Located on the west coast of Africa, Liberia has a population of 3,441,790 and is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the southwest, Sierra Leone on the northwest, Guinea on the east, and Côte d’Ivoire on the southeast. Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia are known as the three Mano River Union countries of West Africa.
Liberia was named using the Latin word, liber, meaning “free.” In 1820, the first groups of repatriated slaves from the United States, referred to as Americo-Liberians, and a second group of former slaves from the West Indies and Africa, the Congoes, were sent to this West African country, inhabited already by a variety of indigenous Africans. These newcomers did not govern themselves initially; the country was run by wealthy, White administrators from the American Colonization Society. In 1839, Liberia was declared the Commonwealth of Liberia, and in 1841, Joseph Jenkins Roberts was elected the first black governor. Liberia received independence in 1847, becoming the...
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Suggested Readings
Ellis, S. (1999). The mask of anarchy: The destruction of Liberia and the religious dimension of an African civil war. New York: New York University Press.
Fraenkel, M. (1964). Tribe and class in Monrovia. London: University Oxford Press.
Gifford, P. (1993). Christianity and politics in Doe’s Liberia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gifford, P. (1998). African Christianity: Its public role. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Potocky-Tripodi, M. (2002). Best practices for social work with refugees and immigrants. New York: Columbia University Press.
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For information on the Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved May 13, 2011, from http://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html
For information on the United Nations High Commissioners for Refugees statistics. Retrieved May 13, 2011, from http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49c3646c4d6.html
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Nsonwu, M.B. (2012). Liberia. In: Loue, S., Sajatovic, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Immigrant Health. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-5659-0_459
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