A Study of the African-American Mosaic: A Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History and Culture

Essay by KNoorishadUniversity, Bachelor'sA+, October 2006

download word file, 2 pages 4.1

One of the many exhibits displayed at the Library of Congress is The African-American Mosaic: A Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History and Culture. The exhibit covers nearly 500 years of African-American history in the Western Hemisphere. It includes books, periodicals, prints, photographs, music, film, and recorded sound covering four substantive areas: (1) Colonization, (2) Abolition, (3) Migrations, and (4) the Works Projects Administration ("WPA"). The Library's purpose for presenting this exhibit was to spur interest in African-American history and to open avenues for academics to further research subject-matter relating the African American Mosaic to African-American history.

The beginning of the colonization movement was becoming apparent in the eighteenth century due to the diversity of proposed plans amongst the whites and the African-Americans. Some African-Americans believed in prospering in the United States as free citizens practicing their full legal rights. This conflicted the white man's view of using colonization to rid the United States of all African-Americans, at the same time, setting them free of racial discrimination.

As an alternative to these different courses of action, a group called the American Colonization Society ("ACS") was formed in 1817. Within thirty years they established an independent nation called Liberia in west Africa. By retaining the American manners, dress, architecture, and government style, a "pseudo America" was reconstructed in Liberia by the African-Americans. An American-like government was formed by having Joseph Jenkins Roberts as the first black ACS governor and later became the first president to lead the new nation. The African-Americans set forth great effort in order to create a well developed colony, however, harsh attacks by abolitionists, eventually decreased financial support, thus rendering Liberia a place more concerned with education and religion as opposed to emigration. In 1964, after the dissolution of...