For most Americans, Liberia is a remote place in a distant continent with no connection to their daily lives. Few of us know that in the early 19th century, it was, in fact, an American colony, and to this day, contains communities called Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Virginia, Kentucky, and Maryland founded by freed American slaves and populated by descendants of those slaves. Author Alan Huffman tells this story in his remarkable Mississippi in Africa: The Saga of the Slaves of Prospect Hill Plantation and Their Legacy in Liberia Today. The book begins as the author's attempt to flush out the details of a fascinating Mississippi family story about a prominent plantation owner's (Isaac Ross) desire to repatriate his slaves in Africa, but ends up being a complex and sensitive exploration of the legacy of slavery in the American South and Liberia. As Huffman traces Ross' descendants and those of his family's repatriated slaves, an intricate story of displacement, cultural identity, immigration, oppression, and racial politics unfolds. Ironically, when America's freed slaves immigrated to Africa, they brought with them the only social paradigm they knew, that of the Southern plantation. Overcoming severe hardship, they recreated that culture, and by the time Liberia became Africa's first independent republic in 1847, the minority American settlers had become the country's ruling class. Huffman adeptly shows how this legacy contributes to the current crisis in Liberia.

Mississippi in Africa is at once historical and contemporary, personal and universal, local and global. As Huffman indicates, slavery "has existed throughout Africa's recorded history, and still has not entirely passed from the scene." Its pernicious consequences continue to affect the lives of millions caught in the devastating and endless civil war in Liberia, just as they continue to impact American life. Yet, Huffman repeatedly shows that this extraordinary story cannot be simply reduced to a polemical rendering of white oppression of blacks. It is so much more about the powerful versus the powerless. Thus, Huffman presents the subtleties that have shaped both the politics and human relations in this story with profound humanity and nuance. --Silvana Tropea

