| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.4

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to JAH online. About 254 words from this article are provided below; about 352 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the Organization of American Historians, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a member of the Organization of American Historians, you can:: • Join the OAH and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the Journal of American History.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two-hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the Journal of American History (86.1-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the Journal of American History.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Journey of Hope: The Back-to-Africa Movement in Arkansas in the Late 1800s. By Kenneth C. Barnes. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. xvi, 268 pp. Cloth, $55.00, ISBN 0-8078-2879-3. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 0-8078-5550-2.)

Most studies of the African diaspora in the Atlantic world have focused on either the movement of Africans to the Americas or the experiences and influence of African-descent peoples in the New World. Much less has been written about the "reverse" journey of the African Americans who traveled to West Africa, especially in the late nineteenth century, to settle in Sierra Leone and Liberia. That literature has been dominated by examinations of the establishment and development of Sierra Leone in the late eighteenth century and the early experiences of freed slaves there. Liberia has usually been viewed in comparison to Sierra Leone. In his well-researched and groundbreaking book, Kenneth C. Barnes illuminates the largely untold story of approximately six hundred African Americans from central Arkansas in the late 1880s who participated in the "back-to-Africa" movement, a misnamed migration as all the participants were born in America. Drawing on the extensive archival records of the American Colonization Society (among other institutions), government documents, periodicals, and interviews in Liberia, Barnes gives this complex and revealing story the scrutiny and attention it deserves. He makes an important contribution not only to the study of the movement but also to the history of African Americans in Arkansas, the state with the most emigrants to Liberia in the late 1800s.

. . .

There are about 352 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.