Mexico, Black Emigration, and the African American Imagination

Although Mexico did not occupy as conspicuous a role in African American emigrationism as that of Liberia or Haiti, Mexico as a site for African American conceptions of an alternative home was a consistent theme. In spite of receiving a small number of black immigrants over the course of the 19^th century, Mexico loomed large in African American ideas of the future destiny, place, and hopes of African Americans at various moments in the antebellum and Jim Crow periods in the United States. This paper seeks to examine African American perceptions of Mexico, as well as some of the prominent persons and migration streams of Blacks to Mexico in order to contextualize Mexican migration within the larger discourse of black emigrationism. Prominent black abolitionists and leaders who called for emigration to Mexico, particularly Martin Robinson Delany, as well as individuals who migrated to Mexico, like Joseph Tinchant, William Ellis, and the father of Langston Hughes, will be used as specific examples of the appeal of Mexico to African Americans from the antebellum period to the early 20^th century. Through a combination of secondary sources and select primary source documents, this paper will demonstrate the importance of Mexico within the Black imagination and emigrationist movements, concluding with the diverse and flexible ways black emigrationist efforts contributed to US African American internationalism.

            Emigrationism in the context of this paper refers to various movements of African Americans to leave the US in the pursuit of racial equality, a black nationalist project, or dissatisfaction with the status quo in the US. Liberia and Haiti are usually the only examples discussed in great detail, and both states received thousands of immigrants from the US over the course of the 19^th century. Haiti, in the 1820s, received more than 4000 African Americans, the majority of whom presumably returned to the US.[1] Motivated by nascent black nationalist ideology, free blacks from northern cities came to Haiti with passage covered by the Haitian state and offers of land for farmers, sharecroppers, laborers, and artisans.[2] Subsequent waves of African Americans came in the 1850s and the eve of the Civil War, with those of Louisiana extraction often finding more success.[3] Haiti, as the first independent black state in the hemisphere, and the first to abolish slavery, predictably occupied the minds and hearts of African Americans, slave and free, throughout the 19th century. And, to some black nationalists who supported emigrationism, such as James Theodore Holly, Haiti was to become central to building a black nationality through Protestantism and Anglo-Saxon civilization, thereby regenerating Haiti.[4]  Liberia, on the other hand, was initially organized by the American Colonization Society, a group of whites who saw no future for free blacks in the US. Black proponents of emigration to Liberia also saw little future for free blacks in the US because of racial discrimination and slavery, and tied the Liberian colonization project as a civilizing mission to redeem Africa by establishing a black republic and converting the autochthonous population to Christianity.[5] Haiti and Liberia, the first two independent “black” states, in this context of black emigration, became the central poles. However, due to religion, economics, and the eventual emancipation of slaves, emigrationist projects took on different forms in the postbellum period. Jim Crow segregation and post-Reconstruction forms of racial discrimination transformed black emigrationism, including the forms it took in Mexico through colonization projects such as the 1896 attempt of Ellis in northern Mexico.

African Americans in Mexico Before 1865

The standard narratives of African American migration to Mexico begin with the abolition of slavery in 1829. Consequently, Mexico became free soil, offering freedom to fugitives from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama and beyond who crossed the border. Free soil was not new to fugitive slaves, who often sought freedom by crossing the border to Canada or parts of the Caribbean where slavery was already abolished.[6] According to Sarah E. Cornell, fugitive slaves in Mexico did not have legal rights of citizenship, but were able to carve out a contingent freedom dependent on justifications that they could provide for their presence and the goodwill of local authorities.[7] Naturally, the US consulate in Mexico refused to extend recognition of national citizenship to runaway slaves, who were left in a legal limbo and precluded from citizenship.[8] Therefore, fugitives petitioned for cartas, ensuring legality, some even converting to Catholicism and using godparentage links to increase their chances.[9] Nonetheless, by effectively turning Mexico into free soil for slaves in Texas or other parts of the South, Mexico helped hasten the US Civil War and emancipation by refusing to agree to any extradition treaty for the thousands of runaways in their territory.[10] Mexican authorities benefitted from this arrangement by using freed blacks to populate the frontier, block US expansion, and protect the borderlands from nomadic indigenous peoples.[11] Indeed, Rosalie Schwartz highlighted the example of land grant issued to Seminoles to populate the borderland near Coahuila. These Seminoles also included Black Seminoles.[12] Moreover, runaway slaves provided another source of labor, frequently as sharecroppers or workers on ranches in the north of Mexico.[13] This estimated population of 4000 fugitive slaves in the north of Mexico by the middle of the 1850s undoubtedly contributed to the labor demands of local agriculture.[14]

