num_pages: 352
description: The gripping story of two hundred freed Mississippi slaves who sailed to Liberia to build a new colonyÂ—where the colonistsÂ' repression of the native tribes would beget a tragic cycle of violence When a wealthy Mississippi cotton planter named Isaac Ross died in 1836, his will decreed that his plantation, Prospect Hill, should be liquidated and the proceeds from the sale be used to pay for his slavesÂ' passage to the newly established colony of Liberia in western Africa. RossÂ's heirs contested the will for more than a decade in the state courts and legislatureÂ—prompting a deadly revolt in which a group of slaves burned RossÂ's mansion to the groundÂ—but the will was ultimately upheld. The slaves then emigrated to their new home, where they battled the local tribes and built vast plantations with Greek RevivalÂ–style mansions in a region the Americo- Africans renamed Â“Mississippi in Africa.Â” The seeds of resentment sown over a century of cultural conflict between the colonists and tribal peoples exploded in the late twentieth century, begetting a civil war that rages in Liberia to this day. Tracking down Prospect HillÂ's living descendants, deciphering a history ruled by rumor, and delivering the complete chronicle in riveting prose, journalist Alan Huffman has rescued a lost chapter of American history whose aftermath is far from over.
language: English
title: Mississippi in Africa
titlecomplete: Mississippi in Africa
genres: History, American History, African American, Africa, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 188
places: Liberia
publisher: Gotham