Dreaming Liberty

The way Liberian history is told states that the country was founded by freed Blacks and former slaves, escaping the yoke of slavery. People who, through the benevolence of the American Colonization Society were ‘sent’ back to the homes of their ancestors. We have heard that the ACS founders had mixed motives for the back-to-Africa colonization movement. Again, of course they were. Quakers and Presidents, Congressmen and the wealthy and the benevolent -all Whites- all came together to decide to send people to Africa. The assumption that follows is that the emigrants who came to Liberia had little choice in the matter. No agency, we would say today.

Liberia was not founded by freed Blacks and former slaves; the country was founded by Free Blacks and former slaves. Free, not freed. Because freed Blacks and former slaves are one and the same, having been given their freedom by someone else to whom that freedom previously belonged. A Free Black was a different breed altogether.

In the first five years of colonization, between 1820 and 1825, 94% of the 423 “Pioneers” were freeborn and another 1% had purchased their freedom before deciding to emigrate. By 1830, of 1,582 emigrants from the United States to Liberia, 850 of them, or 52.8% were classified as “freeborn”. Not just “free” but they had never been enslaved. Not freed. Free to choose to leave and make Liberia their home; free to stay in America.

This was the case for emigrants like Joseph Jenkins Roberts, Stephen Allen Benson, Daniel Bashiel Warner and James Spriggs Payne…Liberia’s first four presidents. All freeborn; never enslaved.

And so what? Two hundred years later, what does it matter? Well if you are trying to understand the Liberian motto: The love of liberty brought us here, you’d do well to dissect this free-freed business. Because, for one thing, its the attitude.

When freeborn Hilary Teague sat down to write the Declaration of Independence, he was intimately aware that it was that very American Declaration of Independence that said one thing and did another…that very document, still held so dear, that was what he needed to rewrite.

It wasn’t a beneficiary of someone else’s benevolence, that could write with such anguish:

We, the people of the Republic of Liberia, were originally inhabitants of the United States of North America…we were debarred by law from all rights and privileges of man.

We were excluded from all participation in the government.

We were taxed without our consent.

We were compelled to contribute to the resources of a country which gave us no protection.

We were made a separate and distinct class, and against us every avenue of improvement was effectively closed.

-Declaration of Independence of the Republic of Liberia, July 26, 1847

Free Blacks in America sought the benefits of freedom and liberty in the face of overwhelming social ostracism and racism. They were an anomaly, a glaring contradiction in a closed society that though in terms of absolutes: freedom for Whites; slavery for Blacks. There were laws -loosely joined together to form the Black Codes- that strongly regulated the activities and behavior of blacks, especially free Blacks, who were not considered citizens. Black Codes restricted black people’s right to own property, conduct business, buy and lease land, and move freely through public spaces.

As early precursors to the Jim Crow laws in the US, the Black Codes targeted free Blacks, whether freeborn, manumitted or those who had bought their way out of slavery. For those who were born free or had lived free in the United States, the restrictions of everyday living negated the premise of freedom. The need for self-determination, for being able to earn an honest living, and educate your children (and yourselves) was strongest in those who had the title of ‘free’ without the corresponding reality.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

~ United States of America
Declaration of Independence,
July 4th, 1776

All of this led to generational frustration, not just of bondage, but of being free and not free. Or free and not at liberty to make your own decisions. Agitating against those racial and economic prejudices and being willing to work hard to make your home…that is the attitude that built Liberia.

The English settlers in America took 169 years to decide to fight for independence by 1776; the Black emigrants to Liberia began agitating for self rule by 1825, five years after the first ship landed. They achieved co-leadership of the Commonwealth of Liberia within 15 years, and eventually declared independence just 27 years after the first landing of American emigrants in Africa.

Freeborn Elijah Johnson had fought for America to keep its freedom from the British in 1812. He emigrated to Africa on the first ship, the Elizabeth in 1820. The story is told of how, facing dire circumstances, with only about 25 fighting-age men and dwindling supplies, the discouraged agent of the American Colonization Society had left for supplies. Elijah Johnson was left in charge of the colony even as the settlers were on the brink of

annihilation from tribesmen seeking to drive them off the land that had been purchased.

Just when hope seemed lost, a British warship arrived, bringing food, supplies, and military support. Midshipman Gordon proposed raising the British flag to deter the attacking tribesmen, signaling that they were on British Crown territory. As a war veteran, Johnson understood the implications of raising a flag on this new territory that he now called home.

On this day, on the hill that would be given the name Crown Hill, Elijah shook his head slowly.

“No sir!” he said. “We ain’t gone do that. We ain’t gone put no flag up there that’s gonna cost us more to take down than it will to whup the others.”

Johnson’s refusal highlighted the settlers’ desire for autonomy and resistance to external rule, choosing to fight to the death for their own sovereignty rather than submit to British authority. His decision underscored a broader resistance to colonial power and the struggle for self-determination among the settlers.

This was 19th century FUBU (For Us, By Us).

