PC: An African-American state?

With a P.O.D. no earlier than 1789, is it possible to create a political entity in North America which acts as a "homeland" for the African-American nation?

This could range from a fully sovereign country, to a U.S. state, to some sort of an autonomous protectorate of the United States. Its creation could come about via dystopian methods (e.g. a massive, forced relocation of ex-slaves) or something more well-intentioned (e.g. a voluntary project to create a North American version of Liberia)
 
Washington dies in 1789, and the United States splinters non-amicably into a northern and a southern nation, the former of which eventually abolishes slavery. In the mid-to-late 19th century,there's a dispute about borders in the West, which turns into a war that the North, now firmly antislavery, wins. Shorn of the west and upper south, the remnant is now primed for a black revolution. The north tolerates this, and does population exchanges to move its black population south and the whites north.
 

Jasen777

Donor
If reconstruction is enforced better, Mississippi and South Carolina (maybe Louisiana), are majority African American and perhaps they'll see white flight if democracy is upheld.
 
I have to admit that I'm not completely sure what the OP is requesting.

If you want a majority African-American state, both South Carolina and Mississippi had African-American majorities until at least 1861

If you want some sort of country of American ex-slaves, there were numerous projects to do exactly that in the nineteenth century, with Liberia being the closest attempt to fulfill them. They ran into various problems, some of which should have bene obvious. There were also serious proposals to turn what became the Dominican Republic into such a country, and that is in North America.

If you want a Soviet style republic within the US for just African Americans, you have to get wackier, like find a way to get the US a communist government. If you can get Stalin somehow in charge of drawing up internal US boundaries that would help, since he was in charge to making these arrangements in the Soviet Union. Doing this before the Great Migration north would help, though I suppose if you can get Stalin in charge that part could be fixed as well.

Somewhat less wacky but there are possibilities with getting the radicals in charge during the American Civil War (of the North) and having the northern armies fight for much more explicitly revolutionary goals -no "restoring the Union"justifications- and somehow still win. Then they hold a new constitutional convention after the war. You can use this POD to get any experiment in American government you want to try in, not just this one. Create a state stretching from New Bern to Vicksburg across the Black Belt (or two)? Why not, assuming you are still doing states n this timeline.
 
I have to admit that I'm not completely sure what the OP is requesting.

If I had to sum it up, I'm aiming for some sort of political entity in North America in which African-Americans are the majority of the population, but with the caveat that they need to hold a significant degree, if not all of the economic/political power (i.e. no situations like the OTL states where a majority black underclass is ruled by a white minority*). Such an entity would have to be the result of an attempt to create an African-American homeland, which could range from a racist government going "We're giving you people your own corner of the world, now go away!" to a program by Black leaders/settlers to create one themselves.

*The exception to this would be a predominantly black government answering to the U.S. Federal Government in some capacity
 
If the POD is post ARW then it would most likely have to be done Post-Civil War. The Great Migration from the South becoming more government sponsored, immediately after the Civil War and leading to Black states in the West. Maybe in the Dakotas, Wyoming and Montana leading to the creation of the "New African Great Plains" or something along those lines.

Of course relations with pre-existing Native inhabitants and White settlers will be trouble.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
If reconstruction is enforced better, Mississippi and South Carolina (maybe Louisiana), are majority African American and perhaps they'll see white flight if democracy is upheld.
They could also see Black flight from nearby Jim Crow U.S. states.
 
At least 3 southern states were already there or positioned to be majority African American before the 1st black migration north.

Of course they wouldn't have had any political power for some time but perhaps they'd eventually get political power like Washington D.C and its black mayors.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
How does the U.S. get Haiti, though?

At least 3 southern states were already there or positioned to be majority African American before the 1st black migration north.

Of course they wouldn't have had any political power for some time but perhaps they'd eventually get political power like Washington D.C and its black mayors.
You'd have to make Blacks and their allies retain power in at least one of these states and avoid the Great Migration afterwards, though.
 
The Free States: Black Migration to the Great Plains from 1864-1889

What would be colloquially called the "Free States" consists of the US states of Dakota, Lincoln, and Montana. Though to a lesser extent Nebraska (the push for a West Nebraska has so far been unable to get enough votes ins the state legislature) , Idaho, and Colorado could be included by approximation and the sizeable African-American minorities each state received during the "Great Migration of the 1860s-1880s.

The legacy of the Great Migration came to be during the worst times of the US Civil War, as the question of the status of millions of slaves would be fought for. The chief arbitrator of the Great Migration would be President Lincoln himself, as part of signing the US Homestead Act in 1862 but again adding the "Free Soil" Amendment in 1864 which included all African-Americans no matter their status could apply for land. Importantly to this was the aid of Frederick Douglass and Eustace Williams who laid out the foundation for the Office of Resettlement, while Douglass would put to work his great skill of oratory and organization in the halls of Washington it was Williams who pushed into the territories of the Great Plains and claiming sites for the first "Freedomvilles" that would be settlements of Free Blacks.

Williams initially rebuffed from Nebraska and Colorado territory went North and claimed several locations in the Dakota, Montana and Wyoming territories from 1864-1867, his original writ under Lincoln being accepted by his successor, President Grant. Even before his official return to Washington D.C. Black settlers were streaming westward to sites in the Dakota and Wyoming territories. By 1870 it is estimated some 200,000 Blacks settled in the Great Plains territories, by 1875 this number had increased to over one million. Common factors during this time for why the African Americans left the South are generally laid at discrimination faced by resurgent Confederates in the Reconstruction period, but also a economic pull as gold rushes drew settlers.

The Black settlers of course were not the only inhabitants, facing conflict in particular with the Native tribes of the Dakotas and Wyoming territories. As well as White settlers, some European but in particular Southern settlers who moved into Nebraska, Colorado and Montana and tried to enact Jim Crow laws that ultimately failed in Montana.

Dakota was the first to be admitted to the US as a state, in 1876 alongside Colorado. It would take another decade but eventually in 1889 the states of Montana and Lincoln would both be admitted into the Union with Black majorities and having no Jim Crow laws. Idaho was also admitted the same year but while not having a Black majority it certainly did not include any Jim Crow laws that disenfranchised the Black minority. Since their acceptance as states Dakota, Montana and Lilcoln would consistently elect to Congress Black senators and congressmen who would fight for equal Civil Rights for all people of color remaining in the South and other states of the Union.
 
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