The small number of freed slaves who did settle in Africa—some under duress—initially faced brutal conditions, due to diseases to which they no longer had biological resistance.

In the 20th century, the Jamaican political activist and black nationalist Marcus Garvey, members of the Rastafari movement, and other African Americans supported the concept, but few actually left the United States.

In the South, sometimes influenced by appeals from preachers—abolitionism in the United States had a strong religious component—some individuals freed their slaves or left instructions in their will, to free them upon the owner's death.

The slave owners who controlled the Southern states saw these free black people as a threat to the stability of the economy and society, and made no secret of their desire to be rid of them.

Blacks often viewed the project with skepticism, particularly among the middle-class, who feared that the Colonization movement was a ploy to deport freed African Americans to restrict their efforts against slavery.

Shortly after the foundation of the American Colonization Society, 3,000 free blacks gathered in a church in Philadelphia and issued forth a declaration stating that they "will never separate ourselves voluntarily from the slave population of the country.

[15] Following the Great Awakening, in which America was swept by a wave of religious fervor, many enslaved African Americans converted to Christianity.

By 1847, the American Colonization Society founded Liberia, a land to be settled by black people returning from the United States of America.

The back-to-Africa movement eventually began to decline but would see a revival again in 1877 at the end of the Reconstruction era, as many blacks in the South faced violence from groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.

[27] The continued experience of segregation, discrimination, and the belief that they would never achieve true equality attracted many blacks to a Pan-African emancipation in their motherland.

Florida Governor Napoleon Bonaparte Broward (1905–1909) called for blacks to be permanently moved to land the federal government would purchase, either foreign or domestic.

[29] The eventual disillusionment of those who migrated to the North and the frustrations of struggling to cope with urban life set the scene for the back-to-Africa movement of the 1920s, established by Marcus Garvey.

[30] Garvey contemporaneously served as a major inspiration for a number of 1920s activists and preachers, such as James E. Lewis, whose Los Angeles congregation help to finance the construction of a passenger ship.

[32] Garvey supported a proposal by Torrey George McCallum that passed the Mississippi State Senate in 1922, though it was widely rejected and ridiculed by the Black press.

Activists in the Peace Movement of Ethiopia organisation were committed to black emigration to West Africa in order to escape from the torrid social conditions which they were experiencing in the United States due to the Depression.

Mittie Maude Lena Gordon, the founder of the PME, was essential to this campaign as she acquired the support of Earnest Sevier Cox, a white nationalist from Richmond, Virginia.

She convinced him to support their cause by using her gender in order to appear submissive and thus appeal to Cox's masculinity, as well as by playing on their mutual goal of racial separatism.

[35] His support soon began to diminish so Gordon looked elsewhere, once again finding an unlikely ally on the opposite side of the moral compass in Senator Theodore G. Bilbo.

He proposed an amendment to the House Joint Resolution 679—a work relief bill—in 1938, that would have "repatriated" African American volunteers to Liberia, providing them with financial assistance.

The bill suggested that the United States should purchase 400,000 square miles of African land from England and France, it should credit them as war debts, and it should provide financial assistance to black Americans in order to encourage them to relocate to Africa.

[37] Outside the black nationalist movement, the bill did not garner much support, with leading civil rights groups such as the NAACP refusing to endorse it and the national press lambasting it.

Other African Americans did not support emigration to Liberia due to charges of slavery and political corruption which were filed against its government by the League of Nations.

George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party, viewed black people as a "primitive, lethargic race who desired only simple pleasures and a life of irresponsibility."

[40] In January 1962, Rockwell wrote to his followers that Elijah Muhammad "has gathered millions of the dirty, immoral, drunken, filthy-mouthed, lazy and repulsive people sneeringly called 'niggers' and inspired them to the point where they are clean, sober, honest, hard working, dignified, dedicated and admirable human beings in spite of their color...Muhammad knows that mixing is a Jewish fraud and leads only to aggravation of the problems that it is supposed to solve...I have talked to the Muslim leaders and am certain that a workable plan for separation of the races could be effected to the satisfaction of all concerned—except the communist-Jew agitators.

Rockwell referred to Elijah Muhammad as "The Black People's Hitler" [failed verification] and donated $20 (~$204.00 in 2023) to the Nation of Islam at their "Freedom Rally" event on June 25, 1961, at Uline Arena in Washington, where he and 10–20 of his "stormtroopers" attended a speech given by Malcolm X.

[54]: 5  With an elected black government and the offer of free land to African-American settlers, Liberia became the most common destination of emigrating African Americans during the 19th century.

[54]: 2 [55] Newly arriving African Americans to Liberia experienced many challenges, including broken family ties, very high mortality rates from disease, and a difficult adjustment period.

Some 7,000 enslaved people were freed by their masters, so at that point those free African Americans left the U.S. to escape racism and have more opportunities (mainly because they had lost all hope of achievement).

They viewed Liberia as a destination for black families who left the United States in search of a better way of life, returning to their ancestral homeland of Africa.

It would take Americo-Liberians a century and more to become truly accepted as one of Liberia's ethnic groups.... All of which certainly contributed to most Black Americans rejecting the Back-to-Africa option and opting instead for seeking equal rights in America.