An African Republic

9780807831670

0807831670

"In An African Republic, Marie Tyler-McGraw traces the parallel but seldom intersecting tracks of black and white Virginians' interests in African colonization, from revolutionary-era efforts at emancipation legislation to African American churches' concern for African missions. In Virginia, African colonization attracted aging revolutionaries, republican mothers and their daughters, bondpersons schooled and emancipated for Liberia, evangelical planters and merchants, urban free blacks, opportunistic politicians, Quakers, and gentlemen novelists. White colonizationists fashioned Liberia as a utopian vision of a black republic that reflected credit on the American republic. Black emigration provided a venue for communication and identity formation among Afro-Virginians, connecting them with a larger Atlantic world." "An African Republic follows the experiences of the emigrants from Virginia to Liberia, where some became the leadership class, consciously seeking to demonstrate black abilities, while others found greater hardship and early death. Tyler-McGraw examines the tensions between racial identities, domestic visions, and republican citizenship in Virginia and Liberia."--BOOK JACKET.