I am David Gaines

During Liberia’s civil war in the 1990s and early 2000s, I thought the two [or three or more] warring sides were all descendants of the freed American slaves who “founded” the country. I felt disappointed that the freed American slaves’ country had essentially self-destructed in the worst way. Blood diamonds, child soldiers, Charles Taylor — you couldn’t make this stuff up and it was playing out for the world to shake its head and say, “I told you so…”

And then I started reading more about African history and Liberia specifically. Come to find out, those freed American slaves, led by Elijah Johnson, landed in west African in 1820 and immediately began a campaign of hijacking the land from the natives and creating the country of Liberia, subjecting the millions of people already there to their rule. These freed American slaves and their descendants became the elite, the upper class, the rulers of the subservient and unfortunate families and tribes who existed there for thousands of years.

Several months ago I read Agnes Fallah Kamara-Umunna’s book And Still Peace Did Not Come about her life growing up in Liberia during its chaotic civil war days. From her book, as well as a few others I’ve read, I started to conclude that Liberia’s issues actually started when the first group of freed American slaves washed up ashore some 180 years ago.

Taking the perspective of a native, it became easy to say the “Congo People,” as the descendants of the freed American slaves were called, were the root of the issue. They were no better than those who enslaved them back in America. Well, they were a lesser evil.

But then, I just finished reading The House at Sugar Beach by Helene Cooper, a descendant of Elijah Johnson himself. She tells her story of growing up in Liberia just as all hell was about to break out and what life was like as she and her family fled Liberia back to America.

But it’s a book deeper than one woman’s story or the history of a country in turmoil. Being half-Black and half-Korean [aka Koreagro, Blasian, BlacKorean, whatever] myself, the search for her identity was profound. One moment she’s of top shelf in a country where her great-great-great-great-grandfather was known by all; the next she’s a foreigner at Dudley High School in Greensboro, NC, [just down the street from North Carolina A&T] resting at the bottom of the food chain, eating her lunches in the library with no friends. Her fall from grace was immediate and impossible for me to wrap my mind around.

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