In 1780, Paul Cuffee, his brother & 5 other Black men petitioned the Massachusetts legislature demanding the right to vote. He won free black men the right to vote in Massachusetts on the basis of "No Taxation Without Representation." Paul Cuffee was born Paul Slocum on Jan. 17, 1759, Cuttyhunk Island, Massachusetts, to Kofi Slocum, a farmer & freed slave, and Ruth Moses, a native American of the Wampanog nation.
In 1766 he & his brother John inherited a 116 acre farm from their father in Buzzard's Bay, Massachusetts, near Dartmouth. He changed his surname to Kofi, spelled "Cuffee." The name Kofi suggests that his father came from the Ashanti or Ewe people of Ghana.Starting in business as a whaler, he moved into maritime trade, building/buying a fleet of ships that traded along the US Atlantic coast, in the Caribbean, Europe, and Sierra Leone, the British colony of free blacks established in 1792.
Cuffee was by then the wealthiest American of African descent.In 1780, Cuffee, his brother and five other men filed a petition protesting their taxation without the right to vote. He was jailed, but got his taxes reduced. He developed the idea of a colony of American free blacks in Sierra Leone. When one of his ships from Sierra Leone was seized by US Customs for violating an embargo on British goods, Cuffee sought redress from President James Madison.
In May 1812 he met Madison and Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin at the White House. They ordered his property returned, and asked his views on the growing idea of an American colony in Sierra Leone. Cuffee founded the Friendly Society of Sierra Leone in 1811, and the African Institution in 1812, touring Boston, Philadelphia and New York to recruit members and encourage emigration.
The Friendly Society of Sierra Leone was a cooperative black group intended to encourage “the Black Settlers of Sierra Leone, and the Natives of Africa generally, in the Cultivation of their Soil, by the Sale of their Produce.” the African Institution was an African-American version of the British “black poor” organization. The “Black Poor” was a name that was given to indigent Black residents in London during the late 18th century.
The movement gained traction among leaders of the northern free black population, and in December 1815 he transported 38 emigrants to Sierra Leone on his Brig Traveller (one of his ships) However, support within the free black community fell after AME Bishop Richard Allen's Jan. 1817 Philadelphia meeting of several thousand free black men, where the consensus was that colonization was a pro-slavery scheme to rid the country of free black people.
But desire to emigrate still existed among some free black populations, and the movement was revived a few years later by the American Colonization Society. Paul Cuffee died on Sep. 7, 1817.
