Robert Finley (1772 – November 3, 1817) was an American Presbyterian clergyman and educator who is known as one of the founders of the American Colonization Society, which established the settlement of Liberia in West Africa as a place for free African Americans.
He was a pastor for 20 years at a Presbyterian church in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, and also taught in elementary school and at a boys' academy. He served briefly in 1817 as the president of the University of Georgia before his death.
The American Colonization Society (ACS), initially the Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America, was an American organization founded in 1816 by Robert Finley to encourage and support the repatriation of freeborn people of color and emancipated slaves to the continent of Africa. It was modeled on an earlier British Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor's colonization in Africa, which had sought to resettle London's "black poor". Until the organization's dissolution in 1964, the society was headquartered in Room 516 of the Colorado Building in Washington, D.C.
The American Colonization Society was established in 1816 to address the prevailing view that free people of color could not integrate into U.S. society; their population had grown steadily following the American Revolutionary War, from 60,000 in 1790 to 300,000 by 1830. Slave owners feared that these free Black people might help their slaves to escape or rebel. In addition, many White Americans believed that African Americans were inherently inferior and should be relocated.
View the full Wikipedia page for American Colonization Society