Free American blacks continued to move to Liberia during the 19th century. They created a society that repeated many colonial assumptions. Americo-Liberians, although a minority in the nation, dominated politics and the economy well into the late 20th century. As early as 1853, as African Americans were restudying the issue of emigration to Africa, a report by the Colored National Convention, held in Rochester, New York that year, "condemned the oppression of Liberia's native population." Its leader King Bowyah had appealed to Britain in 1851 for aid against the American encroachment on his country.