Back to Africa

Movement led by Jamaican political thinker Marcus Garvey that preached that black Americans should move to Africa, their ancestral homeland. Although few US blacks actually went to Africa, the movement inspired Rastafarianism and the Black Power movement.

As an alternative to assimilation, Garvey aimed to help tens of thousands of US blacks move to Liberia, a West African country which had been established in the early 19th century for freed slaves from the southern USA. To this end he established the Black Star Line, a steamship company, to help transport blacks to Africa. The movement declined, however, after Garvey was arrested for mail fraud relating to the operation of this company in 1925.