Carl Patrick Burrowes, Ph. D. is Liberia’s leading historian. He’s served as Vice President for Academic Affairs at Cuttington University, Liberia, and Carter G. Woodson Distinguished Professor at Marshall University. Burrowes is the author of Between the Kola Forest and the Salty Sea: A History of the Liberia People Before 1800 and Power and Press Freedom in Liberia, 1830 to 1970. He is also co-author, The Historical Dictionary of Liberia. His research has received awards from the International Communication Association and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications. Patrick earned a Ph. D. in Communications, Temple University, 1994. More information on the author is available at patricksplace.org.

Discussing Liberian History and Narratives With Historian Dr. Patrick Burrowes

Dr. C. Patrick Burrowes Lecture in Liberia 3-2-22

Liberian History MID 1800’s

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Liberia comprises of sixteen major indigenous ethnic groups, one of which is the Kru. Although much has been said about these people by external narrators, two of their many sons and daughters now tell the story from within, asserting that no one can better tell a people’s story than the people themselves.

The Kru: A Short Biography

“The sight of a large number of Kroomen canoeing along the coast, singing a chorus as they rowed, was a familiar one.” So runs a Joline Young commentary on one of the sixteen African ethnic groups of Liberia. It’s these people whose story is now being told by two of their offspring. Read and be touched by the story of these people once known in the maritime world for their hard work and their fortitude: They are the Kru of Liberia!

Plenyono Gbe Wolo

The First African To Graduate From Harvard

Educator, theologian, and lawyer Plenyono Gbe Wolo (circa 1890-1940) was the first Black African to graduate from Harvard University receiving an AB in 1917. The son of the chief of the Kru ethnic group, Wolo was born around 1890 in the village of Grand Cess, Liberia. At a young age he met Methodist Episcopal Church missionary Reverend James Boas Robertson who encouraged him to study at Monrovia Seminary. Wolo enrolled at the seminary and was placed under the care of Alexander P. Camphor and Mamie Camphor, two African American Methodist Episcopal missionaries. Alexander Camphor was the principal of Monrovia Seminary, founder of the College of West Africa, and eventual first bishop of Africa elected by the United Methodist Church (1916).

With support from the missionary community including Camphor, Reverend Percy S. Grant, and fellow Kru member Didhwe Twe, Wolo traveled to the United States in 1910 to attend Mount Hermon School in Northfield, Massachusetts, where he hoped to study scientific agriculture (see article “Mount Hermon’s African Students, 1898-1918” by Sean Foley). After graduating from Mount Hermon in 1913 Wolo continued his education at Harvard University where his interests shifted towards theology and education. Wolo excelled in English and was one of 54 men exempted from a second semester of the class in 1914. Wolo was a member of the Harvard University Christian Association, the Harvard International Polity Club, and treasurer of the Cosmopolitan Club, a social club for foreign students.

Following graduation from Harvard University in 1917, Wolo received an AM from the Teachers College at Columbia University (1919), and a BD from Union Theological Seminary (1922).

Homesick, Wolo returned to Grand Cess, Liberia, in 1922 to start a day school for children. He was interested in educating the indigenous people of Liberia using a curriculum that incorporated local practices and addressed community specific needs in health, agriculture, and industry. In 1926 he became an Assistant Regional Manager for the Firestone Rubber Company where he assisted in labor disputes on two plantations. In 1929 he received an LLB from the Liberian Bar. He also served as Secretary to the International Commission of Inquiry into the Existence of Slavery and Forced Labor in the Republic of Liberia (1930), a professor of Economics at the College of West Africa (1937), Assistant Secretary of the Educational Board of Liberia (1930), and Director of the Banking Corporation of Liberia (1930).

Benefactors throughout Wolo’s lifetime included Emeline Fletcher Dickerson (Northfield Seminary for Young Ladies), Professor Reverend George Alexander Johnston Ross (Union Theological Seminary), William R. Moody (Mount Hermon School), A. Lawrence Lowell (Harvard University), and Anson Phelps Stokes (Phelps Stokes Fund).