By the time Joseph Jenkins Roberts boarded the ship The Harriet in February of 1829, his colleague and compatriot David Walker had already written out his Appeal: “Are we men!! I ask you…are we men?” Walker, like many other early Black leaders, was scathing against colonization or of anything short of complete equality of the races and liberty as citizens in America. But JJ Roberts, at 20 years old was already a successful and well-off merchant in Petersburg, Virginia. However, he could not vote in America and whatever property he owned was vulnerable to “the Curse of Laws” since it could legally be taken away at any time. JJ Roberts answered Walker’s Appeal by grabbing his liberty with both hands and leaving for Liberia.

And when the Liberian settlers fought to establish a Commonwealth with some fraction of self-rule, Joseph Roberts was the first Deputy Governor they chose. When the White Governor died in 1841, Roberts became Governor of the Commonwealth of settlements that formed Liberia. And when the country decided on independence, he was the first elected President at just

38 years old. Bold, well-educated and passionately independent, his story defines the trajectory of the country he helped to create.

President Roberts’ attitude took him right away to London, a few months after his election. There, he secured the first recognition of a sovereign Liberia from Queen Victoria. One would forget that it was the very British who seized boats owned by a Liberian and mocked the colony when they tried to get it back. The Governor of Freetown called Liberia “a mere philanthropic project of a benevolent society”. With nothing to lose, the Pioneers had declared their independence. And here was the British Queen being the first to recognize the Republic of Liberia.

Queen Victoria even gifted the Liberian President with 2 gunboats, the Lark and the Quail. Upon his return to Liberia, it was to freeborn Reid Cooper, a lifelong boat man, that President Roberts entrusted the setting up of the first Liberian Navy. In the era of unrepentant slave trade still going on in some of the obscure waterways, Commodore Cooper, the Lark and the Quail proved formidable opponents. Meanwhile, back in the USA, no Black person could legally operate boats.

Attitude!

Edward James Roye, Liberia’s fifth president, journeyed to his former homeland and negotiated the first navigation treaty with the US, so that Liberian-flagged ships could have the right of entry into US ports. His dream of establishing the first railroad into the interior of the country was cut short when he was overthrown by the people.

But it wasn’t all rosy for the Pioneers. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, especially in the wake of the Berlin Conference of 1885, where Africa was carved up and divided amongst European powers, the Republic of Liberia and the Ethiopian empire were especially vulnerable.

Liberia escaped recolonization but she lost much of her territory. With powerful France colonizing the lands to the north and east; and Great Britain colonizing Sierra Leone to the west, territorial encroachments on Liberian soil was a constant threat from the 19th century through to the 1940s.

When the League of Nations was formed in the wake of World War I, Liberia was a founding member. But even though Liberia’s experience with the League of Nations was less than laudable, Liberia was still the only Black African country (along with Ethiopia and an apartheid South Africa) to have been a member of the League of Nations and the United Nations.

So when World War II broke out, Liberia allied itself with the United States and allowed its territory to serve as a military base for US troops and equipment. Liberia’s President Tubman then proceeded to guide the Republic through the maze of a fruitful and less risky relationship with America, a relationship that saw infrastructure built and the birth of the only economic boom Liberia has ever had.

In 1945, when the United Nations was formed to ensure that “Never again” would war be allowed to destroy so much, Liberia was at that table. Liberia helped to create the institutions of the UN as they were conceived. And Liberia signed the UN Charter in June 1945.

A Liberian lawyer, Richard Abrom Henries, standing third from the left in the photo below, was on the committee that drafted the UN Charter and its by-laws.

Liberia also fought for each emerging African nation as they gained independence, to join the United Nations. It was Liberia who brought a legal case against South Africa for the freedom of Namibia. Ethiopia filed a case as well and eventually, both cases were joined into one. But in a shameful repeat of the League of Nations’ one-sided rulings, the UN sided with South Africa, allowing apartheid to continue.

The Liberian diplomat, Henry Ford Cooper had suffered humiliation as one of Liberia’s representatives to the League of Nations in 1930; and as Liberia’s Ambassador to Berlin, had heroically smuggled dozens of Jews out of Germany during World War II. In 1961 as Liberia’s Ambassador to the United Nations, he launched a scathing attack on the South African Ambassador for mis-representing their apartheid regime. Demanding that the Ambassador’s speech be stricken off the

records of the UN, he called the speech “an insult to every African here, and to every man of intelligence.” His position led to a rare censure of the South African government by a vote of 67 for to South Africa’s lone vote against.

That’s attitude! And it carried through to Angie Brooks Randolph, Africa’s first woman President of the UN General Assembly. On the Trusteeship Committee, she fought for those nations who had fallen into global oversight as Protectorates, like Liberia had almost been.

Liberia’s attitude attracted many other Africans from all over the world. From Barbados in 1865, and Haiti in the 1950s; from Ghana, Togo and Sierra Leone, but also from Jamaica and other Caribbean countries.

In the words of Elijah Johnson: “Here we have found a home and here we shall remain.”