Bishop Henry McNeal Turner Advocates African Emigration 1890s

Bishop Henry McNeal Turner of the AME Church, despairing of justice in America after the collapse of Reconstruction, mounted a sustained campaign in the 1890s for Black emigration to Africa. He declared the American flag 'a dirty and contemptible rag' after the Civil Rights Cases ruling and organized two emigration expeditions to Liberia. Though few Black Americans emigrated, Turner's advocacy articulated a radical rejection of American racial hierarchy decades before Marcus Garvey.