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By Alan Huffman
Gotham Books
ISBN 1-592-40044-2
$27

The memories of an aged black man as quoted by author Alan Huffman give pause, "he remembers the soldiers torching the columned mansions of Mississippi during the civil war, remembers eating crawfish in Louisiana, and collard greens and okra. He remembers crossing the languorous river that flows between Mississippi and Louisiana in a canoe." There is nothing unique or new about these remembrances; they read much like dozens, possibly hundreds, of other narratives about the antebellum days in the Deep South.

Except that this Deep South is in Liberia on the African continent and these events occurred a relatively short time ago.

The story of the Mississippi settlement in Africa and Liberia has its villains, its heroes, and those that pass back and forth between the two given the situation. Skin color is no indicator of the morality, or lack thereof, of one's agenda or the extent to which a person will go to further his ends.

The saga begins with a genuine good guy - Isaac Ross. Ross fought valiantly in the Revolutionary War, on occasion beside black soldiers. He was comfortable with and respected their abilities. Years later he moved to Mississippi, the one in the United States, set up a plantation, grew wealthy, and stipulated in his will that his slaves were to be freed and given passage to the new colony of Liberia on the African continent. Ross died in 1836.

Other slaveholders in Mississippi were less than enamored with Ross' final testament and the example it set. They waged a ten-year battle right to the floor of the Mississippi legislature to retroactively void the will. Finally, in a close vote, the will of Isaac Ross was proclaimed valid and the slaves were freed.

Overseas travel was difficult and conditions in the new country of Liberia were no cakewalk. Many died en route or soon after landing as their physical defenses were unaccustomed to the ills and viruses of a different continent. Those that survived and persevered claimed a territory for themselves and called it Mississippi. The major city in Mississippi in Africa was named Greenville. Across the Sinoe River was Louisiana, peopled by freed slaves from our neighboring state. A little further south was Maryland.

To this point, the good guys and the bad guys are fairly obvious and easily identified. But the desire to accumulate wealth and provide for the upscale niceties of life is colorblind. Greed is neither black nor white, but rather a blind void where reason and kindness are trampled by the split hooves of avarice and narcissism.

The indigenous peoples of Africa did not welcome their returning brethren. Skirmishes and raids became a part of life. Eventually, the returned slaves, or Americo-Africans as they were called, established control and wielded power in the government of Liberia. Then, the former slaves from America did what had been done to them - they enslaved the indigenous peoples of their region of Africa. A 1931 League of Nations report focused on this problem and stated that there is "Forced labor [and] vicious exploitation of the natives" that impels "many natives to reluctantly settle in Sierra Leone." A town chief of the time admitted, "My two children, I pawned them."

In 1980, Liberia's President Tolbert was overthrown and murdered. Violence was brought to a new level and Liberia remains to this day a "criminal polity" led by the escaped U.S. convict Charles Taylor. Taylor's allies reportedly include Libya and the terrorist group al Qaeda. After the civil war passed in 1997, Taylor was elected President in a suspect election. As Huffman points out, "the common refrain prior to Taylor's election was 'You killed my Ma, you killed my Pa. I will vote for you.'"

Huffman's quest began with a desire to know what became of the slave descendants of Isaac Ross' plantation, Prospect Hill, in Liberia. His quest, due to the age and loss of many local records in Jefferson County, Mississippi, is a story in and of itself. If it ended in 1846 with the validation of Isaac Ross' will it would have made for a compelling story of it's own. Huffman risked his life to travel to Liberia, against United States government travel advisories, to follow the story and find the descendants of Prospect Hill slaves. The history of Liberia, amazing in its brutality and carnage, forms the second half of "Mississippi in Africa."

The United States was instrumental in the formation of Liberia. The capital city of Liberia, Monrovia, is named after the U.S. President James Monroe. As a Liberian government official commented to Huffman, "It's a mystery why America does not care about Liberia, considering this is the only country that America ever colonized. When there was trouble in Haiti, they got involved." The natural continuation to this quote in 2004 is to add Iraq to the Liberian official's statement.

A brief review does not do justice to all of the twists and turns in this 150-year journey, nor does it give the proper credence to the exceptional reportage and tenacity of Huffman. The antebellum South and its slave history, if left to the stereotypes of plantation life, would be seen today as familiar ground and unexceptional. The reality is that many unique and unexpected stories remain to be told. Alan Huffman's "Mississippi in Africa" will be a work of enduring interest because of Huffman's skill in doing two things - telling the personal and individual stories in a humane and compelling fashion and setting the entire story in a broad historical and national context. Few writers handle both of these items well.

"Mississippi in Africa" will remain on the short list of must read books for anyone wishing to understand Mississippi slave history or the history of Liberia.