Wolo married Djuah Weeks in 1925 (divorced 1936), Malisa Dennis-Wolo in 1936 (died 1938), and Mary Elizabeth Hansford in 1940. Wolo died of pneumonia in Monrovia, Liberia, in June 1940.

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Presidents of Liberia: Joseph Jenkins Roberts

Joseph Jenkins Roberts (March 15, 1809 – February 24, 1876) was an African-American merchant who emigrated to Liberia in 1829, where he became a politician. Elected as the first (1848–1856) and seventh (1872–1876) president of Liberia after independence, he was the first man of African descent to govern the country, serving previously as governor from 1841 to 1848. Born free in Norfolk, Virginia, Roberts emigrated as a young man with his mother, siblings, wife, and child to the young West African colony. He opened a trading firm in Monrovia and later engaged in politics.

Presidents of Liberia: Stephen Allen Benson

Stephen Allen Benson (May 21, 1816 – January 24, 1865) was a Liberian politician who served as the second president of Liberia from 1856 to 1864. Prior to that, he served as the third vice president of Liberia from 1854 to 1856 under President Joseph Jenkins Roberts. Born in the United States, Benson was the first president to have lived in Liberia since childhood, having arrived with his family in 1822.

Presidents of Liberia: Daniel Bashiel Warner

Daniel Bashiel Warner (April 19, 1815 – December 1, 1880) served as the third president of Liberia from 1864 to 1868. Prior to this, he served as the third Secretary of State in the cabinet of Joseph Jenkins Roberts from 1854 to 1856 and the fifth vice president of Liberia under President Stephen Allen Benson from 1860 to 1864.

Presidents of Liberia: James Spriggs Payne

Payne was born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1819 to free mixed-race parents. Payne grew up in a deeply religious Methodist family and was a devout Christian. His father, David M. Payne, was a Methodist minister and was ordained a deacon by the Virginia Conference in 1824. Payne was noted for having a rather light complexion, with some estimates claiming that he was indeed an octoroon—having seven-eights European ancestry and one-eighth African ancestry. When Payne was ten years old, his family emigrated to Liberia on the ship The Harriet, the same ship as Joseph Jenkins Roberts, Liberia’s future first president, under the auspices of the American Colonization Society.

Presidents of Liberia: Edward James Roy

Edward James Roye (February 3, 1815 – February 11, 1872) served as the fifth president of Liberia from 1870 to his overthrow in 1871 and subsequent death. He had previously served as the fourth Chief Justice of Liberia from 1865 until 1868. He was the first member of Liberia’s True Whig Party to serve as president.

Presidents of Liberia: James Skivring Smith

James Skivring Smith (February 26, 1825 – 1892) was a Liberian politician who served as the sixth president of Liberia from 1871 to 1872. Prior to this, he served as the eighth vice president of Liberia from 1870 to 1871 under President Edward James Roye and as Secretary of State from 1856 to 1860 in the cabinet of President Stephen Allen Benson. He was a member of the True Whig Party.

Presidents of Liberia: Joseph Jenkins Roberts & James Spriggs Payne

Presidents of Liberia: Anthony W. Gardiner

Anthony William Gardiner served as the ninth president of Liberia from 1878 until 1883. He was the first of a series of True Whig presidents who held power uninterruptedly until 1980. Gardiner was born in Southampton County, Virginia in the United States. In 1831, in the wake of Nat Turner’s Slave Rebellion in Southampton, when Gardiner was still a child, his was one of the families who relocated to Liberia under the sponsorship of the American Colonization Society. Gardiner received his law degree in Liberia and, in 1847, he served as a delegate to the National Convention, which drafted Liberia’s declaration of independence and constitution. He became Liberia’s first attorney general and later served in the House of Representatives of Liberia from 1855 to 1871. He served as Speaker of the House of Representatives 1860–1861. In May 1871, he was elected vice-president and was elected once again, serving until 1876. During the incapacitation of President Joseph Jenkins Roberts from 1875 until early 1876, Gardiner was also acting president.
Less than two years after leaving office as acting president, Gardiner won election to the presidency, taking office in 1878. In the same election, the True Whig Party won a massive victory and proceeded to dominate Liberian politics until a coup d’état in 1980 ended almost a century and a half of minority rule by the Americo-Liberians.