From Publishers Weekly
A former staff writer for the Jackson, Miss., Clarion-Ledger, Huffman tells two tales here. One concerns the life, legacy and legatees of Isaac Ross (1760-1836), "the man responsible for sending the largest group of freed-slave emigrants to the colony of Liberia." The other combines travelogue and reportage of current events as Huffman seeks their descendants in present-day Liberia. The former is a good yarn, but the latter makes for a plodding read as the diligent author reports all. Ross's will stipulated that on his daughter's death, his slaves should be freed and his Mississippi estate sold to pay for their transit to Africa. The daughter worked toward this goal; her cousin, against it. From probate and chancery to appellate courts and legislative halls, the case moved in Dickensian manner before the will was finally put into effect in the late 1850s. A suspicious fire and a death occurred at the house, but the emigration proceeded apace. In his sleuthing, Huffman meanders a bit, sometimes from one historic house to another or from one repatriate's letter to another and frequently from one person he meets along the way to another. A little less Huffman would have done more justice to the Ross story. Alternatively, a little less Ross might have freed Huffman to go ahead and write the account of his Liberian trip, one where the reader didn't have to wonder where al Qaeda and the Mississippi state flag controversy fit with Isaac Ross, his repatriated slaves and their descendants. Yet the idea behind this book - the who, what, when, how, and why of this body of retransported slaves and its effect upon Liberia today - is fascinating enough to keep readers going.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Liberia, the deeply troubled little country on the Atlantic coast of Africa, in large measure exists because of a strange mixture of fear, philanthropy, guilty conscience and self-deception in the antebellum United States. It came into being in 1820 as a territory of the American Colonization Society, whose members believed that the way to solve the manifold problems posed by slavery generally and freed blacks specifically was to resettle them in Africa. Never mind that they had been born in the United States and that in many cases their families had been here for generations; to abolitionists who hated slavery and to slave-holders who feared that freed blacks would incite slave rebellions, sending them to Africa would get them out of sight and out of mind.One slaveholder who saw colonization as an attractive option was a Mississippian named Isaac Ross, who "ordained, from his deathbed, the destruction of the very thing that he had spent his life building up -- his prosperous, 5,000-acre plantation" called Prospect Hill in Jefferson County. At his death in 1836 his will "stipulated that at the time of his daughter Margaret Reed's death, Prospect Hill would be sold and the money used to pay the way for his slaves who wanted to emigrate to Liberia." Precisely why Ross chose to do this remains unclear. "Some attribute his interest to philanthropy," Alan Huffman writes, "others to something close to a filial love for his slaves, and still others to fear -- either of the fate that would befall his slaves after he died, or of what would become of the South once they and hundreds of thousands of others were inevitably freed." His daughter supported the will, but his grandson, Isaac Ross Wade, spent years trying to overturn it, in court and in the Mississippi legislature. Ultimately he failed, and by early 1848 slaves from Prospect Hill had begun the long journey to Africa. Ultimately about 200 of Ross's 225 slaves went there, "where they were joined by approximately 200 slaves freed by other, more sympathetic Ross family members." The place where they settled was known as Mississippi in Africa, "at the mouth of the Sinoe River." Initially it was "distinct from the greater colony of Liberia," but soon it was incorporated into the colony and remains part of the independent nation that Liberia subsequently became. Nothing about the resettlement was easy: "In addition to epidemics of various African fevers, and conflicts with indigenous tribes, the Mississippi colony was underfunded and did not enjoy good relations with the Liberian government in Monrovia, partly due to disagreements between the Mississippi Colonization Society and the American Colonization Society." Its "government was essentially bankrupt and its residents were isolated and reeling from depredations by tribes" that, among other things, felt themselves unfairly criticized for participating in the slave trade and deeply resented what they saw as the freed slaves' privileged position.The settlers from Mississippi don't seem to have done much to ingratiate themselves with their new neighbors. However odd it may seem now, they sought to replicate the social system they had left behind in Mississippi: "Many built massive houses reminiscent of plantations back home, staffed with servants from the native tribes," and "subjugated the underclass of native tribes whenever they had the opportunity, creating a dynamic reminiscent of their former master-slave roles," though it is still unclear whether they actually enslaved native Africans.When Huffman prepared to visit Liberia three years ago, he "had heard a good bit about the historic enmity between the descendants of freed slaves and indigenous tribes in [his] Internet research," and pronounced himself "amazed to find that so much of the vitriol harked back to the arrival of those intrepid freed slaves, among them the Rosses of Prospect Hill." He quotes a Liberian editorialist named Tarty Teh:"What more do the African-Americans and Americo-Liberians want from us? We surrendered a century and a half of our lives to absorb the anger of the returnees on behalf of any African who had anything to do with selling our brothers and sisters abroad. . . . If these returnees still don't like us after 150 years, then they have returned to the wrong part of Africa." For the settlers from Prospect Hill, life in Liberia scarcely seems to have been a return to the Promised Land. Quite to the contrary, they endured "extremely high mortality rates," became entangled in "political alliances and feuds," and now are caught in a terrible civil war that, "although it has officially ended, never seems to end." In some ways most difficult of all, they have to suffer the indifference of the nation that sent their forebears there so many generations ago. Though American authorities have made occasional gestures of friendship toward Liberia and helped persuade Charles Taylor, its corrupt, murderous former president, to leave office, essentially the United States has stood by as Liberia descends into chaos and extreme need. It is too much to say, as this country's more virulent critics sometimes do, that Liberia's endless civil war is America's fault, but it certainly seems fair to say that our indifference toward a country we helped create scarcely has done it any good.All of which adds up to raw material for a good and important story, but Huffman has botched it at just about every turn. If Mississippi in Africa has a governing organizational principle, it is invisible. Though the logical narrative line would be to trace the freed slaves from Mississippi to Liberia, Huffman gets nearly halfway through the book before he gets them there; the first half is an interminable account of the wrangling over Isaac Ross's will and of what happened to the slaves who chose not to emigrate and their descendants. This is a subplot at best, but Huffman inflates it -- and his own effort to track down these slaves -- into something far larger than the evidence can sustain.This appears to be explained, though, by the book's central weakness: Huffman is more interested in himself and his research than he is in the freed slaves and their fate. Like others infatuated with what long ago ceased to be the "new" journalism, Huffman just can't get enough of the first-person singular: "I have reached the bewildering conclusion that I will have to descend into the genealogical maw to find descendants of the Prospect Hill slaves who stayed behind. This is not something I really want to do." Or: "Over the last year, as I have been trying to piece together the threads of the story of Prospect Hill, I have come to the unavoidable -- and daunting -- conclusion that I will have to travel to Liberia." Or: "I have been unnerved by Liberia before I even arrived. . . . I have been told that it is too dangerous to travel in Liberia after sundown, although, like so much of what I have heard before coming here, this proves debatable." In two words: Who cares? If a writer chooses to do a book about a 19th-century plantation, he's got to be ready to study the documents, genealogical ones included, and if he's going to do a book about Liberia, he's got to go to Liberia. Whining about all this serves no purposes beyond those of solipsism and self-absorption, and destroys any possibility of turning a good subject into a good book. Instead Mississippi in Africa is merely a narcissistic bore. Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

