improvementl negro association, which was marcus garvey's group, to collect signatures of people whoould be willing to move to africa to start anew. one thing you will notice from this petition is that the handwriting is the same on every line. you can see, maybe someone wrote it out and copied names from a phone book. but really, we think this was the presentation copy so you could read handwritings. african-americans supported this initiative. they felt at the time, there was no way to get equal rights in the united states. and this was across the country, not just in mississippi. they thought this was their only way to find land and create something for themselves. as part of the greater liberia act, which we have a copy of, invest. government would $15 million to secure land and transportation for anyone that wanted to move to liberia. this was 1939. thisworld war ii in play, was put on hold and forgotten. it shows just one of the ways in which bilbo tried to segregate the country. not only was he anti-african america,n but he did not care for italians, jewish, hispanic people ei