Although there are not many first-hand accounts of the experiences of fugitive slaves in Mexico, it appears that many escapees in Mexican territory also found some degree of social inclusion or opportunity. US abolitionist Benjamin Lundy, who had traveled to Haiti as well as Texas and Mexico in promotion of abolitionist agendas, used the example of a former slave working as a blacksmith to promote the idea of Mexico as a land with little to no racial prejudice. According to Lundy’s informant, Mexicans treated all people the same, regardless of color, leading Lundy to characterize Mexican government policy as one based on bringing together people of all colors.[15] Jane Cazneau, cited by Rosalie Schwartz, also mentioned the multiple opportunities for “’young men of mixed blood, who have been well-trained, perhaps, in the household of their masters, settle themselves advantageously, marry in the best families and carry their honors with high dignity.’"[16]

African Americans, particularly those of mixed racial origins, could marry into high-ranking families, perform a number of occupations, and achieve positions in society unavailable in the US South. Lundy similarly reported on the favorable treatment accorded to “mulattoes” from Louisiana. Nicholas Drouet, a “dark mulatto” officer in the Mexican army, for instance, received a grant of land for the purpose of colonization by “colored” settlers from Louisiana in Tamaulipas.[17] According to Lundy, Drouet received support from a Mexican general and support from other blacks.[18] It would seem that many free blacks and those living under slavery envisioned Mexico as not only a bastion of liberty from enslavement, but a site perceived as relatively lacking in the entrenched racial prejudices of the United States. Mexican state discourse of the nation as one built on racial inclusion likewise shaped state attempts to curry favor with US African Americans. General Santa Anna during the Mexican-American War, a period when many slaves fled across the border, circulated a notice to US troops, telling them that there is no distinction of races in Mexico and there is liberty, not slavery.[19] One can surmise from such instances that Mexican official responses to the question of slavery and racism positively contrasted Mexico to that of the US, connecting official discourse of race to the interests and imagination of African Americans, both enslaved and free.

In fact, African American support or relative acceptance of the official discourse of racial equality and a perceived lack of racial discrimination may have correlated with the writings of US black abolitionists and black nationalists who did not travel to Mexico. Frederick Douglass, who opposed the Mexican-American War, clearly linked US aggression to slavery and racial prejudice, thereby tying Mexico to African American anti-imperialist politics and abolitionist goals.[20] To Douglass, who did not favor black emigration, the war was nothing but “…a war against the free states—as a war against freedom, against the Negro, and against the interests of workingmen of this country—and as a means of extending that great evil and damning curse, negro slavery.”[21]

In addition, abolitionist, Civil War veteran, novelist, and medical doctor Martin R. Delany included Mexico within his vision of the future for African Americans. To Delany, the fate of blacks was in the south, in Mexico, Central America, the West Indies, and South America.[22] Delany believed Central and South America to be the “ultimate destination and future home of the colored race on this continent.”[23] Predating Ivan Van Sertima by over a century, Delany also claimed Africans had been present in Central America before 1492, thus tying the aboriginal population of the Americas to Africans by “consanguinity.”[24] Furthermore, because the indigenous population of the Americas was allegedly related to Africans, Delany argued blacks have even greater claims to the continent than Europeans and should make common cause with the Indian.[25] Moreover, the majority of the population of Mexico, Central America, and South America were “colored” and therefore “brethren” of US African Americans.[26] This common racial bond and shared history of oppression by Europeans was to unite African Americans with Latin Americans, who by this time (1852), had mostly abolished slavery and people of color purportedly enjoyed equality in social, civil, political and religious privileges with whites.[27] Delany’s tailoring of the fate of African American uplift in his black nationalist project was irrevocably linked to Latin America, and though Mexico was only a part, his 1852 essay utilized an expansive definition of “colored” people and a refashioning of the history of Central America that included Mesoamerica as central to a black emigrationist project.