From Booklist
This book was reviewed from galley proofs in our August 2002 issue under the title Prospect Hill, but it was never published. Now Putnam/Gotham has scheduled it for a January 2004 release with a new title. --Ed.This is an incredible tale of two Mississippis--one in the American South, the other in Liberia. Isaac Ross, a wealthy plantation owner in the 1840s, created a furor in the family and among other slaveholders by providing in his will for the emancipation and repatriation of his slaves in Africa. Like other supporters of the American Colonization Society, Ross was motivated more by concerns that blacks--who would inevitably be freed--were dangerous to American society than by altruism. With inadequate support, the repatriated slaves begin a settlement that re-creates the American slave culture they've left behind, with themselves in the master position. Ross and his will set in motion 165 years of tangled family history and race relations on two continents. Based on research and interviews with descendents--both black and white, American and Liberian--Huffman reveals how the effects of slavery reverberate in modern Mississippi politics as well as continued conflicts in Liberia. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

The Boston Globe
Huffman is a patient, confident storyteller who lingers over the details until they come to life

Los Angeles Times
Moving . . . Vividly illuminates that old American conflicts still matter very much indeed.

New York Times Book Review
Provides extraordinary insight in the matter of race in the modern world.

Book Description
The gripping story of two hundred freed Mississippi slaves who sailed to Liberia to build a new colony—where the colonists’ repression of the native tribes would beget a tragic cycle of violence When a wealthy Mississippi cotton planter named Isaac Ross died in 1836, his will decreed that his plantation, Prospect Hill, should be liquidated and the proceeds from the sale be used to pay for his slaves’ passage to the newly established colony of Liberia in western Africa. Ross’s heirs contested the will for more than a decade in the state courts and legislature—prompting a deadly revolt in which a group of slaves burned Ross’s mansion to the ground—but the will was ultimately upheld. The slaves then emigrated to their new home, where they battled the local tribes and built vast plantations with Greek Revival–style mansions in a region the Americo- Africans renamed "Mississippi in Africa." The seeds of resentment sown over a century of cultural conflict between the colonists and tribal peoples exploded in the late twentieth century, begetting a civil war that rages in Liberia to this day. Tracking down Prospect Hill’s living descendants, deciphering a history ruled by rumor, and delivering the complete chronicle in riveting prose, journalist Alan Huffman has rescued a lost chapter of American history whose aftermath is far from over.

About the Author
A former staff writer for the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, Alan Huffman has written for numerous publications, including the Los Angeles Times, The Atlanta Journal- Constitution, Outside, and The Oxford American.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The gripping story of two hundred freed Mississippi slaves who sailed to Liberia to build a new colony - where the colonists￯﾿ﾽ repression of the native tribes would beget a tragic cycle of violence.

When a wealthy Mississippi cotton planter named Isaac Ross died in 1836, his will decreed that his plantation, Prospect Hill, should be liquidated and the proceeds from the sale be used to pay for his slaves￯﾿ﾽ passage to the newly established colony of Liberia in western Africa. Ross￯﾿ﾽs heirs contested the will for more than a decade in the state courts and legislature - prompting a deadly revolt in which a group of slaves burned Ross￯﾿ﾽs mansion to the ground - but the will was ultimately upheld. The slaves then emigrated to their new home, where they battled the local tribes and built vast plantations with Greek Revival mansions in a region the Americo-Africans renamed "Mississippi in Africa." The seeds of resentment sown over a century of cultural conflict between the colonists and tribal peoples would explode in the late twentieth century, begetting a civil war that rages in Liberia to this day.

In the award-winning tradition of Slaves in the Family, this enthralling work traces an epic legacy that sweeps from the slave quarters of the antebellum South to the war-ravaged streets of modern-day Monrovia. Tracking down Prospect Hill￯﾿ﾽs living descendants, deciphering a history ruled by rumor, and delivering the complete chronicle in riveting prose, journalist Alan Huffman has rescued a lost chapter of American history whose aftermath is far from over.

