Chapter One: Liberia: An Overview

Liberia: The Land, Its People, History and Culture

Author: Frank Sherman

Paperback: 348 pages

Publisher: New Africa Press (10 January 2011)

ISBN-13: 9789987160259

Chapter One:

Liberia: An Overview

LIBERIA is located on the west coast of Africa. It's bordered by Sierra Leone in the west, Guinea in the north, Ivory Coast in the east, and by the Atlantic Ocean in the south. It has an area of 43,000 square miles.

It had an estimated population of 4 million in 2010. During the civil war in the 1990s, Liberia lost about 8 per cent of its population.

The capital of Liberia is Monrovia, named after the American president, James Monroe, who was in office when Liberia was founded in 1822.

Liberia has a hot tropical climate influenced by heavy rainfall during the rainy season and by harsh harmattan winds during the dry season.

The coastal region, which is known as Pepper Coast, is covered by mangrove forests. It's heavily populated. It's the most heavily populated part of the country.

The interior is sparsely populated. It has forests and a plateau of drier grasslands.

When the country was founded by the American Colonization Society as a homeland for freed black American slaves who proclaimed to the world, “The love of liberty brought us here,” there were no European colonies in Africa except the Portuguese-ruled territories of Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau which was then known as Portuguese Guinea.

The scramble for Africa which led to the partition of the continent had not taken place when Liberia was founded. It was not until 1885 that Africa was divided among the European powers, leading to the creation of colonies which later became independent countries.

During that period, Liberia and Ethiopia were the only independent countries on the continent.

Ethiopia was never colonised except for a short period of occupation by the Italians under Mussolini from 1936 to 1941 during World War II.

Liberia became a republic in 1847, although it has been a virtual American colony, America's 51^st “state,” throughout its history.

Its history is inextricably linked with the history of the United States.

Although freed black American slaves constituted the largest number of the people who founded Liberia, captured Africans who were freed from slave ships during anti-slavery patrols after slavery was abolished were also sent there instead of being sent back to their homelands where they had been captured.

The settlers came to be known as Americo-Liberians. They dominated Liberia until 1980 when soldiers who were members of native tribes overthrew the government, ending almost 160 years of hegemonic control of the country by the descendants of freed American slaves since the country was founded in 1822.

But the establishment of military rule by native Liberian soldiers was also the beginning of a period of instability and chaos in the history of Liberia. The country was plunged into civil war in the 1990s in which hundreds of thousands of people died and suffered in many other ways. It was a horrendous tragedy from which the country has not fully recovered.

A lot of this can be attributed to the explosive ethnic mix of Americo-Liberians and the indigenous people who were considered by the descendants of freed American slaves to be inferior to them.

History of Liberia

Indigenous tribes 1200-1800

The region that is now the country of Liberia was inhabited at least as far back as the 1300s perhaps even before then.

Mende-speaking people pushed smaller ethnic groups – the Bassa, the Gola, the Kissi, the Kru, and others – towards the Atlantic Ocean into the area that is now Liberia. These are some of the indigenous people who constitute the population of Liberia.

The forced migration of these ethnic groups was compounded by the decline of the Mali empire in 1375 and of the Songhai empire in 1591.

Desertification of the interior also played a major role in this migratory trend, forcing many people to migrate to the coastal region – what later came to be known as the Pepper Coast – of Liberia.

The new native settlers brought to the region various skills with them. The skills included cotton spinning, cloth weaving, iron smelting, as well as rice and sorghum cultivation. They also introduced to the area social and political institutions from the Mali and Songhai empires where these institutions had evolved through the centuries into highly complex systems.

Shortly after the Mane – originally from what is now Ghana and Ivory Coast – conquered the region, another tribe, the Vai,was forced to migrate.

The Vai had been an integral part of the Mali empire and were forced to migrate after the empire collapsed. They settled in the coastal area that came to be known as Grand Cape Mount, a county in the northwestern part of Liberia.

The migration caused some conflict. The Kru, who were already there, did not want the Vai to settle in the area. They formed an alliance with the Mane and stopped further influx of the Vai. But the Vai were able to remain in the Grand Cape Mount region which is still their home today. The town of Robertsport, the eighth-largest in the country, is also located there.

Another ethnic group which was driven towards the coastal region of what is now Liberia as a result of the Mane invasion were the Glebo.

Settlers from the United States

The history of the region took another turn with the arrival of freed black American slaves who came to be known as Americo-Liberians.

In 1822, the American Colonization Society (A.C.S.) founded the country of Liberia as a home for freed slaves. Among the American leaders who supported the scheme was President James Monroe after whom the capital of Liberia was named in his honour.

Another prominent American leader who supported the colonisation scheme was Henry Clay who served at various times as a congressman, senator, speaker of the House of Representatives, and from 1825 to 1829 as the U.S. secretary of state.

The founders and supporters of the American Colonization Society (A.C.S.) believed that it was better to send freed slaves back to their motherland, Africa, than to have them continue to live in the United States as free people.

