Back To Africa Quotes

I just think you people (African Americans) would be happier back in Africa where you came from.

Ultimately the white man should leave the United States and the black people should go back to Africa.

There are in the colony more than a dozen healthy persons who will receive no more provisions out of the public store until they earn them.

ßome would not be governed by white men, and some would not be governed by black men, and some would not be governed by mulattoes; but the truth was they did not want to be governed by anybody

This is a white man’s country and if the niggers don’t like it, put them on a rowboat and send them back to Africa to swing from coconut trees and eat one another.

I go back to Africa every year. I have a home there. You know, my grandfather lives back there in Cameroon.

I go back to Africa to make a path for commerce and Christianity.

If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do as to the existing institution [of slavery]. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia, to their own native land.

Nothing is more to be wished than that the United States would themselves undertake to make such an establishment on the coast of Africa ... But for this the national mind is not yet prepared. It may perhaps be doubted whether many of these people would voluntarily consent to such an exchange of situation, and very certain that few of those advanced to a certain age in habits of slavery, would be capable of self-government. This should not, however, discourage the experiment, nor the early trial of it; and the proposition should be made with all the prudent cautions and attentions requisite to reconcile it to the interests, the safety, and the prejudices of all parties

They are not felons, or common malefactors, but persons guilty of what the safety of society, under actual circumstances, obliges us to treat as a crime, but which their feelings may represent in a far different shape. They are such as will be a valuable acquisition to the settlement already existing there, and well calculated to coöperate in the plan of civilization

If this condition is the inevitable consequence of the contact of the two races, separation, voluntary or compulsory, at whatever cost, is the dictate of wisdom, morality, and national safety. If reconciliation upon the basis of justice and equal rights is impossible, then migration to Africa should be the policy of the future. To that fertile continent from whence they came they would return, not as aliens and strangers, but to the manner born. To their savage kindred who still swarm in its solitudes they would bring the alphabet, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bible. Emancipated from the traditions of bondage, from the habit of obedience and imitation, from the knowledge of its vices, which is the only instruction of a strong race to a weaker, the African might develop along his axis of growth and Ethiopia stretch out her hand to God.

the deportation or extermination of the African race from among us.

I have no desire to take all black people back to Africa; there are blacks who are no good here and will likewise be no good there.

colonizing free colored persons, with their own consent, at any place or places without the United States.

I confess that I see no remedy but by colonizing the free blacks, either in Africa or the West Indies, or both. This, it appears to me, is all Congress can do.... But this bare removal of the free blacks would be a blessing to them and would relieve the slave and free states from a wretched population, that must ever be kept in a state of degradation by the prejudice of color and race, whether they reside in the slave or free states. There can be no well grounded hope for the improvement of either their moral or social condition, until they are removed from a humiliating sense of inferiority in the presence of a superior race

It turns out that every person alive today can trace his or her ancestry back to Africa. Everyone's DNA tells a story of a journey from an African homeland to wherever you live.

The presence of the black man in this country is a curse to both races. It keeps the white man lying, stealing, misrepresenting, and the black man abusing, vilifying, and cursing, and neither white nor black can be Christian. I pray God you will continue in the great work in which you are engaged, and move this country to help the negro to emigrate to the land of his ancestors.

We were stolen from our mother country and brought here. We have tilled the ground and made fortunes for thousands, and still they are not weary of our services. _But they who stay to till the ground must be slaves_. Is there not land enough in America, or 'corn enough in Egypt'? Why should they send us into a far country to die? See the thousands of foreigners emigrating to America every year: and if there be ground sufficient for them to cultivate, and bread for them to eat, why would they wish to send the ‘first tillers’ of the land away? Africans have made fortunes for thousands, who are yet unwilling to part with their services; but the free must be sent away, and those who remain must be slaves. I have no doubt that there are many good men who do not see as I do, and who are sending us to Liberia; but they have not duly considered the subject--they are not men of color. This land which we have watered with our tears and our blood is now our ‘mother country’, and we are well satisfied to stay where wisdom abounds and the gospel is free.

The American Colonization Society hereby grants to the colonies or settlements in Liberia, on the western coast of Africa, under its care, the following Constitution:

I beg to direct your attention to Africa …. I go back to Africa to try to make an open path for commerce and Christianity.

If any gentleman from the South shall propose a scheme to be carried on by this government upon a large scale, for the transportation of the colored people to any colony or any place in the world, I should be quite disposed to incur almost any degree of expense to accomplish that object.

I deem it best and, therefore, recommend a resolution memorializing the Congress of the United States to purchase territory, either domestic or foreign, and provide means to purchase the property of the negroes at reasonable prices, and to transport the negroes to the territory purchased by the United States. The United States to organize a government for them of the Negro race; to protect them from foreign invasion, to prevent white people from living among them in the territory; and to prevent negroes from migrating back to the United States.

Most of the ancestors that I can trace were born here in the United States of America. And then it goes back to slavery. And I'm sure my ancestors go all the way back to Africa, but I feel more of an affinity for America than I do for Africa. I'm a black man in America.

Liberia and the United States are bound together by history and values.

Most of the money I made has gone back to Africa or is going back to Africa.