Land Grabbed for Liberia: The Ongoing Source of Antagonism Between Freed American Blacks and Indigenous Tribal People Causing Market Distortion

In the early nineteenth century, freed American Blacks established their own country on the west coast of Africa. Many were members of organizations such as the American Colonization Society, the Young Men’s Colonization Society of Pennsylvania, the Mississippi State Colonization Society, and the Maryland State Colonization Society. They named their country Liberia, but liberation came at the expense of tribal communities, notably the Dei, Bassa, Kru, Grebo, and Gola people. Freed Blacks and Americo-Liberians also imposed domestic servitude on tribal people, even selling them into slavery to accumulate wealth. Stephen H. Gobewole explores how freed American Blacks misled tribal chiefs and why past land transactions were not legitimate. They were inconsistent with the local African tradition and land protocols. The author also examines how government officials in the United States and slaveholding aristocrats enacted legislation that funded the deportation of freed American Blacks and the consequences of their policies. Find out how tribal communities in what is now Liberia were decimated, how their way of life changed, and why many remain in poverty to this day with Land Grabbed for Liberia.