African Civilization Society

The African Civilization Society (ACS) was an American Black nationalist organization founded by Henry Highland Garnet and Martin Delany in New York City to serve African Americans. Founded in 1858 in response to the 1857 US Supreme Court decision Dred Scott v. Sandford and a series of national events in the 1850s which negatively impacted African Americans, its mission was to exercise African-American self-determination by establishing a colony of Free Black people in Yorubaland. Additionally, the organization intended the colony to Westernize Africa, combat the Atlantic slave trade, and create a cotton and molasses production economy underwritten by free labor to undermine slavery in the United States and the Caribbean. However, the majority of African Americans remained opposed to emigration programs like theirs.