An account of the rise, fall, and persistence of the 20th century's Black Zionist dream -- the movement's creation of a homeland in Africa.

Unprecedented in scope and detail, Brothers and Strangers is a vivid history of how the mythic Africa of the black American imagination ran into the realities of Africa the place. In the 1920s, Marcus Garvey—convinced that freedom from oppression was not possible for blacks in the Americas—led the last great African American emigrationist movement. His U.S.-based Universal Negro Improvement Association worked with the Liberian government to create a homeland for African Americans. Ibrahim Sundiata explores the paradox at the core of this project: Liberia, the chosen destination, was itself racked by class and ethnic divisions and—like other nations in colonial Africa—marred by labor abuse.

In an account based on extensive archival research, including work in the Liberian National Archives, Sundiata explains how Garvey’s plan collapsed when faced with opposition from the Liberian elite, opposition that belied his vision of a unified Black World. In 1930 the League of Nations investigated labor conditions and, damningly, the United States, land of lynching and Jim Crow, accused Liberia of promoting “conditions analogous to slavery.” Subsequently various plans were put forward for a League Mandate or an American administration to put down slavery and “modernize” the country. Threatened with a loss of its independence, the Liberian government turned to its “brothers beyond the sea” for support. A varied group of white and black anti-imperialists, among them W. E. B. Du Bois, took up the country’s cause. In revealing the struggle of conscience that bedeviled many in the black world in the past, Sundiata casts light on a human rights predicament which, he points out, continues in twenty-first-century African nations as disparate as Sudan, Mauritania, and the Ivory Coast.

"“An exhaustive study of the Pan-African aspects of Liberia’s history from 1914 to 1940. . . . A prodigious effort. . . . This book should become a standard reference for an important period in Liberia’s Pan-African history.”" - Journal of African American History

"Brothers and Strangers is an illuminating, politically charged. . . history of ethnic and class conflict in Liberia." - Journal of Colonialism & Colonial History

"Brothers and Strangers thoughtfully engages the usefulness of diaspora as a theoretical template for deciphering the histories and interests of African peoples long separated by oceans and time." - Journal of American History

"A thoughtful history. . . . It is an honest and frank discussion about the role of race, ethnicity and class in the Pan-African narrative. Its comprehensiveness, its attention to detail, and its clarity of thought make this work a substantial contribution to African, African American, and Atlantic history." - The Americas

"Writing with the command of a scholar deeply versed in the topics at hand, Sundiata provides a rich and thoughtful assessment of Liberia, black America, and the relationship between these transatlantic communities during a quarter century of contestations over charges of slavery, struggles over black rule, and the nature of transatlantic black linkages.What makes Sundiata’s book such worthwhile reading is that he tackles the topics with incisive interpretation and analysis. The book is thus a powerful commentary on the state of relations among Africans and the diaspora." - African Affairs