African Americans in Africa: Black Missionaries and the “Congo Atrocities,” 1890-1910

Abstract

Abstract The “Congo atrocities” were one of the most brutal events in Africa’s colonial history. William Henry Sheppard, an African American missionary of the American Presbyterian Congo Mission (APCM) was among the first to speak out against these atrocities, thus playing a major role in the African American confrontation with European colonialism in Africa. The Congo Mission was founded in 1890 in the Democratic Republic of Congo which, from 1885 until its independence in 1960, was part of the European colonial empires, first as the Congo Free State, and, since 1908, as Congo Belge. The history of the APCM exemplifies the role African Americans played in the United States’s involvement in Africa at the turn of the century and sheds light on the American economic and social interests in Central Africa at this time.