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 most of the regions in the continent of Africa south of the Sahara. It was modeled on an earlier British Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor's colonization in sub-Saharan 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.