While Delany later championed African American emigration to Liberia and West Africa, Mexico’s geography, resources, location, alleged consanguinity with Africans, and perceived racial equality made it an attractive site for black emigration and colonization projects. To Delany and other African American black nationalists, a broad definition of “colored peoples” could encompass Latin Americans and indigenous groups who were not necessarily “black,” strengthening the case for including Mexico as a significant site for African American emigrationism and the black imagination, not solely Liberia or Haiti. Besides, Delany’s emigrationist project was directed against the US, unlike US government black colonization schemes during the Civil War, which sought to use black colonization as a tool of national policy in the Yucatan and Central America, exploiting black colonization as a method for checking French, British, and Spanish intervention in the region.[28] Thus, black nationalist discourse’s expansive definition of “colored race” and reworking of history helped provide an ideological foundation which probably shaped some African American migrants in Mexico during the 19^th century. Foreshadowing future generations of African American critics of US Empire, examples such as Delany exemplified a black internationalist politics in which Mexico and Latin America were central.

The example of a free people of color family, the Tinchants, in Mexico before and after the US Civil War, serves as another example of the ways in which African American emigrationist and nationalist ideas intersected in Mexico. Cases like the Tinchants, who exhibited a mixture of the motives and interests of black immigrants in Mexico before and after emancipation in the US, point to the ways in way Mexico appealed to African Americans as an alternative to the US or Haiti. Rebecca Scott’s Freedom Papers alluded to the Tinchant brothers who lived in Veracruz and grew tobacco further inland during and after the US Civil War and Emperor Maximilian’s reign in Mexico. Maximilian, who endeavored to attract laborers and Confederates, also had support among some Francophone men of color from Louisiana.[29] Jules Tinchant, whose first home in Mexico was in Jicaltepec, with French settlers, attempted to lure fellow Creoles from Louisiana, especially his brother Joseph, to Veracruz, where he established his own retail tobacco, cigar, and dry goods business.[30] When his brother Joseph did move to Mexico, he and his wife Stephanie joined an agricultural colony recently founded by Louisiana migrants, where Creoles pursued tobacco cultivation after acquiring land near Papantla and other rural areas.[31] Intriguingly, Joseph Tinchant sympathized with Mexican opposition to French forces, and may have known Benito Juarez.[32] However, Joseph Tinchant left Mexico in 1875 after years of economic trouble, despite gaining Mexican citizenship. Yet he retained connections to his wife’s family, Creoles who remained in Mexico, cultivating tobacco.[33] Mexico was able to provide land, economic and social conditions, and policies aligned with the interest of Louisiana Creoles of color during the US Civil War, continuing a longer tradition in which African Americans could enjoy certain privileges unavailable in the US. Additionally, the Tinchant case appears to, like the future case of William Ellis, exploit the stereotype of “Latin” or Latin American peoples for self-identity and branding, as a sort of cultural Mexican-ness assisted Joseph Tinchant’s tobacco business after he established himself in Europe.[34]

African Americans in Mexico After 1865

After the US Civil, African American interesting in emigrationist schemes did not completely disappear, but no longer had the pressing impetus of racial slavery as a motive to leave. Official discourse in Mexico during the second half of the 19^th century also embraced notions of race that shaped immigration policy. Whites, particularly Italians and other “Latin” Europeans, were believed to be the best immigrants to improve the population pool, as exemplified by the failed Italian colony organized to cultivate terrenos baldíos.[35] Black immigrants, no matter where they came from, were perceived as contributing negatively to the racial makeup of the nation. Francisco Pimentel, for example, argued against black immigration because it would, he claimed, lead to an increase in vices, crime, and a zambo population that would be degenerate.[36] Elsewhere, blacks were described as a conductor of cancer in the US and Cuba, clearly establishing a bias against black immigration in Mexico.[37] In 1895, the Hotel Iturbide in Mexico City, possibly influenced by racial segregation in US cities, even prohibited the use of the kitchen to three African Americans, indicating the degree to which some institutions and enterprises adopted racially discriminatory attitudes and practices.[38] The solution, to those like Pimentel, who did not believe the indigenous population should be destroyed, favored European immigration to achieve progress, not black immigration.[39] During the Porfiriato, the state sought to entice European immigration through terrenos baldíos, which would promote export crops and increase revenues for the state. Unfortunately, European immigration never reached the rates of the immigration in the US or Argentina.[40] Thus, in the search for additional labor in agriculture, as well as foreign-owned enterprises and businesses, such as railway construction, thousands of blacks came to Mexico.[41]

