Were there any prominent Africans that travelled to the US during the slave trade? If so, how were they treated?

by radiohead87

Edit: I should clarify that I'm referring to sub-Saharan Africans that were visiting the US.

Dionysiokolax

No, evidently not. One reason is that there were few governments in Africa before 1865 that the United States or Europe recognized as nation-states. In the crude social science of the day, most of Africa was supposedly in a state of "savagery" or "barbarism" unworthy of respect from "civilized" countries. In the words of an African scholar, Lamine Kebe, in 1835: "There are good men in America, but all are very ignorant of Africa.

Morocco, in North Africa, was one of the first states to recognize the independence of the United States — Sultan Sidi Muhammad issued a declaration of friendship in 1777 — but the U.S. was still new at this diplomacy thing and didn't get around to responding in kind for three years. Even after the U.S. established treaty relations and a consulate in Tangier, there were no Moroccan state visits to the States, as best I can tell, until the 20th century. (Of course, state visits were uncommon anyway in an era when it took weeks to sail across the Atlantic Ocean.)

The United States did not extend diplomatic recognition to any majority-black nation until 1863, the year of the Emancipation Proclamation. Liberia, the West African state established by American freedmen, and Haiti, the second oldest republic in the Americas, were both finally recognized that year, but there were no state visits by dignitaries from either country.

One reason for all the delay was the rise of European colonial rule over Africa in the 1800s. Because of this, the ruling dignitaries for most of the continent were white Europeans until the 1950s and 1960s, when most former colonies gained their independence. The earliest U.S. visit I am aware of by an African head of state was in 1956, when Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia was the guest of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Lamine Kebe, quoted in African Muslims in Antebellum America: A Sourcebook, ed. Allan Austin, 1983.