John Hanson (died c. 1860) was an African American associated with the American Colonization Society, which sought to relocate freeborn and emancipated black Americans to Liberia. In Liberia, he served as a senator from Grand Bassa County. He was born into slavery, but he purchased his freedom and emigrated from Baltimore to Liberia at age thirty-six.
In Liberia, he joined the growing mercantile class. He was elected to the Colonial Council in December 1840, and was elected as one of the two senators from Grand Bassa county in the first elections after the country’s independence.
He also served as Commissary in the same county for several years, furnishing a house for the storage of arms and ammunition. Hanson died in 1860, and was mourned as a “faithful and patriotic servant” by Liberian president Stephen Allen Benson.
Senator Hanson has sometimes been misidentified as being John Hanson of Maryland, a white politician who served as a President of the Continental Congress during the American Revolution.