Thousands of blacks from the US and the Caribbean came to Mexico, in spite of allegedly being corrupted, feminized, ugly and viceful.[42] Black laborers from Jamaica, for example, worked on the train line of San Luis de Potosi to Tampico in 1882.[43] According to historian Laura Muñoz Mata, black workers were often sought by English or American companies involved in railway construction, agriculture, and dockyards because they spoke English.[44] Mostly coming from Jamaica, these black immigrants came on contracts for a defined term and were expected to return to the Caribbean.[45] However, some black immigrants, including those from Jamaica or Belize, seem to have stayed in Mexico, as the case of Quintana Roo illustrates. By 1904, the majority of its 8000 inhabitants were from Belize and Jamaica.[46] These black workers were often paid more than their salaried Mexican counterparts, which may have fueled hostility from local populations against black migrants, who complained to British consuls of their poor treatment.[47] Black American laborers were similarly proposed for agricultural colonies for growing cotton, sugar, rice, and tobacco.[48] Economic considerations and labor interests led to an increase of black, Asian and other groups perceived as unfavorable in an age when Social Darwinism and racial ideology exerted a strong influence on the intellectuals of the Porfiriato. Thus, Mexican newspapers criticized black and Asian immigration.[49]

Unfortunately, little has been uncovered on the experiences of Jamaican and Afro-Caribbeans working in Mexico in the 1880s or 1890s, but a number of African American colonization projects or attempted plans shed light on black immigration in the period. One example, a colony in Tlahualilo, Durango, formed with African Americans, was founded in 1895 and led to an increase in the production of cotton and corn.[50] In 1888, the Mexican Land and Development Company, which claimed ownership of seven million acres of land in Tamaulipas, offered to sell shares to interested African Americans.[51] Arnold Shankman similarly describes interest among African Americans in colonization of Mexico in San Diego, California. James Fowler’s Colored Colonization Company of San Diego, established in 1893, claimed to have made arrangements to purchase land in Mexico for African American farmers, though by 1895, it appeared to have fallen apart.[52] Mexico was, at least for period in the 1890s, perceived as a land of opportunities for African-Americans in the black press, too.[53] On the other hand, African Americans and some of the black press also displayed critical or condescending attitudes, looking down on Catholicism or the “primitive” and backwards nature of Mexican agricultural methods and sanitation.[54] Consequently, in their view, African Americans could become agents of progress in Mexico, especially in agriculture and cotton production.[55] Therefore, African American emigration to Mexico would not only provide an escape from US racism, but also provide access to opportunities and aid in the progress of their new land, following older patterns of black emigrationist ideology as uplifting, redeeming, or civilizing in recipient nations.

Perhaps William Ellis best illustrates Mexico in the black imagination in the late 19^th century. Born a slave in Texas, Ellis learned Spanish and because of his ambiguous looks, was often able to pass as a Mexican, Cuban, or Latin American in the US, taking the name Guillermo Enrique Eliseo.[56] Ellis later met Porfirio Diaz in 1888, requesting a permit for 20,000 African Americans to come to Mexico.[57] By 1895, Ellis organized a colony of 816 persons, mostly from Alabama, in Tlahualilo, which, though short-lived because of an epidemic and poor housing, continued the earlier 19^th century tradition of viewing the country as an ideal setting for African Americans, lacking the race prejudice which characterized the US.[58] The African American colonists received higher pay than local farmers for growing cotton, but were not vaccinated and Ellis did not provide the promised comfortable lodgings.[59] Furthermore, Ellis’s exploitation of his vague racial features and knowledge of Spanish to craft an identity based on perceived “Latinness” facilitated his passing in the US, where he was accepted as a Mexican in New York. Like the Tinchants, who utilized their time in Mexico and connections to Latin America to further their own interests, Ellis took advantage of perceived “Latinness” to climb social ladders, although he retained ties with his relatives and other African Americans, showing a keen interest in promoting black emigration to Mexico. Lastly, in spite of the failure of the 1890s colonization experiment spearheaded by Ellis, Mexico persisted as a location among African American emigrationist imagination, even as the cientificos of the Porfiriato, newspapers, and local communities often responded to black immigration with hostility, thereby weakening Ellis’s essential argument that Mexico lacked race prejudice. Considering the amount of time Ellis spent in Mexico City, it would not be unreasonable to suspect he knew better, but as an alternative to legalized racial segregation of the US, and the earlier precedent of the southern neighbor as a refuge for slaves and free people of color, Ellis, at least in his writings to African Americans, promoted the idea of Mexico as a land of racial equality.

