Plantation Politics

January 8, 2026.Reading time 1 minute.

We’re talking about the Monroe Doctrine when we should be talking about the American Colonization movement. Not as a distraction, but as acknowledgement that what we are living through has its roots in some of the earliest movements of exclusion in this country’s history. Please watch…and learn more. – ALD

Sources:

American Colonization Society. Annual Report of the American Colonization Society: With Minutes of the Annual Meeting and of the Board of Directors. (Washington D.C.), American Colonization Society, 1910 1818, 91 volumes.

Guyatt, Nicholas. The American Colonization Society: 200 Years of the “Colonizing Trick” – AAIHS. Abolitionism. December 22, 2016.

Sparks, Jared. A Historical Outline of the American Colonization Society, and Remarks on the Advantages and Practicability of Colonizing in Africa the Free People of Color from the United States .. O. Everett, 1824.

Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. Octagon Books, 1980.

The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917. Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg, 2007.

WHHA (En-US). “The American Colonization Society.” Accessed January 8, 2026.

Monroe’s December 1823 Address:

History Repeating…Again.

May 30, 2025.Reading time 2 minutes.

The United States has done this before. This is what this country does.

Today, as white South Africans are welcomed as “refugees” with open arms, the United States government and courts feel nothing unconscionable about turning away people seeking asylum from countries and situations that are facing catastrophic situations largely because of the United States’ international policies.

Below, I’m including links to several historic documents that I use as references in my own research that provide some context.

My assessment is that the United States has never been on the right side of this equation. If we want to contribute to the betterment of the changing, globalizing and interconnected world, we will need to think from an entirely different perspective of human life. The modern realization of the promise of a United States founded on the principle of “we the people” will remain unrealized as long as it is allowed to be coopted by expressions of exclusion, subjectivity, physical barriers, philosophical boundaries and a singular world view.

I share my perspective here and these links so that we can all better informed in the future.

–ALD

1882 Chinese Exclusion Act

1892 Geary Act

1924 Immigration Act

1965 Hart Cellar Act

Background on 1965 Act

A Useful Timeline…The Immigrant Learning Center