Some of the whites who supported the repatriation of blacks to Africa were known to be racist. And the American Colonization Society itself was labelled “racist” by some people; a reputation or notoriety it still has today in history.

In supporting the repatriation – or expulsion – of blacks from the United States, Henry Clay had this to say:

“(Because of) unconquerable prejudice resulting from their color, they never could amalgamate with the free whites of this country. It was desirable, therefore, as it respected them, and the residue of the population of the country, to drain them off.”

They were “drained off” in a futile attempt to keep American white, not just to find them a home where they could live in peace and security free from white prejudice. To the consternation of a large number of whites, most blacks remained in the United States after the end of slavery. Only a small number – 12,000 to 13,000 – decided to move to Liberia.

The first president of Liberia was Joseph Jenkins Roberts. He served as president from 1848 to 1856. He was born ni Norfolk, Virginia, in the United States. His father was a white farmer who traced his ancestry to Wales. His mother was a light-skinned mulatto, more white than black in terms of ancestry.

Liberia became a republic on 26 July 1847. It's the oldest black republic in Africa. Before then, it was governed by the officials of the American Colonization Society from 1822 to 1847.

But Americo-Liberians did not integrate with the indigenous people. They considered them to be inferior. And even though they themselves were a people of African origin and had settled in – or “returned” to – Africa, they still considered themselves to be Americans and identified themselves that way.

They were also identified as Americans by the indigenous people and by the British colonial authorities in neighbouring Sierra Leone.

They also had all the outward symbols and manifestations, including language, values, customs and traditions which inextricably linked them to the United States. The Liberian flag, which in many ways looks like the American flag, the motto and seal of Liberia as well as the form of government Americo-Liberians chose, reflected the American background of these settlers.

The United States also continued to play a role in providing the new nation with the skills it needed to survive and prosper as an outpost of West civilisation in “the jungles” of the “Dark Continent.”

The Ashmun Institute which was founded in Pennsylvania in 1854 for the education of black Americans and which was later renamed Lincoln University, played an important role in providing Liberia with trained manpower.

The first graduates of Ashmun Institute – James R. Amos, his brother Thomas H. Amos, and Armistead Miller – left for Liberia on the brig Mary C. Stevens in April 1859 soon after graduation. Others followed suit in subsequent years.

Coincidentally, the first African nationalist to lead the first black African country to independence from colonial rule also attended and graduated from Lincoln University. He was Kwame Nkrumah. He first went to Lincoln University as a student in 1935.

Years later, he led Ghana to become the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to win independence. The country was known as the Gold Coast during British colonial rule and won independence on 6 March 1957 when it was also renamed Ghana.

Another leading African nationalist who also attended Lincoln University was Nnamdi Azikiwe, popularly known as Zik. He went to Lincoln University before Nkrumah did and returned to Africa in 1935, the same year Nkrumah first went to Lincoln. Azikiwe became the first president of Nigeria after the country won independence from Britain on 1 October 1960.

Both of these leaders and others from Africa – who also attended Lincoln University – shared a common educational background with many educated Americo-Liberians who laid the foundation of modern Liberia as a product of the same school which even today is one of the most distinguished historically black colleges in the United States.

Liberian ties to the United States were also manifested in many other ways. Even the official residence of the president of Liberia, officially known as the Executive Mansion, had an unmistakable architectural influence from the American South.

The religious practices, social customs and cultural standards of Americo-Liberians also had their roots in the antebellum American South. And they profoundly influenced and shaped the perceptions and attitudes of Americo-Liberians toward the natives.

The indigenous people, their cultures and lifestyles, were seen as the very antithesis of what civilisation was all about and whose embodiment was the Americo-Liberian community in the midst of a “backward”and “primitive” people.

Mutual mistrust and hostility between the Americo-Liberians along the coast and the indigenous people of the interior was a recurrent theme in the country's history.

The black settlers from America established a system of government which excluded the native population from participation in the conduct of national affairs, an exclusion they “justified” on the grounds that they were the harbingers of civilisation to the natives who were not qualified to be leaders. This hegemonic control also clearly showed that Americo-Liberians considered the members of the local tribes to be inferior to them in every conceivable way.

They named the country “Liberia,” meaning “land of the free.” Yet they denied freedom to the indigenous people which they themselves took for granted as members of the civilised world.

The form of government they adopted was patterned after that of the United States. It was democratic in inspiration and even in structure but not in practice. It was a virtual dictatorship instituted to preserve, protect and promote the interests of the black settler minority from the United States.

The Liberian government was formed and controlled by the True Whig Party. The party assumed absolute control of the country and remained in power for more than 100 years until its ouster in 1980 in a military coup by a group of soldiers from the indigenous community.

The coup was launched and executed on 12 April 1980 by a group of non-commissioned army officers led by Master Sergeant Samuel Kanyon Doe.

The soldiers were members of various ethnic groups. They contended that the indigenous people were denied equal rights by the minority Americo-Liberian settlers and there was no way of redressing their grievances under a system which had excluded them from power since the founding of the nation. They were right. And there was a lot of evidence to prove that. History was on their side.

