Liberia, the World, and Africa

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Description for Program

The objective of our roundtable is to discuss the latest scholarly trends for appreciating the significant and complex place of Liberia in Global Africa and the larger world from nineteenth century onward. The first exogenous settlers, comprising free and formerly enslaved African-descended people from the United States and later Barbados, arrived in 1822 in what became Liberia. They came to be known as “Americo-Liberians.” In 1847, Liberia declared independence, making it the first republic on the continent and the second Black republic in the world, with the motto “The Love of Liberty Brought Us Here.” From its beginning, Liberia generated immense debate among the African-descended globally. Some viewed the West African republic as a symbol of freedom for Black people everywhere, while others disparaged Liberia as a settler colonial state for its violence against Indigenes and alliances with the racist American Colonization Society and U.S. imperialism. Recent scholarship has highlighted the importance of Liberia to nineteenth-century West Africa and to the making of Global Africa; the resilience of Liberian communities on the continent and in diaspora; the visibility of women in and the gendered contours of Liberian life and culture on and off the continent; the erasure of Liberia from scholarship on Black internationalism; and the Liberian civil war. This roundtable, comprising junior and senior multi- and interdisciplinary scholars from the United States and Liberia, is at the forefront in charting new scholarship of this West African nation. Topics of discussion include Liberia in relation to Black internationalism, slavery, abolition, settler colonialism, Pan-Africanism, women, gender, indigeneity, culture, Garveyism, migration, religion, the Midwest, community formation, and memory. We look forward to a lively conversation about the brilliance, significance, paradoxes, and possibilities of Liberia and its people, then and now.

Sub Unit

• ASWAD

Chair

• Erik McDuffie

Presenters

• Yolanda Covington-Ward

• Krystal A. Smalls, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Elijah Robert Zehyoue, Emory University