<P> The Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America, commonly known as the American Colonization Society (ACS), was a group established in 1816 by Robert Finley of New Jersey which supported the migration of free African Americans to the continent of Africa . The society in 1821--22 helped to found a colony on the Pepper Coast of West Africa, as a place for free - born or manumitted American blacks . The ACS met with immediate and continuing objections from such African - Americans as James Forten and David Walker, who wished to remain in the land of their birth, saw colonization as a racist strategy for protecting slavery and purging the U.S. of its black citizens, and preferred to fight for equal rights at home . Colonizers were also met with resistance and attacks from those already living in and around the areas being colonized . There was some religious support and missionary efforts were part of the colonization . Disease was a major problem and took a deadly toll . </P> <P> The ACS was founded by groups otherwise opposed to each other on the issue of slavery, being a coalition made up mostly of evangelicals and Quakers who supported abolition of slavery and believed blacks would face better chances for freedom in Africa than in the United States, and some slaveholders (in the Maryland branch and elsewhere) who saw repatriation as a way to remove free blacks from slave societies and avoid slave rebellions . The two opposed groups found common ground in support of so - called "repatriation". </P>

Who established the american colonization society in 1817