A House with Two Rooms - The Advocates for Human Rights

practices as superior to practices of indigenous Africans. Statement givers opined that, “[w]hen the exslaves
arrived in Liberia from the United States, they brought with them segregation. They drew a line
between themselves and the indigenous people of West Africa.” 129 Even the leadership reflected this
sense of superiority, as Liberia’s first president, J.J. Roberts, reportedly called indigenous Liberians “a
heathen and barbarous people.” 130
Americo-Liberians demonstrated their contempt for indigenous culture
in many ways: by their reluctance to marry indigenous Liberian women
with whom they had informal liaisons, by their ceaseless efforts to convert
indigenous Liberians to Christianity, by ordinances against public nudity…,
by efforts to replace indigenous Liberian traditional land ownership (based
on use and need) with private ownership, and by de facto segregation in
towns. 131
This attitude set the stage for systematic exclusion
and marginalization of indigenous Liberians as
settlers consolidated power. While Americo-
Liberians constituted only a small percentage of the
population, 132 this small minority group effectively
dominated the majority indigenous Africans
politically, economically, and socially for more than
100 years. Americo-Liberians were, as historian
Stephen Ellis writes, “as much a social and political
class, a type of aristocracy, as they were a true ethnic
group.” 133
During the years of settler rule in Liberia,
government policies focused on consolidation
of power among the ruling elite in Monrovia. In
addition to establishing an indirect rule system to
collect taxes from the hinterland for the central
government, 134 the government used the Liberian
Frontier Force to “quell internative conflict, collect
taxes, and enforce government mandates.” 135
Historians and statement givers alike describe
violence and intimidation inflicted in the interior by the Liberian Frontier Force. 136 In the Liberian
Frontier Force and its successor, the AFL, the officer corps was made up of Americo-Liberians, while
the rank and file soldiers were indigenous Liberians. 137 Such a system began to provide incentives for
consolidation of loyalty to the state among indigenous Liberians who gained benefits from aligning
with the settler elites.
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