Departure for Liberia

Date: February 6, 1820 • Location: London, United Kingdom

The first ship of the American Colonization Society departed from New York for West Africa with 86 African-American emigrants aboard to found the colony of Liberia.

The American Colonization Society (ACS), initially the Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America, was an American organization founded in 1816 by Robert Finley to encourage and facilitate repatriation of freeborn people of color and emancipated slaves to sub-Saharan Africa, particularly the Grain Coast. It was modeled on an earlier British Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor's colonization in sub-Saharan Africa, which had sought to resettle London's black poor. Until the ACS's dissolution in 1964, the society was headquartered in Room 516 of the Colorado Building in Washington, D.C.