Search for a Place: Black Separatism and Africa, 1860

Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1969. First Edition thus (as a single work). Small quarto in illus pale yellow jacket; and abstractly illus cloth boards; 250 pages: map; 22 cm. Maps to endpapers. Fine in near fine lightly soiled, price-clipped jacket now in archival mylar. Hardcover.

A crisp copy in a crisp jacket. ¶ Delany (1812–1885) was a pioneering African American intellectual, physician, and military officer, widely regarded as an early proponent of Black nationalism. He trained in medicine and was one of the first Black students admitted to Harvard Medical School. Delany’s work as an abolitionist and editor of The North Star alongside Frederick Douglass established him as a leading voice against slavery. He advocated for African Americans to establish an independent Black nation, even exploring emigration to Africa. During the Civil War, he became the first African American field officer in the U.S. Army, attaining the rank of Major. His 1859 novel Blake; or The Huts of America is considered an early work of African American speculative fiction. ¶ "Robert Campbell (1829 – 1884) was a Jamaican-born emigrant from the United States to Nigeria who wrote books and published a newspaper. Initially apprenticed to a printer he trained as a teacher in Spanish Town. Finding his salary insufficient in the economic turmoil of post-abolition Jamaica he emigrated to Nicaragua and Panama before settling in New York City in 1853. He found work as a printer before being employed as a science teacher and then assistant principal at the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.In 1858 Campbell joined Martin R. Delany on the Niger Valley Exploring Party to look for a suitable site for the settlement of black Americans in West Africa. A site at Abeokuta (in modern-day Nigeria) was selected and the expedition returned to the United States. Campbell returned to Africa in 1862, but found that, due to the American Civil War as well as opposition from the leaders of the British Colony of Lagos and disputes between the Egba people and the British, his settlement plans had been rendered untenable. Campbell instead settled in Lagos, establishing the Anglo-African newspaper. This was opposed by the British governor, Henry Stanhope Freeman, who thought it would lead to ill feeling between different factions in the colony. The newspaper ceased in 1865 and Campbell afterwards worked to develop the colony commercially." Wikipedia