The Price of Liberty: African Americans and the Making of Liberia / Edition 1

by Claude Andrew Clegg

Overview

In nineteenth-century America, the belief that blacks and whites could not live in social harmony and political equality in the same country led to a movement to relocate African Americans to Liberia, a West African colony established by the United States government and the American Colonization Society in 1822. In The Price of Liberty, Claude Clegg accounts for 2,030 North Carolina blacks who left the state and took up residence in Liberia between 1825 and 1893. By examining both the American and African sides of this experience, Clegg produces a textured account of an important chapter in the historical evolution of the Atlantic world.

For almost a century, Liberian emigration connected African Americans to the broader cultures, commerce, communication networks, and epidemiological patterns of the Afro-Atlantic region. But for many individuals, dreams of a Pan-African utopia in Liberia were tempered by complicated relationships with the Africans, whom they dispossessed of land. Liberia soon became a politically unstable mix of newcomers, indigenous peoples, and "recaptured" Africans from westbound slave ships. Ultimately, Clegg argues, in the process of forging the world's second black-ruled republic, the emigrants constructed a settler society marred by many of the same exclusionary, oppressive characteristics common to modern colonial regimes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807855164
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	04/26/2004
Edition description:	1
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	5.75(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.77(d)

About the Author

Claude A. Clegg III is associate professor of history at Indiana University at Bloomington. He is author of An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Origins
Chapter 2. Between Slavery and Freedom
Chapter 3. The First Wave
Chapter 4. Inventing Liberia
Chapter 5. The Price of Liberty
Chapter 6. Emigration Renaissance
Chapter 7. To Live and Die in Liberia
Chapter 8. The Last Wave
Epilogue: Everything Is Upside Down
Notes
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

A welcome addition to the literature on the colonization movement . . . the most comprehensive and scholarly study that has yet been undertaken on the subject. . . . Essential reading for everyone interested in the colonization movement of Liberian history.—American Historical Review



Clegg writes elegant prose based upon painstaking research.—Books & Culture



Conceptually and tangibly authoritative.—Journal of American History



Professor Clegg has written an elegant and exceedingly interesting narrative of nineteenth-century efforts to colonize African Americans in Liberia. . . . Combining remarkably thorough research with graceful prose, Clegg has produced the best study ever written about this complex resettlement venture. It is a brilliant and remarkable exploration of race relations in trans-Atlantic perspective.—Lawrence J. Friedman, author of Gregarious Saints: Self and Community in American Abolitionism



The Price of Liberty is outstanding scholarship that richly captures the meaning, the hopes, and the tragedy of the colonization movement both in the United States and Liberia.—David S. Cecelski, author of The Waterman's Song: Slavery and Freedom in Maritime North Carolina



The Price of Liberty. . . . is an impressive and valuable work of scholarship.—Charlotte Observer



Clegg . . . reveal[s] how cherished myths about Africa and America ran aground on the shoals of political and cultural realities.—The Chronicle of Higher Education



An engaging and thoroughly researched account of how just over 2,000 North Carolinian blacks left for Africa between 1820 and 1893 and of the role they played in the establishment of the nascent state of Liberia. . . . Brilliant.—Diaspora



This book about the black North Carolinian's emigration to Liberia is an excellent inquiry into the socioeconomic life of a people, who until now, seem to have had no history.—International Journal of African Historical Studies



This is a brilliant and fascinating account that has filled in many gaps. . . . The narrative has a deep human quality, depicting the real predicament that the option of colonization posed for black people. This book will definitely illuminate the Liberia story and enliven an important period of American history. . . . There is a lot that Liberians can learn from this work that should provide a context for reconciliation and reconstruction.—Amos Sawyer, Interim President of Liberia (1990-1994) and author of The Emergence of Autocracy in Liberia



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Editorial Reviews

"A welcome addition to the literature on the colonization movement . . . the most comprehensive and scholarly study that has yet been undertaken on the subject. . . . Essential reading for everyone interested in the colonization movement of Liberian history."
-- "American Historical Review"

"An engaging and thoroughly researched account of how just over 2,000 North Carolinian blacks left for Africa between 1820 and 1893 and of the role they played in the establishment of the nascent state of Liberia. . . . Brilliant."
-- "Diaspora"

"The Price of Liberty" is outstanding scholarship that richly captures the meaning, the hopes, and the tragedy of the colonization movement both in the United States and Liberia. (David S. Cecelski, author of "The Waterman's Song: Slavery and Freedom in Maritime North Carolina")

In the first book to examine closely both the American background and the post-migration lives of a substantial number of Liberian emigrants, Clegg focuses on the experiences of over 2,000 black North Carolinians who traded the racial crisis in North Carolina for a new set of challenges facing them in Liberia.

This is a brilliant and fascinating account that has filled in many gaps. . . . The narrative has a deep human quality, depicting the real predicament that the option of colonization posed for black people. This book will definitely illuminate the Liberia story and enliven an important period of American history. . . . There is a lot that Liberians can learn from this work that should provide a context for reconciliation and reconstruction. (Amos Sawyer, Interim President of Liberia (1990-1994) and author of "The Emergence of Autocracy in Liberia")

From the Publisher