With the Ebola outbreak ravaging West Africa, Liberia has been thrust into the spotlight here in America. But did you realize that it’s capital city, Monrovia, is named after the fifth president of the United States, James Monroe?
That’s just one example of a deep connection between the west African nation and our own.
Have you ever taken a look at Liberia’s flag? It’s strikingly familiar. Eleven red and white stripes, with a white star on a blue field in the canton. And have a listen to their National Anthem: All Hail Liberia, Hail! The men who wrote it were American. And it’s sung in Liberia’s official language: English. In Liberia, there’s a Maryland county – and cities named Virginia and Greenville.
None of this is coincidence.
“From an American perspective it’s just a country in Africa,” said Alan Huffman, author of Mississippi in Africa. “They have no idea that we basically were responsible for creating it.”
It all goes back to 1816 - and a group called the American Colonization Society, a curious mix of prominent American slaveholders and abolitionists. Among those there at the start were future president James Monroe, Francis Scott Key of Star Spangled Banner fame, and Massachusetts’ own Daniel Webster.
“The abolitionists wanted to find a home for freed slaves and the slaveholders wanted to reduce the number of freed slaves in the advent of emancipation,” Huffman said.
By the 1820s, they had established a colony in West Africa - the area where most slaves in America came from – and freed African Americans were heading there to start a new life.
“Much like with the Native Americans in this country the indigenous people weren’t really aware what they were giving up and so there was hostility from the start,” Huffman said.
Many of the former slaves had a little money, skills and contacts in America. These Americo-Liberians, as they came to be known, built a society modeled heavily on ours. In 1847, they officially became Africa’s first Republic. Their original constitution, essentiall a modified version of ours, was drafted by a Harvard professor. And the connections didn’t end in the 19th century.
“The American culture has such great influence on us,” said Jassie Senwah, who was born and raised in Monrovia. She came to Boston in 2003, when she was 14.
Senwah says that every Liberian learns about the country’s founding in school, and that you can still see America’s reflection all over Liberian cities.
“We use the United States dollars. It’s widely used more that our own currency. The cereal that you eat here, they sell it there. The bath soap that you use here, they sell it there. Everybody knows Beyonce, they know Jay-Z, they know Kanye West. All of that is infused in our culture growing up,” she said.
But the relationship has not been without a dark side. The Americo-Liberians who established the Republic - and their decedents - remained a minority ruling-class that held power for more than 150 years.
The indigenous people felt oppressed, they felt like they didn’t have a say. Senwah, who has both indigenous and Americo-liberian roots, says that dynamic played a central role in the two bloody civil war that ravaged Liberia in the '90s and early 2000s.
“All that little tension between the Krahn people, the Gio people, the Mano people and so forth— it was fighting for power but it was fighting moreso Americo-liberians who felt like they were better than us because they were from America,” she said.
On the heels of those wars, with Liberia’s economy in tatters, and now in the midst of an ebola crisis, I asked Hoffman if the United States has an obligation to do more there, given our role in it’s founding.
“Once you set these things in motion, the argument can easily be made that we have a responsibility because we set it in motion. If nothing else because they feel that. They feel the connection with the United States,” he said.
Senwah counts herself among the many Liberians who still feel that special connection. And while most Americans remain blithely unaware of it, she says that affords her a unique opportunity to share Liberia’s story and establish new, fruitful bonds between the two nations.
“I always think it’s like a mystery. When you don’t know about it and you’re like, ‘Oh, is there’s a connection? Tell me more. That sounds exciting. I didn’t know that.’”
Email the Curiosity Desk: curiositydesk@wgbh.org.
