Day of Revenge settlers by the 1960s. The Italian population was concentrated in the coast around the cities of Tripoli (37 percent of its population) and Bengasi (31 percent). With the Italian defeat in World War II, Italian influence waned. After several years under British mandate, on 24 December 1951 Libya declared its independence as the United Kingdom of Libya (a constitutional, hereditary monarchy under King Idris). Although many Italians had already left the former colony, many remained (primarily farmers and craftsmen). King Idris was a tolerant monarch, and generally treated the Italian population well. Libyan Jews (who had lived in Libya since
Mississippi-in-Africa (since renamed the Supreme Court). In the late 1840s, approximately 300 African-American freedmen from Ross's Prospect Hill Plantation emigrated to Mississippi-in-Africa. They were the largest single group of American colonists to migrate to Liberia. Ross's grandson and heir Isaac Ross Wade contested the will through years of litigation, during which time he occupied the plantation. Wade was supposed to pay the freedmen for their labor. In 1847 the court ruled that the slaves, then technically free, could leave the United States. In 1848 the last group of Ross's freed slaves emigrated to the colony in West Africa. The passage to