Collection of Paul Cuffe printed materials

Paul Cuffe (1759-1817) was an African American Quaker, Pan-Africanist, and entrepreneur who was a leader in the Back-to-Africa movement — a political effort advocating a return of African Americans to the continent of Africa. He was born on January 17, 1759 on Cuttyhunk Island, Massachusetts, the son of Coffe (Kofi) Slocum, a formerly enslaved man from the Ashanti Empire, and Ruth Moses, a member of the Wampanoag Nation. In 1783, Cuffe married Alice Abel Pequit, another Wampanoag woman, and the couple settled in Westport, Mass., where they raised their seven children. Lacking a formal education, Cuffe taught himself to read and write, and in 1773, the year after his father’s death, he began his time as a mariner on whaling ships. His skill in navigation led him to enter a partnership with his brother-in-law Michael Wainer, to establish a shipping fleet, operating a number of vessels which transported cargo along the Massachusetts coast. As his entrepreneurship grew, Cuffe became one of the wealthiest African Americans in the United States, and consequently, he used his status to promote the well-being of African Americans.

Inspired by British abolitionists who had established the colony of Sierra Leone in an effort to re-settle members of the African diaspora, Cuffe was deeply involved in the movement of Black emigration to Sierra Leone. In contrast to the enslavement, violence, and disenfranchisement Black individuals faced in the United States, he envisioned the colony as a political, social, and economic haven for African Americans.