November 22, 2007

During the early 1800s, the American Colonization Society promoted the settlement of freed slaves to Africa, resulting in the founding of Liberia. With the discrimination in the Jim Crow South by the late 1890s, a new Back-to-Africa movement emerged. During that time, approximately 650 Arkansas emigrants made the long journey. Among them were approximately a dozen black Arkansas missionaries, such as this Methodist missionary group that posed for this photo before making the trip to Liberia in 1898.