View Document Frames
“Blacks Should Accompany Mendi on Return to Sierra Leone.” African Repository
and Colonial Journal 17, no. 22 (11 Nov., 1841): 345.
The Mendi people are expected to sail for Sierra Leone on or about the 16th instant.
They are to be accompanied by some white persons in the capacity of teachers and
missionaries. The individuals who have had the charge of them, make a strong appeal
for some colored man to go out with them. Indeed it is manifest that they feel themselves
placed in an embarrassing condition. The difficulty of sending white men to contend
with the African climate; the natural prejudices of the people so long abused and
trampled upon by white men, and the scarcity of suitable white men who are willing
to go, all combine to render the return of these unfortunate Mendians a rather difficult
matter to their inexperienced guides and protectors. To let them return alone, with
only their present stock of knowledge, would be fatal to their future prospects.
To send out no persons with them but whites, is imminently to endanger their
future hopes: for how soon may the whites be cut off, and leave them only half heathen,
in the midst of the most degraded and degrading heathenism.
If we are not entirely mistaken, those who are sending home these exiles, will soon learn a lesson of the value and indispensableness of Colonization, which they have never known as yet, and which will do them good all their lives long. Experience is often a very severe teacher; but her lessons are important.
