ABSTRACT
As an emigrationist during the 1850s, Alexander Crummell called for the voluntary emigration of free American blacks to another country outside of the US, recognizing that in America black people could expect little hope in their claims to become citizens. Certainly Crummell is not as well known as Frederick Douglass or Martin Delany, but his influence as a scholar, intellectual, and man of letters far supersedes the critical acclaim and attention he has so far garnered. As an emigrationist, by 1852 Delany had gradually evolved into thinking that black people should voluntarily migrate to Southern, Central America and the West Indies. The paramount power of slave power notwithstanding, Southern America, prior to the Civil War, was rife with numerous acts of violent resistance and attempted revolts by slaves. There were differences between slave and nonslave blacks, such as the legal status of free blacks was higher than that of slaves, relative to the white American power structure.