Presidents of Liberia: Alfred Francis Russell

Alfred Francis Russell was an Americo-Liberian missionary, planter, and politician who served as tenth president of Liberia from 1883 to 1884 after serving as vice-president under Anthony William Gardiner, whom he succeeded as president. Born in Lexington, Kentucky, Russell was emancipated in 1833 (with his mother Amelie “Milly” Crawford) by their mistress Mary Owen Todd Russell Wickliffe (Russell’s grandmother through his white father). Wickliffe also emancipated his cousin, Lucretia Russell, and her four children. Both families emigrated together from the United States to Liberia that year. Alfred F. Russell later married and had a daughter by the name of Julia Ann, who later married John Douglas Simpson one of the first black congressmen from Florida, United States. They both had several children including Alpha Douglas Simpson, father of former Vice President of Liberia Clarence L. Simpson Sr. Alfred Russell served as a Methodist missionary and later owned a large coffee and sugarcane farm. Russell continued to serve as a Methodist minister after entering politics; he was also elected to the Liberian Senate, and served as President Pro Tempore of the Senate of Liberia.

Presidents of Liberia: Joseph James Cheeseman

Joseph James Cheeseman was the 12th president of Liberia. Born at Edina in Grand Bassa County, he was elected three times on the True Whig ticket. Cheeseman was educated at Liberia College (now University of Liberia). In the decades after 1868, escalating economic difficulties weakened the state’s dominance over the coastal indigenous population. Conditions worsened, as the cost of imports was far greater than the income generated by exports of coffee, rice, palm oil, sugarcane, and timber. Liberia tried desperately to modernize its largely agricultural economy.

Presidents of Liberia: William David Coleman

William David Coleman was an Americo-Liberian politician. A True Whig Party member, he served as the 13th president of Liberia from 1896 to 1900. Born in Fayette County, Kentucky, United States, he emigrated to Liberia in 1853. In 1877, he was elected to the House of Representatives and served as Speaker of the House of Representatives until 1879. Later he served in the Senate and then as vice president before assuming the presidency when Joseph James Cheeseman died in office.

Presidents of Liberia: Garretson W. Gibson

Garretson Warner Gibson was the 14th president of Liberia from 1900 to 1904. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, his family emigrated to Liberia in 1845. After receiving an education in mission schools, he returned to Maryland to study theology.

Presidents of Liberia: Arthur Barclay, 15th President of Liberia

Arthur Barclay was president from 1904 to 1912. In addition to continued internal unrest, the country faced a severe economic crisis and huge indebtedness to European creditors. In the decades after 1868, escalating economic difficulties weakened the state’s dominance over the coastal indigenous population. Conditions worsened, as the cost of imports was far greater than the income generated by exports of coffee, rice, palm oil, sugarcane, and timber. Liberia tried desperately to modernize its largely agricultural economy.

Presidents of Liberia: Daniel E. Howard

Howard was elected president in 1911 and assumed office on 1 January 1912. With the outbreak of World War I, he attempted to maintain the country’s neutrality, though he tended to support the Allies, whose colonial territories in Africa surrounded Liberia. Despite German protests, he allowed the French to operate a wireless station in the capital, Monrovia. Realizing that their complaints were in vain, the Germans sent a submarine to attack the city in 1917, forcing the reluctant Howard to side with the Allies and declare war on Germany. Howard remained in office for two years after the war’s end. He died in Monrovia in 1935.

