Migration as Resistance? Liberia and the Back-to-Africa Heritage and Archaeology Research Project

In 1822, Black American settlers seeking respite from racialized persecution in the United States arrived at Providence Island, cementing the back-to-Africa movement and catalyzing the founding of Liberia in 1847. While the African continent's first independent Black republic represents a reversal of the "point of no return" and a re-entanglement of Africa and its diaspora, the more recent histories of sociopolitical inequities and civil war (1989–2003) illuminate the challenges of materializing early Pan-African freedom dreams.