Samana Photo Exhibit

"Once We Were Americans" by Max Belcher. At the African-American Museum in Philadelphia until Sept. 2. 50 photos on the story of the Blacks who landed in Samana in 1824.

Anyway this can be accessed by internet?

The 1824 expedition that left Philadelphia under the leadership of Peter Van Der Horst, a minister, arrived in Santo Domingo.

This voyage was sponsored by a radical anti-slavery group (for the times, it was radical) called the American Colonization Society. This group had purchased slaves around the Washington, D.C. area and taken them to Philadelphia for dispersal: Either back to Africa* or, as in this case, to Latin America.

Upon arrival, these balck suffered tremendous culture shock. Voo-doo, Catholicism, and French were all as foreign to them as Timbuktu is to you readers. The added dangers of malaria and yellow fever just added to the problems.

Some estimates have up to 50% mortality, 30% desertion to other, English-speaking islands (where slavery had been banned) and the little group that went to the Samana Bay area.

Lots more could be added to this, but we want to stay in the 21st Century...
HB