A View to Encourage Liberian Emigration:
Letters to Benjamin Coates
Magill Library, Sharpless Gallery & Foyer
February 2006

Among the remedies proposed in the nineteenth century to treat the scourge of slavery in America was the emigration of free blacks to Africa. Believing that African Americans could never receive justice in this country and might live more fulfilling lives away from racial discrimination, a number of abolitionists took up the controversial cause of the so-called colonization movement in order to give black Americans a fresh start.

Proponents of the movement came from many walks of life: young and old, black and white, male and female, Episcopalian, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Quaker. Their efforts led to the resettling of thousands of African Americans and the establishment of the country of Liberia on the west coast of Africa. These individuals' dreams and fears, successes and disappointments are recorded in a rare collection of over a hundred letters written to one man, Benjamin Coates, a Quaker philanthropist and social reformer living in Philadelphia.

Letters from the Benjamin Coates African Colonization Collection form the core of the exhibition and are featured in the newly published book, Back to Africa: Benjamin Coates and the Colonization Movement in America, 1848-1880, edited by Haverford professor and Curator of the Quaker Collection, Emma Lapsansky-Werner with noted Quaker author Margaret Hope Bacon.