ICE Case Studies
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Kimberly Kiko Jackson |
I. Case
Background
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1. Abstract
As early as the 1700’s Africans brought to the
This paper will focus on several key issues related to Africans born in the
Western hemisphere who later returned to
The British involvement in the creation of Sierra Leone can be called a disaster, but it has been referred to as an experiment and “a school for the civilization of negroes", (Smeathman, 2002:97). The British, simply, wanted to find an alternative to the expensive practice of transporting African slaves to the West Indies in order for their slave labor to produce the tropical agricultural products that Europeans desired. The experiments would run concurrently, one in the West Indies and one in the African colony of Sierra Leone, with the use of imported slave labor in the West Indies and free African labor in Sierra Leone; basically two different forms of slavery in two separate geographical locations that required the use of human beings minds and bodies.
The American Colonization Society was started in 1816 by 50 white, mostly Southern, slaveholders and sympathizers. Prominent clergymen and politicians, such as Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Judge Bushrod Washington (nephew of George Washington), Francis Scott Key (author of the Star Spangled Banner), Henry Clay (Speaker of the House of Representatives), General Andrew Jackson (later became president of the United States), were included as members and sympathizers in the American Colonization Society(Forbes, 2001:210). According to John David Smith, many white racists favored some sort of migration, colonization, deportation or repatriation program as a long term solution to "The Negro Problem" (Smith, 1993:xxv)
The rhetoric of some of the society’s members sometimes spelled out the objectives of the society, Henry Clay made the statement:
Can there be a nobler cause than that which, whilst it proposed to rid our country of a useless and pernicious, if not dangerous portion of its population [freedmen], contemplates the spreading of the arts of civilized life, and the possible redemption from ignorance and barbarism of a benighted quarter of the globe, (Clay in Forbes, 1990:218).
By asserting that colonization was solely for freedmen, the society made their fear of freedmen known according to Ella Forbes of Lincoln University. Forbes states that because white supporters of colonization had a rabid fear of freedmen, they promoted the emigration of the troublesome free African American population to Africa, (Forbes, 1990:218).
In 1822 the ACS transported eighty-eight free African-Americans to Liberia, within a decade the ACS had sent 1,420 African-Americans including some African slaves manumitted expressly for colonization. The ACS transported approximately 20,000 settlers (half of which died) as it promoted colonization through the 1890s. The ACS was largely unsuccessful in convincing large numbers of African-Americans to leave America.
Liberia
Fighting in
Marcus Garvey
Marcus Mosiah Garvey was born in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica in 1887; a descendant of the maroons, Jamaica's first Black freedom fighters, (Nicholas, 1996:12). In 1914 Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in Jamaica, the objective of the UNIA was to establish educational and industrial colleges for Jamaicans of African descent, similar to the Tuskegee Institute founded by Booker T. Washington in Alabama.
Garvey is most famous within the Rastafarian community for his role in the prophecying of the coronation of Emperor Haile Selassie, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, in Ethiopia in 1930 and for founding the Black Star Line in 1919, a shipping company founded for Pan-African commerce and to transport Africans back to Africa, repatriation. For these reasons Garvey is regarded as the first prophet of Rastafari. Garvey wrote in a message to the UNIA in 1923 while in a n Atlanta prison waiting to be deported back to Jamaica:
We have gradually won our way back into the confidence of the God of Africa, and He shall speak with the voice of thunder, that shall shake the pillars of a corrupt and unjust world, and one more restore Ethiopia to her ancient glory, (Garvey in Nicholas, 1996:15).
Ethiopia
Many Rastafarians, most being from Jamaica, started migrating to Ethiopia in
1955 when Haile Selassie gave
them 500 hectares of land on which to settle. In the beginning stages of this
repatriation project around 2,500 Rastafarians settled in what is now
Ghana
Today
Rita Marley, wife of reggae singer Robert (Bob) Nesta Marley, recently resettled in
1700s - present
Africa: Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana, Ethiopia
American Colonization Society, American and British governments, Rastafarians, Marcus Garvey, governments of Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana and Ethiopia
Table 1
Sierra Leone |
Liberia |
Ethiopia |
Ghana |
rapid population growth |
loss of biodiversity |
desertification |
recurrent drought in north |
civil war depleting natural resources |
pollution of coastal waters from oil residue and raw sewage |
water shortages in some areas |
water pollution, inadequate supplies of potable water |
slash-and-burn agriculture resulted in deforestation and soil exhaustion |
tropical rain forest deforestation and soil erosion |
deforestation, soil erosion and overgrazing |
deforestation and soil erosion |
The extent of the environmental problems cited in Table 1 suggest that within Sierra Leone the civil war and diamond mining are the causes of their environmental issues. Liberia's environmental conflict can be attributed to similar instnaces of diamond mining and civil war.
8. Act and Harm Sites:
USA, Britain and Africa
civil
medium
13. Level of Strategic Interest
multilateral
Ghana deforestation in Ghana
Eritrea and Ethiopia Ethiopia and Eritrea's civil war
Diamond-SL civil war and blood diamonds in Sierra Leone
Liberia Diamond civil war and blood diamonds in Liberia