Colonization Apart From Garrison: Widening the Lens on America's Black Resettlement Movement

Abstract

Among the least known stories of America’s early historical narrative, African colonization was the United States’ large and lengthy attempt to resettle free blacks outside American territory during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Despite the size and duration of the movement, African colonization is largely absent from a modern-day retelling of America’s founding and formative years. Where the historical details of this movement fall short, William Lloyd Garrison can be counted on for clarification by denouncing colonization as the “enemy of abolition” of slavery. Garrison provides an historical lens through which to view black resettlement. While this lens helps to clarify colonization, and gives shape to this rather elusive part of American history, to accept explicitly Garrison’s reading of colonization is to miss the distinct nature of the movement. When viewed apart from Garrison’s theory, the African colonization movement occupies a distinct and important place in American history and speaks to the deep complexity that surrounded the country’s early debates over slavery.