About the Author:
Alan Huffman is the author of the photoessay book Ten Point: Deer Camp in the Mississippi Delta, and has written for numerous newspapers and magazines, including The Los Angeles Times, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, Smithsonian, Outside, The Oxford American, The Clarion- Ledger, and National Wildlife. He lives in Bolton, Mississippi.

SYNOPSIS

After the 1836 death of Mississippi plantation owner Isaac Ross, his will decreed that his plantation, Prospect Hill, should be liquidated in order to pay for his 200 slaves to go to Liberia. Disputed by his relatives, the will remained in litigation for years, prompting a slave uprising at Prospect Hill, but eventually a number of the Prospect Hill slaves would emigrate to Liberia, joining other slaves who would go on to become Liberia's elite, modeling their society on the Old South of their birth. Investigative journalist Huffman traces the fates of the families that stayed behind and those that emigrated, recounting his own travels to the area of Prospect Hill and to Liberia, and reflecting on how the events of years ago echo in the social conflicts and political realities of the American South and the war-torn African country. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

A former staff writer for the Jackson, Miss., Clarion-Ledger, Huffman tells two tales here. One concerns the life, legacy and legatees of Isaac Ross (1760-1836), "the man responsible for sending the largest group of freed-slave emigrants to the colony of Liberia." The other combines travelogue and reportage of current events as Huffman seeks their descendants in present-day Liberia. The former is a good yarn, but the latter makes for a plodding read as the diligent author reports all. Ross's will stipulated that on his daughter's death, his slaves should be freed and his Mississippi estate sold to pay for their transit to Africa. The daughter worked toward this goal; her cousin, against it. From probate and chancery to appellate courts and legislative halls, the case moved in Dickensian manner before the will was finally put into effect in the late 1850s. A suspicious fire and a death occurred at the house, but the emigration proceeded apace. In his sleuthing, Huffman meanders a bit, sometimes from one historic house to another or from one repatriate's letter to another and frequently from one person he meets along the way to another. A little less Huffman would have done more justice to the Ross story. Alternatively, a little less Ross might have freed Huffman to go ahead and write the account of his Liberian trip, one where the reader didn't have to wonder where al Qaeda and the Mississippi state flag controversy fit with Isaac Ross, his repatriated slaves and their descendants. Yet the idea behind this book-the who, what, when, how, and why of this body of retransported slaves and its effect upon Liberia today-is fascinating enough to keep readers going. (Jan.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A superior historical and journalistic investigation, tracing the lives and legacies of freed slaves in America and Africa. Freelance journalist Huffman, a native of Mississippi, found the tale of Prospect Hill in his backyard after inheriting a piano from the long-abandoned plantation. Prospect Hill's founder, a South Carolina planter named Isaac Ross, died in 1836, leaving a will that stipulated that "at the time of his daughter Margaret Reed's death, Prospect Hill would be sold and the money used to pay the way for his slaves who wanted to emigrate to Liberia, where a colony of freed slaves had been established by a group called the American Colonization Society." Reed died in 1838, whereupon the will became the subject of a long court battle on the part of Ross's heirs, scandalized at the thought that so much property would pass from their hands. Amazingly, the courts honored Ross's instructions. In 1849, most of his slaves were freed, and some 200 went to Africa, accompanied by another 200 or so freed by sympathetic members of the Ross family. In Liberia, Huffman writes, "the freed slaves . . . remained cohesive despite dispersing throughout Mississippi in Africa," and they created anew the world they had left behind-to the extent that many of them became slaveholders. The sharp social and economic division between the returned "Americos" and the native "Congo," Huffman discovers upon traveling to Liberia, underlie the civil war that has been raging there over the last two decades. His reports from the field are full of smart observations on the history of a nation that, although closely linked to the US, has too long been ignored. "We have a commonality, despite our differences,"one Liberian tells him. "It all goes back to America, because America established this country, which is why America cannot allow everything to be in vain." Alas, America has done little in the way of intervention-even though, Huffman writes, the failed state of Liberia has lately become fertile ground for al Qaeda operatives involved in the lucrative diamond and arms trades. Thought-provoking and expertly told-and a most promising debut. Agent: Patty Moosbrugger/Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Curtis Wilkie

An engaging mediation on tangled race relations in the American South. — author of Dixie: A Personal Odyssey through Events that Shaped the Modern South

William Winter

Alan Huffman has pulled from the dust bin of history a saga of immense present day significance. — former Governor of Mississippi