Rent Another America: The Story of Liberia and the Former Slaves Who Ruled It

Synopsis

The first popular history of the former American slaves who founded, ruled, and lost Africa's first republic

In 1820, a group of about eighty African Americans reversed the course of history and sailed back to Africa, to a place they would name after liberty itself. They went under the banner of the American Colonization Society, a white philanthropic organization with a dual agenda: to rid America of its blacks, and to convert Africans to Christianity. The settlers staked out a beachhead; their numbers grew as more boats arrived; and after breaking free from their white overseers, they founded Liberia—Africa's first black republic—in 1847.

James Ciment's Another America is the first full account of this dramatic experiment. With empathy and a sharp eye for human foibles, Ciment reveals that the Americo-Liberians struggled to live up to their high ideals. They wrote a stirring Declaration of Independence but re-created the social order of antebellum Dixie, with themselves as the master caste. Building plantations, holding elegant soirees, and exploiting and even helping enslave the native Liberians, the persecuted became the persecutors—until a lowly native sergeant murdered their president in 1980, ending 133 years of Americo rule.

The rich cast of characters in Another America rivals that of any novel. We encounter Marcus Garvey,who coaxed his followers toward Liberia in the1920s, and the rubber king Harvey Firestone, whobuilt his empire on the backs of native Liberians.Among the Americoes themselves, we meet the brilliantintellectual Edward Blyden, one of the firstblack nationalists; the Baltimore-born explorer BenjaminAnderson, seeking a legendary city of goldin the Liberian hinterland; and President WilliamTubman, a descendant of Georgia slaves, whose economicpolicies brought Cadillacs to the streets ofMonrovia, the Liberian capital. And then there arethe natives, men like Joseph Samson, who was adoptedby a prominent Americo family and later presidedover the execution of his foster father during the1980 coup.

In making Liberia, the Americoes transplantedthe virtues and vices of their country of birth. Theinspiring and troubled history they created is, to aremarkable degree, the mirror image of our own.

View descriptions at Amazon.com