Sunday, January 9, 2011: 9:10 AM
Grand Ballroom Salon A (Marriott Boston Copley Place)
This paper focuses on the relationship between Christianity, colonization, and gender conventions among manumitted slaves and freeborn blacks who chose to relocate to Liberia during the 19th century. This paper acknowledges the implicit efforts on the part of organizations such as the American Colonization Society to promote African American migration in order to “civilize,” “colonize,” and “proselytize” among Africans on the continent, but it is most focused on the lives of individuals who migrated under the philosophical umbrellas of these organizations. The intersection of the sacred (church sponsored relocation schemes) and the secular (Unites States sponsored colonial endeavors) produced a range of gendered assumptions about and among colonists. For example, the right to exhert patriarchal claims to family and opportunities to experience the social status of “men” or “ladies” were themes used to promote colonization. They were also themes that appeared within private correspondences between settlers in Africa and their kin in America. In some cases adapting to a society where African American men and women could benefit from rights they were lacking in America resounded as triumphant progress. In others, relocation produced tragic consequences for settlers such as high mortality rates and financial devastation. By agreeing to participate in relocation schemes, African American men and women exploited opportunities for freedom and engaged in a symbolic reverse migration in order to visualize and attempt to actualize a Liberia full of possibilities. The goal of this paper is to explicate how African Americans understood their own transnational movement under the guise of Christianity, their roles as promoters of US colonial efforts in Africa, and their ability to ascribe to 19th century gendered conventions about masculinity and femininity once outside the borders of the United States.