Presidents of Liberia: Charles D. B. King

Charles Dunbar Burgess King was a Liberian politician who served as the 17th president of Liberia from 1920 to 1930. He was of Americo-Liberian and Sierra Leone Creole descent. He was a member of the True Whig Party, which ruled the country from 1878 until 1980. King was Attorney General from 1904 until 1912, and Secretary of State of Liberia from 1912 until he was elected president in 1919. In this capacity, he attended the 1919 Paris Peace Conference and the accompanying First Pan-African Congress. Though a moderate supporter of reform, he continued to support the patronage machine and corrupt dominance of the True Whig Party.

Presidents of Liberia: Edwin J. Barclay

Edwin James Barclay was a Liberian politician, poet, and musician who served as the 18th president of Liberia from 1930 until 1944. He was a member of the True Whig political party, which dominated the political governance of the country for decades.

Presidents of Liberia: William V. S. Tubman – Africa First Dictator

William Vacanarat Shadrach Tubman was a Liberian politician. He was the 19th president of Liberia and the longest-serving president in the country’s history, serving from his election in 1944 until his death in 1971.

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2Pac’s Biological Father Billy Garland Disappointed With Biopic

After more than 35 years in prison, Mutulu Shakur, Tupac Shakur’s stepfather, will be released on parole on Dec. 16, when he’ll spend what are expected to be his final days among family and friends.

The U.S. Parole Commission in October granted a request to release Shakur, an activist and holistic health care advocate, now 72, according to court documents obtained by NBC News. The decision to grant parole was made public on Thursday.

Shakur has several health issues, most notably stage-3 multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that can affect the bones and kidneys. He is being held at a federal medical center in Lexington, a prison in Kentucky for incarcerated people who require care.

“There are a lot of tears of joy,” Jomo Muhammad, an organizer with the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, who has been working to free Shakur, said of the decision. “There’s still disbelief because we were steadying ourselves for another denial. Now folks are excited about being able to reunite Mutulu with his family. We were crying together. It’s a long time overdue.”

Shakur has been incarcerated for decades stemming from a 1988 conviction for leading a group of revolutionaries in a string of armed robberies in New York and Connecticut, including one that left three people dead. His supporters consider him to be a “political prisoner,” arguing that authorities wanted to make an example of him because of his activism. Read More

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How Chinese Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa

The Myth of the Chinese Debt Trap in Africa

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Malcolm X Day is an American holiday in honor of Malcolm X that is celebrated on either May 19 or the third Friday of May. The commemoration of the civil rights leader has been proposed as an official state holiday in the U.S. state of Illinois in 2015 and Missouri as recent as 2019.

The post Celebrating Malcolm X first appeared on MyBlack Planet.

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The African continent saw a significant increase in coups in the last year-and-a-half, with military figures carrying out takeovers in Burkina Faso, Sudan, Guinea, Chad and Mali. After Sudan’s coup in October 2021, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres spoke of “an epidemic” of coups, including the events in Africa and a February 2021 coup in Myanmar. He described an “environment in which some military leaders feel they have total impunity” and “can do whatever they want because nothing will happen to them.”

Coups in Africa had been declining for much of the past two decades. In the 10 years before 2021, there had been on average less than one successful coup per year, according to U.S. researchers Jonathan Powell and Clayton Thyne at the University of Central Florida and the University of Kentucky, respectively, who consolidated their findings on their Arrested Dictatorship website.

The latest power grabs in Africa have raised concerns that the region could be backsliding from its progress toward greater democracy. Read More…

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William Richard Tolbert Jr. was the 20th President of Liberia, a position he held from 1971 until 1980, when he was killed in a coup d’état led by Samuel Doe. Trained as a civil servant, he entered the country’s House of Representatives in 1943 for the True Whig Party, then the only established party in the country.

https://youtu.be/t404rjrO-Qo

The post Celebrating The 20th President Of Liberia William Richard Tolbert Jr. On His Birthday – May 13, 1913 first appeared on MyBlack Planet.

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Tariq Nasheed: Does Africa Owe Reparations to FBA Too?

Who’s Ready To Call Africa Out For Its Role In SLAVERY?

The post Does Africa Owe Reparations To African Americans For Thier Role In The Slave Trade? first appeared on MyBlack Planet.

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