This Our Dark Country: The American Settlers of Liberia

by Catherine Reef

In the early 19th century, the American Colonization Society was formed with the sole intent of creating a colony for free blacks and former slaves. Both blacks and whites took passionate stands either for or against this proposal. Despite the controversy, the first group of settlers landed on the west coast of Africa in 1822. They faced numerous problems arising from the unfamiliar climate, hostile encounters with the indigenous people, and the failure of other nations to recognize their independence, but they managed to build a nation, naming it Liberia, for liberty. Today, partly because of these difficult beginnings, Liberia is a country plagued by unrest.

In this accessible and well-written book, award-winning author Catherine Reef presents a significant but as of yet relatively unexplored chapter in African American history. Her account is filled with excerpts from diaries and letters of the settlers and richly illustrated with period photographs and prints, many of which have never been published before. Photo gallery, endnotes, bibliography, index.

Genres: Africa, History, Nonfiction, Liberia, Middle Grade

144 pages, Hardcover

First published November 25, 2002

About the author

Catherine Reef is the author of more than 35 nonfiction books for young people. Her books for Clarion include the highly acclaimed JOHN STEINBECK and SIGMUND FREUD, which was the recipient of the 2002 Sydney Taylor Award, presented by the Association of Jewish Libraries. She lives in College Park, Maryland.

Reviews

[Lucy Mitchell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book Review "This Our Dark Country" By Catherine Reef

Slaves owning slaves? This phenomenon took place in Liberia in 1821. Published in 2002 by Catherine Reef, This Our Dark Country is an educational, nonfiction book about the African American settlers of Liberia. This Our Dark Country is a single book. It educates readers about slavery, the debate of shipping liberated slaves off to faraway colonies, and the history of Liberia.

The plot of This Our Dark Country is about the settlement of Liberia, which was a colony founded by the American Colonization Society at a time in American history when there was extreme fear that the slaves were going to revolt. The book contains information about the plans, travel, complications, and settlement of Liberia. It also goes into detail about the American Colonization Society founding Liberia and what people of power thought of what to do with slaves and liberated slaves, in general.

The book starts by describing the first-person narrative of a young Matilda Shipwith. She describes her family, who was on the ship, and what it was like first seeing the land of Liberia after a long ship ride. Then the book stops with her perspective and starts discussing information on Africa and its native tribes. Throughout the entirety of the book, much information is given about Liberia; the people, government, diseases there, and the reasons why white people wanted to create and run a whole new, separated continent for liberated slaves away from the main American land. The book ends with an epilogue about Liberia from the 1900s-2000s with pictures of Liberia and the people who were a part of it.

This non-fiction book is informational and teaches the reader about a topic that many have not heard of and schools rarely teach. The story of Liberia being created at a new slave settlement fascinated me. I had never heard of Liberia before reading this book. I felt that the book was well-written because I learned a lot from it. When introducing the Americo-Liberian settlers, the book would give a backstory of them, their family, what they did for work, and what led them to become a part of Liberia's history. This made the book very interesting. In addition, this book contained a lot of hand-drawn illustrations and photographs that helped further the information.

My only real complaint about this book was that I wish that more of the story about the Shipwith family would have been included. The Shipwiths were the family introduced at the beginning of the book. There was never a conclusion to their story, making them just seem somewhat random. Having the book start with them mislead me into thinking this book was a story about that family.

I would recommend this book to anyone from the age of fifteen years and older. This book has a lot of information, which would make it difficult for younger people to stay interested. In addition, it deals with the difficult topic of slavery. I rate this book three out of five stars because I feel it was a good, well-written book on Liberia, its founders, and settlers. While it was an interesting topic, it was hard to read at times just because it contained so much information about a topic I wasn’t familiar with.

[Charlotte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good introduction (the book is aimed at middle-schoolers) to a subject I knew very little about. Liberia is one of those topics that warrants a brief mention in US History class in high school but then you never really hear about it again. The book does a nice job of explaining how the colony and then country came to be and how ambivalent nearly everyone felt about it! The whole 200-year history of the place leaves the impression that it just sort of failed to properly launch; the book would have benefited from more explanation as to **why**, exactly. Four stars for the fascinating photos and three stars for the content.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recently I learned from a podcast that Liberia was a country created by white people for black Americans who wanted to leave the US after being released from slavery. I had never heard about that before and was eager to learn more. But not so eager that I was willing to read a 500-page tome about it. This was the perfect book to give me a more full picture of the history of Liberia and its first settlers. It was published in 2002, so I may do some additional research to learn about more recent events.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

I choose to read Catherine Reef because she writes clearly and honestly for even the youngest readers. She doesn’t assume you know and explains without being patronizing. This book is intense and so very, very sad. It contains so much that I had never been taught and seems to purposely be excluded in US History. It needs to be read and shared by YA and Adults...and discussed.

[Gregg Cosgrove · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't realize that it was a 'juvenile' book when I picked it up at the library. That said, it is a nice even-handed approach to the history and current situation in Liberia. There are a lot of photographs and a nice design.

[Matt Coyne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fine introduction to something very few Americans know about.

[Salsabrarian]

White US government officials came up with the idea of colonizing freed black slaves, and freed slaves were the ones who settled in what became Liberia, with the promise of freedom and equality for all. But interestingly this did not extend to the native Africans. Liberia never did achieve its promise: not enough people came over from the US and the inequality between Americo-Liberians and the natives bred resentment and violence. Safeguarding the nation's independence also took precedence over building a thriving economy. Lincoln was all for this colonization idea!