman, an advocate of the separation of the races and a major force in the American Colonization Society, which offered passage to their colony in west Africa (now Liberia), to free black Americans.

Rufus William Bailey

After serving as principal for seven years, he resigned to become the Virginia agent for the American Colonization Society.


Eli Ayers

Eli Ayers (May 9, 1778 – April 25, 1822) was a physician and the first colonial agent of the American Colonization Society in what would later become Liberia.

James Skivring Smith

After working with a white doctor of the American Colonization Society, Smith returned to the United States to study medicine at the University of Vermont College of Medicine.

Liberia; or, Mr. Peyton's Experiments

It is interesting to note that Liberia shares some parallels to the 1852 anti-Tom novel Frank Freeman's Barber Shop by Baynard Rush Hall, which also featured a slave being sent to Liberia by the American Colonization Society after leading a miserable life in the Northern United States.

Linconia

Linconia was the name of a proposed Central American colony suggested by United States Senator Samuel Pomeroy of Kansas in 1862, after U.S. President Abraham Lincoln asked the Senator and United States Secretary of the Interior Caleb Smith to work on a plan to resettle African Americans from the United States.

William Tubman

Mrs. Tubman sought the help of her friend and mentor, Henry Clay, who was president of the American Colonization Society, which sought to find suitable places for ex-slaves.


see also