“Conventions, the Idea of Africa and Emigration Debates”
Charles Long states that Africa is a historical reality for black communities in America; it serves as point of reference in the religious, cultural and civic imagination of those black African descended people living in America. Perhaps, Long’s viewpoint was even truer in the Nineteenth Century, an era in which there was much public debate and private angst that fomented outcries about the role of Africa in African American life.