The complicated history of one man’s simple act

“MISSISSIPPI in Africa” emerges from its deceptively simple outer garb as a powerful, unsettling and deeply engaging examination of America’s past and its position in the contemporary world.

The book begins modestly in the present day. Alan Huffman, a Mississippian and former reporter for the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, wants to learn about Isaac Ross, a rich 19th century plantation owner in Jefferson County, Miss., who unleashed a storm of controversy that reverberates to this day by declaring in his will that his 200 slaves should be freed, his plantation sold and the proceeds devoted to transporting them to the West African territory of Liberia, the site during the early 1800s of a burgeoning effort to send blacks back to the continent from which they were forcible wrenched.

It is not clear whether Ross, who died in 1836, reached his decision from conviction (his enemies called him an abolitionist), kindness (he apparently treated his slaves well) or fear for the future of a South with so many slaves.

Huffman finds his research hard going in poverty-stricken Jefferson County, which lies along the sinuous Mississippi River just north of Natchez. Records of the era are old and crumbling. And many residents who have heard the old stories don’t want to talk. Especially the whites. For it turns out that white families and black families have been mixing since the days of slavery. Cousins with the same name but different hues abound.

Even as Natchez celebrates the rich past of its cotton kingdom days with festivals in spring, in fall and at Christmas, the legacy of slavery haunts the region like the decay caused when humid heat turns great old houses into filigrees of rotten wood and slave cabins into mere traces on the land.

There are stories: The plantation, Prospect Hill, burned even as Ross’ grandson fought the will, and a white girl died in the fire; whites believe there was a black insurrection and that as a result, some blacks were lynched. “Old stories in the South tend to get a lot of grooming,” Huffman writes mordantly. He can’t get to the truth of most of them to his satisfaction.

Ross’ daughter supported her father’s will. It eventually was validated by state courts, which ruled that Ross could do what he wanted with his slaves, for in the end it came down to the issue of property, and the slaves were his to dispose of as he wished.

So it was that in the 1840s, 200 of Ross’ former slaves sailed for Liberia, where they settled with other freed slaves along the coast in an area they named Mississippi, calling its capital Greenville. The area was already dominated by about 40 indigenous tribes that Europeans collectively named the Kru. The freed slaves took control. They built Greek Revival plantation-style houses, and Huffman writes that they evidently had something akin to slaves of their own.

The “Americo-Liberians,” as they were called, ruled the country from 1870 until 1980, when Samuel Doe staged a coup that routed them and triggered 20 years of brutal civil war that shocked the world. The United States, which had generally supported the descendants of its former slaves, was in the throes of the Cold War and so gave $400 million to the insurgent Doe for fear that the Whig Party he opposed was too reliant on Communist assistance.

During that period, many Liberians sought refuge in the United States. Some got in; most were turned away.

Huffman describes going to Liberia in 2001 to find descendants of the original Mississippi settlers. Continuing turmoil prevented him from visiting Greenville, but he did meet with some descendants. His narrative at times is too convoluted to follow, but he clearly found the experience moving. Among the Americos and non-Americos alike, he writes of finding great fondness for America and its ideals. But the legacy of slavery persists.

In Liberia’s civil war, he says, “The conflicts of the old American South not only still matter, they are matters of life and death.” Huffman’s very personal tale vividly illuminates that old American conflicts still matter very much indeed in this country too.