Liberian immigrants
Liberian immigrants trace their origins back to the early 19th century when free-born African Americans settled in Liberia, seeking a new life away from the oppressive social conditions in the United States. These settlers, known as Americo-Liberians, were joined by individuals liberated from the transatlantic slave trade and indigenous populations, forming a diverse societal landscape. Liberia declared its independence in 1847, becoming a unique case in sub-Saharan Africa, as it was not colonized by European powers. However, the political and economic authority remained largely in the hands of Americo-Liberians until the late 20th century when significant political upheaval occurred.
During the civil war that erupted in the late 1980s, many Liberians sought refuge in the United States, leading to a notable immigration wave. Between the early 1990s and the early 2000s, approximately 20,000 Liberians resettled in the U.S., primarily in Rhode Island, often maintaining familial and cultural ties with their ancestral homeland. The U.S. government introduced temporary protected status (TPS) to assist these immigrants amidst the ongoing conflict. However, TPS was set to end in 2007, creating uncertainty for many Liberians who had established lives in the U.S. Efforts to secure permanent residency for these immigrants have been ongoing, reflecting the challenges faced by Liberians as they navigate their identity and status in the context of a fragile home country.
Liberian immigrants
- IDENTIFICATION: West African nation that originated as a refuge for formerly enslaved Americans
SIGNIFICANCE: Since its founding, Liberia has had a unique relationship with the United States. Its history is closely linked to American slavery and the abolitionist movement in the US. It was founded as a colony for formerly enslaved African American and free Black individuals, who were encouraged to emigrate from the US during the early nineteenth century. In the early twentieth century, a Black nationalist movement in the US attempted to send more settlers to Liberia.
Liberia’s first American settlers were eighty-eight free-born African Americans who arrived in 1820 and settled at Cape Mesurado, at the mouth of the St. Paul River. Most of these people were educated and free, and many owned property in Maryland and Virginia. Although they had not been born into slavery in the United States, they had not enjoyed full citizenship rights as Americans. By the time Liberia declared its independence in 1847, several thousand more free-born African Americans and former enslaved people had joined them in the new nation. These original immigrants and their descendants were afterward known as Americo-Liberians.
Liberia’s Early Immigrants
By 1824, the original Cape Mesurado Colony was home to several hundred settlers and had been renamed the Liberia Colony. Throughout the 1820s, other colonies were established along the coast. These included New Georgia, which was settled by Africans from other parts of the continent who had been liberated from slave ships by US naval vessels while they were being carried to the Western Hemisphere. After these people were set free in the new colony, they became known as “Congos.”
Meanwhile, several additional colonies were established under the sponsorship of colonization societies, including the American Colonization Society, and the state legislatures of Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. The colonies expanded along Liberia’s coast throughout the 1830s and 1840s. The population of the region was made up of three distinct groups of people: the original settlers from America, enslaved Africans who had been liberated from slave ships, and the region’s Indigenous peoples, primarily from Malinké-speaking societies. Americo-Liberians and Congos would always constitute a small minority of the total population of Liberia, but they dominated the politics and economy of Liberia through the nineteenth century and most of the twentieth century. By the twenty-first century, however, average Liberians no longer made distinctions among descendants of the original settlers of Liberia.
By 1847, when the Republic of Liberia declared its independence, approximately 15,000 Americans had settled in the country, along with a few thousand newly so-called Congos. Several European nations quickly established diplomatic relations with Liberia, but the United States did not recognize the new nation until 1862.
Twentieth Century Liberia
Liberia was long an anomaly in sub-Saharan Africa, most of which was colonized by European nations during the late nineteenth century. By the twentieth century, Liberia and Ethiopia were the only sub-Saharan countries that had not been colonized by Europe, but Liberia differed from Ethiopia, on the other side of the continent, in being politically dominated by non-African settlers, most of whom came from the United States. The country’s Americo-Liberian rulers did not even recognize members of Liberia’s Indigenous societies as citizens of the new nation until 1904. During the 1920s, Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association tried to start a new resettlement program to send African Americans to Liberia, but only a small number of people emigrated to the country.
Meanwhile, Liberia developed painfully slowly. Even its borders with its colonial neighbors remained poorly defined until well into the twentieth century. In his 1936 book, Journey Without Maps, author Graham Greene trekked 350 miles through Liberia’s rainforests. The only map available at the time from the US government showed a wide swath of Liberia as being unexplored, with a vast, empty space fancifully labeled “cannibals.”
The Americo-Liberians governed Liberia through a single party. Although their governments were often corrupt, the country remained relatively stable until 1980, when an army sergeant named Samuel K. Doe brought down the government in a swift coup and had its Americo-Liberian leaders executed. Afterward, ethnic tensions increased until 1989, when Doe’s former chief of procurement, Charles Taylor, invaded Liberia from neighboring Côte d’Ivoire and took control of the government. Taylor’s regime was marked by a long, bloody civil war, during which 200,000 Liberians died, and about one-third of the nation’s population fled to neighboring countries. Thousands of Liberians who had the means to do so fled their war-torn nation and sought refuge in the United States, essentially reversing the trend of Americans returning to the shores of West Africa. Liberia’s civil war officially ended in August 2003, when all the warring parties agreed to a cease-fire. However, by then, much of Liberia lay in ruins, and a massive humanitarian disaster existed.
Liberian Immigration to the United States
From the early 1990s through the first years of the twenty-first century, nearly 20,000 Liberians settled in the United States. Nearly three-quarters of them resided in Rhode Island. Many of them were descendants of enslaved African Americans who had long maintained ties with their extended family members in the United States. In seeking refuge, they began returning to the homeland of their ancestors, the United States. To afford these new immigrants legal protection, the US government began granting them temporary protected status (TPS) in 1991. By 2005, TPS had been extended to thousands of Liberians, many of whom had been living in the United States for a decade or more and had either renewed or established new family, social, and economic ties. In September 2006, the US Department of Homeland Security announced that the TPS program would stop on October 1, 2007, effectively ending the refugee status Liberian immigrants had enjoyed. However, Liberians already registered under TPS were allowed to remain in the United States under Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) status into March 2009.
Because Liberia remained in a fragile state with a weak economy and nearly nonexistent infrastructure, many US government leaders asserted that forcing the return of nearly 20,000 immigrants to Liberia could easily overwhelm the frail nation. To address the issue, the Liberian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act of 2007 (LRIF) was introduced in the US Senate in February 2007. A similar bill, the Liberian Refugee Immigration Protection Act of 2007, was introduced in the US House of Representatives in April 2007 and subsequently referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary and the Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law. Both forms of legislation were designed to permit eligible Liberians living in the United States to apply for permanent resident status.
As that extension was about to expire, President Barack Obama signed an order allowing the Liberians to remain in the United States for another year. Similar memorandums continued extending this protection until a wind-down period was set to begin in March 2018 and end one year later. President Donald Trump extended the wind-down period through January 2021, allowing those who qualified under LRIF to apply for permanent residency. In January 2021, President Joe Biden reinstated DED and some work authorizations for Liberians through June 2022, which he extended through June 2024 and again through June 2026.
Bibliography
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Smith, James Wesley. Sojourners in Search of Freedom: The Settlement of Liberia by Black Americans. UP of America, 1987.
“S.2161—Liberian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act of 2015.” Congress.gov, Library of Congress, 7 Oct. 2015, www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/2161. Accessed 25 Jan. 2025.