Moving into the 20^th century, Mexico sustained interest among African Americans. For example, the Little Liberia colonization project to exploit the land and mineral wealth of Baja California brought African Americans from California in 1919.[60] Mexican President Obregon also told these colonists his nation will not create a color line, later turning against black immigration through a law that required them to apply for special passports to get into Mexico.[61] Again, Mexican state responses contradicted the promise and reputation of racial equality, yet African American emigration and colonization carried over the 19^th century perspective of regarding Mexico as a land of racial equality. That the Baja California colonization took place in 1919 may also correlate with post-World War I black militancy and resistance to racism after serving in war, connecting African American emigration to other black responses to racism at a critical juncture. This, in turn, also shaped black internationalist politics in the post-World War I years and the Harlem Renaissance, which also looked to Mexico through travelers and writers like Langston Hughes. Notions of community uplift, cultivating race pride, and supporting black businesses in an environment believed to be less hostile likely kept Mexico relevant for the pursuit of these goals.

Langston Hughes’s father, James Nathaniel Hughes, permanently relocated to Mexico for reasons following a similar trajectory as past black migration, and died in Mexico City. In Hughes’s I Wonder As I Wander, Hughes describes visiting Mexico after the death of his father to settle his estate. His father owned a large ranch, as well as tenements in Mexico City, showing some degree of social and economic success for African Americans in Mexico.[62] Besides his father’s economic success, his relationship with the Patiño sisters, three women of standing, shows a degree of social integration.[63] Indeed, Hughes had left the US in order to escape the color line and to practice law, which he could not do in Oklahoma.[64]  Based on his travels in Mexico, Langston Hughes would conclude that in Mexico, blacks were so well merged they were hard to find, but noted the presence of Cuban blacks and a friend of his father, Butch Lewis, who owned the largest and most popular American-style restaurant in the capital.[65] Clearly, Mexico appealed to African Americans of Hughes’s father’s generation, but also his own interests in folk culture, African strains in Mexican culture, and literature. I Wonder As I Wander also covers Hughes’s time in Cuba and Haiti, two locales more often associated with the Harlem Renaissance and African Americans, but Mexico, with its folk dances, indigenous heritage, African past, and symbolic meaning to African Americans, such as the father of Hughes, signified an additional important space in the African American imagination. Hughes’s friendships with Diego Rivera and Miguel Covarrubias, in particular, the latter also a participant in the Harlem Renaissance, attests to the gravity of the Mexico connection to African Americans into the 20^th century.[66]

Conclusion

In summation, Mexico’s historic presence in the black imagination, in particular, black emigrationist movements since the 19^th century, necessitates contextualizing it within the broader history of African American emigration. Before emancipation, African Americans looked to Mexico, which, through its free soil policies and refusal to sign any extradition treaty for runaway slaves, became an important refuge. Both slaves and free people of color found a common interest in the republic to the south. In addition, influential black abolitionists and proponents of black emigration, such as Martin Delany, identified the future nationality of African Americans in Central America and Mexico, complicating the usual narrative on black emigration that focus solely on Liberia or Haiti. These tendencies persisted throughout the postbellum years, as African American emigrationist movements, which, like Afro-Caribbean migration, benefitted sectors of the Mexican economy despite their unwanted presence. They were organized by various African Americans. Mexican elites or government responses, unsurprisingly, used this connection to promote their own interests and to downplay the existence of racial prejudice on its soil, despite simultaneously promoting racially discriminatory immigration laws. Well-known examples of black colonization projects possessed positives that met the interests of African Americans and Mexico’s economic and labor needs, and indicate the ongoing appeal of Mexico for black emigrationist projects. Someone like Langston Hughes, for instance, who lived in Mexico for a year and whose father chose it over the US, proves its enduring symbolic significance to African American internationalist politics, history, and migration.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] Sara Fanning, Caribbean Crossing: African Americans and the Haitian Emigration Movement, 100.

[2] Ibid, 82.

[3] Leon Pamphile, Haitians and African Americans: A Heritage of Tragedy and Hope, 50.

[4] Floyd J. Miller, The Search for a Black Nationality: Black Emigration and Colonization, 1787-1863, 247.

[5] Ibid, 56.

[6] Ada Ferrer, “Haiti, Free Soil, and Antislavery in the Revolutionary Atlantic” discusses the free soil concept in a Haitian context, while relating it to the broader Atlantic World.

