 Preamble to the constitution | |
| Formation | 1858 |
|---|---|
| Founders | Henry Highland Garnet Martin Delany |
| Dissolved | 1869 |
| Purpose | Education and self-determination for the African diaspora |
| Headquarters | New York City |
Main organ | Freedmen's Torchlight People's Journal |
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 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 people of color 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.
After the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, the organization shifted its focus and became the only Black-led organization to educate freedmen in the Southern United States. At their height in the 1860s, the organization supported Freedmen's Schools with a collective student body of approximately 8,000 people throughout the East Coast and Gulf Coast, employing 129 teachers with an annual budget of $53,700 (equivalent to $1,229,193 in 2023). Though most of their supporters lived in New York and Pennsylvania, auxiliaries and affiliates were established in England, Ohio, Connecticut, Ontario, and Washington, DC. They published weekly and monthly newspapers with contributions from Black leaders. After 11 years of service, the organization ceased operations in 1869.