Kentucky in Africa

A special edition of Kentucky Life, revised for classroom use, explores the Kentucky connection to the founding and development of the nation of Liberia. The story of how and why thousands of freed enslaved African-Americans undertook the hazardous journey across the Atlantic to build a new country in Africa is told partly in the words of Abraham Lincoln, Henry Clay and Alfred Russell, a Kentuckian who became president of Liberia. A visit to an area still known as "Kentucky in Africa" explores the continuing legacy of these 19th-century pioneers.