Seeking help, Liberia looks home, to U.S.
July 15, 2003
BY DESIREE COOPER
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
As a nation fresh out of a war with Iraq, it's no surprise that President George W. Bush finished his five-country tour of Africa without committing American peacekeepers to Liberia. If you ask most Americans, they'd probably say that Liberian President Charles Taylor's bloody dictatorship -- which has destabilized neighboring Sierra Leone, Guinea and the Ivory Coast -- is regrettable. But what business is it of ours?
Few understand that Liberia -- along with many of its problems -- was created by America 150 years ago.
Finish what we started
In December 1831, the James Perkins left port in Norfolk, Va., with 339 passengers aboard. Included were some of the most talented people of Southampton County, Va. -- doctors, masons, blacksmiths, cobblers and carpenters.
The passengers, all former slaves, were headed for Liberia, a colony established by the U.S.-backed American Colonization Society a decade before. It had become a sort of reverse Middle Passage -- a way to rid America of the increasingly powerful blacks who had been born free or who had bought their freedom.
For their part, the blacks were less than enthusiastic about the Liberia scheme. They didn't want to leave behind enslaved family members to try their fortunes in the white-ruled colony. Many had never been to Africa; stories of the dangerous voyage and the rugged lifestyle were deterrents to emigration.
So, as a carrot, the U.S. government appropriated money to ship and resettle free blacks to Liberia. As the stick, states like Virginia passed laws forbidding freedmen fromremaining there on pain of re-enslavement. In some cases, they were terrorized until they boarded ships like the Perkins and headed for Liberia.
Upon arrival, they were blended into a strict caste system that reserved the most power and privilege for whites, followed by the former slaves, called Americo-Liberians. Removed from their land and forced into the lower rungs of society were the aborigines.
Liberia declared its independence in 1847, but tensions have continued between the elite Americo-Liberians, who make up only 5 percent of the population, and the aborigines. Last year, I interviewed Tuo, a 21-year-old Liberian refugee living in the Detroit area. "The Americo-Liberians are the educated class," he told me. "They look like Africans, but they speak like African Americans."
Since its establishment, Liberia has been treated as a U.S. protectorate. Firestone built the world's largest rubber plantation there. The CIA used it as a base for anti-Libya intelligence operations. In return, it became Africa's largest per-capita recipient of U.S. aid -- part of which was used in the 1980s to prop up corrupt dictator Samuel Doe. When the Cold War ended, so did most of the foreign aid, leaving Doe vulnerable.
In December 1989, Americo-Liberian Charles Taylor invaded Liberia. Trained in Libya, he touched off a 6-year civil war that has decimated the nation's economy and people.
Tuo was separated from his family during the war but was reunited in a Sierra Leone refugee camp. "When elephants fight," he said, "it's the grass that feels the pain."
It's no wonder that Liberians, whose flag is a cross between the Texas Lone Star and the Stars and Stripes, are looking to their homeland for help. And in this case, their homeland isn't in Africa -- it's America.
