Saturday, January 8, 2011: 11:50 AM
Room 201 (Hynes Convention Center)
Jennifer Walton-Hanley
,
Western Kentucky University, Glasgow, KY
In 1892, the seventy-five year old American Colonization Society (ACS) tottered on the brink of dissolution. Since its inception, the ACS had struggled to fulfill its promises of redemption in Africa for the Americans that had been repatriated to Liberia under the guidance of the ACS. But, by the 1890s, the ACS simply did not have the financial means to continue to recruit, transport, and support transplanted black Americans on the distant continent. It was the president of the ACS, Henry Potter, who devised a plan to save the organization while remaining true to its principles. Potter’s plan was to discontinue actively populating Africa en masse with black American émigrés and, instead, to redeem Africa through moral intervention. In his mind, the future of the ACS lay in promoting “charitable, religious, and educational activities for the benefits of the inhabitants of Liberia.”[1] This shift in purpose, moreover, would become a permanent facet of the ACS’s schema until it disbanded in 1964. This paper, then, explores the ACS’s activities in its “benevolent” phase. Unwilling to completely abandon the idea of colonization but unable to financially fulfill their obligations, members of the ACS saved their organization by sponsoring various missionary and educational endeavors directed towards Liberia. By shifting their focus, members of the ACS were able to spread American values and mores to the Dark Continent, absolve themselves of any responsibility for black Americans at home, and continue to promote colonization without any kind of financial obligation. In this manner, colonization became benevolent and the ACS was able to continue its operations for another seventy-two years.
