SOURCE: An introduction to Search for a Place: Black Separatism and Africa, 1860, M. R. Delany and Robert Campbell, The University of Michigan Press, 1969, pp. 1‐22.

In the following essay, Bell explores Delany's views on Black separatism in the 1850s in the context of such like‐minded figures as Robert Campbell, Henry Highland Garnet, and James M. Whitfield.

Often, present‐day black separatists look for ways to restore the balance of justice for centuries of oppression by penalizing the white man. Their counterparts a century ago looked often for a place beyond the borders of the United States where they might develop a powerful black nation, the products of which would compete economically with those of the slave South, and where the Negro's genius for politics and government would be unhampered by meddling whites.

Mindful always of their responsibility to those still in slavery, the Negro separatists of that era...