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Full-Text Articles in African History
Whiteness In Africa: Americo-Liberians And The Transformative Geographies Of Race, Robert P. Murray
Whiteness In Africa: Americo-Liberians And The Transformative Geographies Of Race, Robert P. Murray
Theses and Dissertations--History
This dissertation examines the constructed racial identities of African American settlers in colonial Liberia as they traversed the Atlantic between the United States and West Africa during the first half of the nineteenth century. In one of the great testaments that race is a social construction, the West African neighbors and inhabitants of Liberia, who conceived of themselves as “black,” recognized the significant cultural differences between themselves and these newly-arrived Americans and racially categorized the newcomers as “white.” This project examines the ramifications for these African American settlers of becoming simultaneously white and black through their Atlantic mobility. This is …