Black Americans rejected colonization and chose to stay despite slavery’s history

Evidence

Nearly three years after Lincoln met with those men in the White House, General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, effectively ending the Civil War and suddenly freeing four million Black Americans. Few were interested in leaving the country. Instead, most would have fervently supported the sentiment of a resolution against Black colonization put forward at a convention of Black leaders in New York some decades before: “This is our home, and this our country. Beneath its sod lie the bones of our fathers…. Here we were born, and here we will die.” — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 142

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reframing argument thread across this book: Black freedom-fighters’ rootedness in American soil contradicts the marginal-narrative. Also resonates with the ‘origin stories as infrastructure’ frame.