July 26, 1847: Liberia officially founded
By Amy Cox
CNN
Friday, July 23, 2004 Posted: 4:31 PM EDT (2031 GMT)
(CNN) -- Searching for a land of freedom and opportunity, thousands of former slaves left the United States in the 19th century and sailed across the Atlantic to a continent their ancestors had unwillingly left.
Over the decades, freed blacks settled on the west coast of Africa in what is today Liberia. They established a nation on July 26, 1847, and also a relationship with Africans that continues to influence regional politics.
A colony for blacks outside the United States had been proposed several times, beginning in the 1700s, but it was the American Colonization Society's formation in 1817 that provided the impetus to make it a reality.
"[Colonization] was supposed to be sort of a remedy for slavery and racial inequality in the country," said Claude Clegg, author of "The Price of Liberty: African Americans and the Making of Liberia." "Colonization was believed to be a middle ground -- you rid the nation of slavery but also rid the country of African Americans and the whole issue of race altogether."
The Colonization Society attracted a mixed bag of supporters, Clegg said. Anti-slavery Quakers believed blacks would only find true freedom away from the United States; many slaveholders did not want free blacks in the country; and some freed blacks who wished to live in their ancestral homeland supported the group.
Still, many other freed slaves and abolitionists opposed the idea of colonization, believing that those wishing to go to Africa should stay and fight for freedom in the United States.
"Many blacks said: 'We were born here and we have every right to be here as much as any group' and criticized those who wanted to leave," explained Wynfred Russell, who was born in Liberia and teaches classes on African-American and African studies at the University of Minnesota.
Five years after its formation, the American Colonization Society launched its first ship to Liberia, founding a settlement named Monrovia, after U.S. President James Monroe. Over the decades, the number of blacks sailing to Liberia steadily increased. Settlers built schools, churches and roads and formed a government modeled on the United States.
By the 1840s, many European countries had established colonies surrounding Liberia and were pressuring the colony, the American Colonization Society and even the United States to clarify Liberia's role and identity: Could it broker treaties and trade agreements? Could it levy taxes? And could England or France annex the area if it was not claimed by any other country?
In response, Joseph Jenkins Roberts, who had immigrated to Liberia in 1829, publicly declared the colony an independent republic on July 26, 1847, and was elected president the next year. The declaration created the first black-ruled republic in Africa.
But tensions between the settlers and the indigenous people grew within the new nation.