[7] Sarah E. Cornell, “Citizens of Nowhere: Fugitive Slaves and Free African Americans in Mexico, 1833-1857,” 354.

[8] Ibid, 362.

[9] Ibid, 368.

[10] Ronnie C. Tyler, “Fugitive Slaves in Mexico,” 12.

[11] Ibid, 2.

[12] Rosalie Schwartz, Across the Rio to Freedom: US Negroes in Mexico, 39.

[13] James David Nichols, “The Line of Liberty: Runaway Slaves and Fugitive Peons in the Texas-Mexico Borderlands,” 428.

[14] Todd W. Wahlstrom, The Southern Exodus to Mexico: Migration across the Borderlands after the American Civil War, 41.

[15] Benjamin Lundy, The Life, Travels, and Opinions of Benjamin Lundy, 48.

[16] Rosalie Schwartz, Across the Rio to Freedom: US Negroes in Mexico, 43.

[17] Benjamin Lundy, The Life, Travels, and Opinions of Benjamin Lundy, 113.

[18] Ibid, 143, 144.

[19] Rosalie Schwartz, Across the Rio to Freedom: US Negroes in Mexico, 31.

[20] Frederick Douglass, Liberator, June 8, 1849 http://www.blackpast.org/1849-frederick-douglass-mexico

[21] Ibid.

[22] Floyd J. Miller, The Search for a Black Nationality: Black Emigration and Colonization, 1787-1863, 127.

[23] Martin R. Delany, The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States and Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party, 193.

[24] Ibid, 187, 188.

[25] Ibid, 188.

[26] Ibid, 195.

[27] Ibid, 214.

[28] Schoonover, Thomas. "Misconstrued Mission: Expansionism and Black Colonization in Mexico and Central America during the Civil War." Pacific Historical Review 49, no. 4, 610.

[29] Rebecca Scott, Freedom Papers, 117.

[30] Ibid, 140, 141.

[31] Ibid, 142, 144.

[32] Ibid, 146, 147.

[33] Ibid, 151.

[34] Ibid, 166.

[35] Moises Gonzalez Navarro, La Colonizacion en Mexico 1877-1910, 9.

[36] Gonzalez Navarro, Los Extranjeros en Mexico y los mexicanos en el extranjero, 188

[37] Ibid.

[38] Ibid, 189.

[39] Gonzalez Navarro, Los Extranjeros en Mexico y los mexicanos en el extranjero, 500.

[40] Moises Gonzalez Navarro, La Colonizacion en Mexico 1877-1910, 9.

[41] Karl Jacoby, The Strange Career of William Ellis, 54.

[42] Ibid, 186.

[43] Moises Gonzalez Navarro, La Colonizacion en Mexico 1877-1910, 80.

[44] Laura Munoz, “Migracion afroantillana a Mexico en el siglo XIX”, 76.

[45] Ibid, 77.

[46] Laura Munoz, “Presencia afrocaribena en Veracruz: la inmigracion jamaicana en las postrimerias del siglo XIX”, 78.

[47] Laura Munoz, “Migracion afroantillana a Mexico en el siglo XIX”, 81-82.

[48] Laura Munoz, “Presencia afrocaribena en Veracruz: la inmigracion jamaicana en las postrimerias del siglo XIX”, 77.

[49] Moises Gonzalez Navarro, Sociedad y cultura en el porfiriato, 162.

[50] Moises Gonzalez Navarro, La Colonizacion en Mexico 1877-1910, 60-61.

[51] Arnold Shankman, Ambivalent Friends: Afro-Americans View the Immigrant, 61.

[52] Ibid, 61-62.

[53] Ibid, 65.

[54] Ibid, 68, 69.

[55] Karl Jacoby, The Strange Career of William Ellis, 76.

[56] Ibid, 13.

[57] Karl Jacoby, “Between North and South: The Alternative Borderlands of William H. Ellis and the African American Colony of 1895”, 213.

[58] J. Fred Rippy, “A Negro Colonization Project in Mexico,” 1895, 69.

[59] Message of the President of the United States, Relating to the Failure of the Scheme for the Colonization of Negroes in Mexico and the Necessity of Returning Them to Their Homes in Alabama, 59.

[60] Seeking Eldorado, 158.

[61] Ibid, 168, 169.

[62] Langston Hughes, I Wonder As I Wander, 289.

[63] Ibid.

[64] Ibid, 294.

[65] Ibid.

[66] Ibid