Free African Americans were discouraged from remaining in Virginia because their presence was a contradiction of the concept of race-based slavery. Restrictive laws were passed to force free African Americans to leave the Commonwealth. This collection includes records from two agencies created by the General Assembly for the purpose of removing free African Americans to Liberia.

An act was passed in 1833 "making appropriations for the removal of free persons of color" to the western coast of Africa and established a board of commissioners charged with carrying out the provisions of the act. This data was drawn from The Board of Commissioners for the Removal of Free Persons of Color records, 1833‐1856, which includes a report of the Board of Commissioners, 1835, containing a list of free Black individuals transported to Liberia including their names, ages, and where they had lived in Virginia.

Data is also dawn from the The Colonization Board of Virginia records which was created by an act of the General Assembly passed on April 6, 1853, and appropriations were made to help fund the voluntary transportation and removal of free
Black individuals to Liberia or elsewhere in West Africa through the efforts of the Virginia branch of the American Colonization Society. The Virginia Board of Colonization journal of proceedings includes lists of the names and ages of free Black individuals transported from the Commonwealth to Africa, as well as the county, city, or borough from which they were transported, and in some instances also includes the name
of the ship and names of former enslavers.

Data in this collection is drawn directly from the original historical records and may contain terminology which is now deemed offensive.