Against Wind and Tide

Against Wind and Tide tells the story of African American’s battle against the American Colonization Society (ACS), founded in 1816 with the intention to return free blacks to its colony Liberia. Although ACS members considered free black colonization in Africa a benevolent enterprise, most black leaders rejected the ACS, fearing that the organization sought forced removal. As Ousmane K. Power-Greene’s story shows, these African American anticolonizationists did not believe Liberia would ever be a true “black American homeland.”In this study of anticolonization agitation, Power-Greene draws on newspapers, meeting minutes, and letters to explore the concerted effort on the part of nineteenth century black activists, community leaders, and spokespersons to challenge the American Colonization Society’s attempt to make colonization of free blacks federal policy. The ACS insisted the plan embodied empowerment. The United States, they argued, would never accept free blacks as citizens, and the only solution to the status of free blacks was to create an autonomous nation that would fundamentally reject racism at its core. But the activists and reformers on the opposite side believed that the colonization movement was itself deeply racist and in fact one of the greatest obstacles for African Americans to gain citizenship in the United States.Power-Greene synthesizes debates about colonization and emigration, situating this complex and enduring issue into an ever broader conversation about nation building and identity formation in the Atlantic world.

Against Wind and Tide probes more deeply into the history of black opposition to the American Colonization Society's program of removal than any previous work. Power-Greene skillfully weaves together a number of important historical strands of the antebellum period that illuminate just how central the debate over Liberian colonization was in relationship to African American identity and presence in the United States. Significantly, he pays close attention to the place of Haiti as an alternative site for African American migration and identity formation, detailing how crucial the black republic was to any discussion of Afro-Atlantic destiny., Power-GreenesAgainst Wind and Tideis successful in engaging the historical literature on emigration and colonization and in revealing the schemes mounted by racist colonizationists and the black and white resistance to the movement., Well-written and cogently argued,Against Wind and Tideis a must-read for scholars interested in the African Colonization Movement., Against Wind and Tideis a fine contribution to the story of African colonization movements in early American history.

Ousmane K. Power-Greene is Assistant Professor of History at Clark University (MA).