via “Changing My Mind”:

Abraham points out Liberia’s state seal on the wall: a ship at anchor with the inscription “The Love of Liberty Brought Us Here.” In 1822 freed American slaves (know as Americo-Liberians, or, colloquially, Congos) founded the colony at the instigation of the American Colonization Society, a coalition of slave owners and politicians whose motives are not hard to tease out. Even Liberia’s roots are sunk in bad faith. Of the first wave of emigrants, half died of yellow fever. By the end of the 1820s, a small colony of three thousand souls survived. In Liberia they built a facsimile life: plantation-style homes, white-spired churches. Hostile local Malinke tribes resented their arrive and expansion; sporadic armed battle was common. When the ACS went bankrupt in the 1840s, it demanded that the “country of Liberia” declare its independence. It was the first of many category errors: Liberia was not yet a country. Its agricultural exports were soon dwarfed by the price of imports. A pattern of European loans (and defaulting on same) began in the 1870s. The money was used to partly modernize the Black Americo-Liberian hinterlands while ignoring the impoverished indigenous interior. The relationship between the two communities is a lession in the facetitiousness of “race.” To the Americo-Liberians, these were “natives” — an illicit slave trade in Malinke people continued until the 1850s. As late as 1931, the League of Nations uncovered the use of forced indigenous labor. Abraham, in the front seat, bends his head round to Lisbeth in the back: “You know what we say to that seal? The Love of Liberty MET us here.” This is a popular Liberian joke.