American Colonization Society photograph collection

The American Colonization Society was founded in 1817 to support the emigration of free-born African Americans and emancipated slaves from the United States to Africa. Among the local branches founded at the same time was the Maryland State Colonization Society. The project had particular interest for Maryland as the American state with the largest number of free African Americans.

With financial assistance from local chapters, churches, and the legislatures of border states, the society paid for the transportation of freed slaves and free-born African Americans to a designated site in West Africa, and assisted with supporting them there. In 1821, a site was acquired for the settlement in the region of Cape Mesurado (Montserrado), soon to be called Monrovia, Liberia. Monrovia was named for United States President James Monroe, and Liberia was a derived from the Latin word for "free man". In 1822, Methodist minister Jehudi Ashmun became the director of the settlement. As a result of controversy among both pro- and anti-slavery factions in the United States coupled with funding difficulties, the society declined after 1840, but did assist in resettling around 6000 free blacks from America between 1821 and 1867. The organization was not dissolved until 1912.

In Maryland, the society's activities were subsidized at times by the State Legislature. Censuses of the free African American population helped the state to identify eligible emigrants. Reports of poor treatment of the new arrivals by local West Africans led to the founding of a separate colony in West Africa for Maryland's emigrants in the 1830s, and Maryland physician James Hall was enlisted to acquire twenty acres at Cape Palmas, Liberia. The new settlement, called Maryland in Liberia, was centered around the town of Harper, named for General Robert Goodloe Harper of the American Colonization Society.