Millions of formerly enslaved Africans were forced into sharecropping, peonage and racial subservience after the Compromise (betrayal) of 1876.

By Abayomi Azikiwe

“By an act of April 16, 1862, which abolished slavery in the District of Columbia, Congress made an appropriation of $100,000 for voluntary Negro emigrants at an expense of $100 each; and later, July 16, an additional appropriation of $500,000 was made at Lincoln’s request. The President was authorized ‘to make provision for transportation, colonization, and settlement, in some tropical country beyond the limits of the United States, of such persons of the African race, made free by the provisions of this act, as may be willing to emigrate, having first obtained the consent of the government of said country to their protection and settlement within the same, with all the rights and privileges of freemen.’”

Quote taken from Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois’ “Black Reconstruction in America” in the chapter entitled “Looking Backward”