In a late-night raid on the Executive Mansion in Monrovia on April 12^th, the soldiers killed President William Tolbert. He had been president for nine years. Ten days later, they executed other Americo-Liberian leaders including most of the cabinet members. As Liberian journalist Gabriel I.H. Williams states in his book, Liberia: The Heart of Darkness: Accounts of Liberia's Civil War and Its Destabilizing Effects in West Africa:

“The popular disaffection toward (President) Tolbert found its way into the AFL (Armed Forces of Liberia) and gave rise to a watershed event in Liberian history: the dramatic coup d'etat launched by twenty-eight-year-old Master Sergeant Samuel Kanyon Doe and his youthful comrades on the morning of April 12, 1980.

President Tolbert was said to have been dragged out of bed at the Executive Mansion and dismembered, and was buried in a common grave with two dozen of his security guards.

On April 22, thirteen senior officials of the ousted government were tied to a wooden stakes on the beach behind the Barclay Training Center barracks in Monrovia and executed by a drunken firing squad, while thousands of Monrovians cheered and cameras rolled.

Those executed included Supreme Court Chief Justice James A.A. Pierre; Speaker of the House of Representatives, Richard A. Henries; President Pro-Tempore of the Senate, Frank Tolbert, who was also the elder brother of the president; and Foreign Minister C. Cecil Dennis.

Others were E. Reginald Townsend, chairman of the True Whig Party (TWP); Clarence Parker, TWP treasurer; Finance Minister James T. Phillips Jr; Commerce Minister John Sherman; Agriculture Minister Dr. Cyril Bright; Justice Minister Joseph Chesson; Planning Minister D. Franklin Neal; Budget Director Frank Stewart; and Representative Charles King.

The officials had been found guilty of high treason, rampant corruption and gross violation of human rights. However, the Special Military Tribunal, which tried them, had recommended death sentences for only four of the officials, and life sentences for the others.” – (Gabriel I.H. Williams, Liberia: The Heart of Darkness: Accounts of Liberia's Civil War and Its Destabilizing Effects in West Africa, Trafford Publishing, Bloomington, Indiana, USA, 2006, pp. 65 – 66).

The coup leaders formed the People's Redemption Council (PRC) to rule the country and brought an end to Africa's first republic. Samuel Doe became the first Liberian head of state who came from the indigenous community and who was not a member of the Americo-Liberian elite.

Liberia is one of only two countries in Africa which were founded as a home for freed slaves. The other one is Sierra Leone, founded by the British.

In October 1985, Liberia held the first post-coup elections ostensibly to legitimise Doe's regime. International observers agreed that the Liberia Action Party (LAP) led by Jackson Doe – no relation to Samuel Doe – had won the election.

After a week of counting the votes, military ruler Samuel Doe fired the election officials and replaced them with his own Special Election Committee (SECOM) which announced that Samuel Doe's ruling National Democratic Party of Liberia had won with 50.9% of the vote.

In response to that, a counter-coup was launched by Thomas Quiwonkpa on 12 November 1985. His soldiers briefly occupied the Executive Mansion and the national radio station and had widespread support throughout the country because of the atrocities committed by Samuel Doe's regime.

Doe's government regained power three days later and Quiwonkpa fled the country.

Thomas Quiwonkpa was a member of the Gio tribe from Nimba county in the northern-central part of Liberia. He was once head of the Armed Forces of Liberia. He was also one of the founding members of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), a rebel group which started the Liberian civil war on Christmas Eve in December 1989. The group was led by Charles Taylor who later became president of Liberia.

Quiwonkpa was demoted in 1983 and subsequently charged with an attempt to overthrow Doe's government. The charges forced Quiwonkpa to flee the country.

On 12 November 1985, one month after the general elections, Quiwonkpa, supported by about 24 heavily armed men, covertly entered Liberia from Sierra Leone and launched a coup against President Doe.

But the coup was a tragic failure. Quiwonkpa was later captured and killed. He was allegedly mutilated by soldiers loyal to President Doe. The soldiers were members of Doe's tribe, the Krahn, who straddle the border between Liberia and the Ivory Coast.

Joe Wylie, later Deputy Minister of Defence in the National Transitional Government of Liberia (NTGL), was among those who launched the coup.

Doe's regime intensified its repressive rule, antagonising even more people across the country.

In a massive campaign of retribution against the coup plotters and their supporters, Doe's government launched a bloody purge against the Gio and Mano ethnic groups in Quiwonkpa's Nimba County, raising alarm about a possible genocide. Doe's slaughter of an estimated 3,000 people created the opportunity for the exploitation of ethnic rivalries which later fuelled the first Liberian civil war.

Doe's troops also imprisoned more than 100 politicians, including Jackson Doe, opposed to his rule. BBC reporter Isaac Bantu was also among those imprisoned.

It was the beginning of Liberia's descent into chaos, culminating in a civil war which devastated the country as we will learn later.

Liberia: The Land, Its People, History and Culture

Author: Frank Sherman

Paperback: 348 pages

Publisher: New Africa Press (10 January 2011)

ISBN-13: 9789987160259