By: ralph geeplay
Susana Lewis and her peers decorate the flag
The struggle for self determination and rule, Liberia ’s constant battle to govern itself since its foundation is still a work in progress after 164 years of independence. There has been many hitches and glitches in the nation’s history to progress because the premise and promise that informed its establishment have been upset, but a people’s resilience to live in their ancestral homeland despite the many odds put in their path has been their only inspiration.
These are the hurdles to
Historians say, the emergence of the nation in the 1800s was a clarion call for liberty, since the interplay of events leading to
There were high hopes that
The great Liberian patriot and academic Edward Wilmot Blyden who immigrated to
The Liberia that finally gained independence in 1847 was a nation still deeply planted in the American South, with plantation minded zealots not quite ready to lead the nation and understand what W. E. B. Dubose would called “…a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity,” at what was the sad state of governance in Liberia, through out the country's history.
The segregation instituted by the Liberian Republican Party (LRP) which began it all in 1848, gave rise to the dominant True Whig Party (TWP) of darker the skin group, of 1869. The TWP was founded to oppose the LRP (which was mainly composed of the lighter skin settlers), and to wrestle power away; it did and continued the same old segregation, and the abuse of power.
It is also known that beginning in 1980 as the TWP reign of error and terror ended; Samuel Doe came into the picture. His PRC-NDPL, mostly controlled by his henchmen began their horror and havoc persecuting almost everyone, including the various indigenous tribes, until he was kicked out of the
Even in 1919 when Liberia joined western nations ratifying the convention of the League of Nations, a brain child of President Woodrow Wilson, it wasn’t until 1946 that the Liberian state granted suffrage to its so-called indigenous peoples, ninety nine years after it became a sovereign state.
And then we bled from the stripped knuckles
Of the hands shackle and vanquish
Like bondsmen while holding
The jagged edge of the machete vulnerable
Blyden and Sabouso on fire the rogue holding the 5
Grip ancestors unanswerable
Now squirm from the big belle
Of mount Thienpo steams rising in anguish
To the heavens from its hilly green tops
Every morning and evening while the blood 10
Of her sons and daughters pops
Dribble in the gutters of Fernando Po it flood
The borders of Buoto and Tchien compromised
From an impious battle at the cock-crow reach
The Montserrado violet and still 15
From the sounds of guns on
Liberians must never forget the paralysis and bias that plagued the existence of its nation state came about because of greed. The history of Liberians is interwoven, because years of sharing the same landscape, same languages, food, music and culture have merged the nation into one….'this real estate’ has bounded the Liberian people together and the cleavages that has been exploited by the demagogues and political chameleons must be rejected in a new era. The country belongs to all of us regardless of creed and ethnic backgrounds; may we forgive the yesterdays of a bygone era which contributed so much to our miseries. Our wounds have been self inflicted, we must do the healings ourselves. It is for these same reasons that we must take solace in the hymn from Edwin Barclay, when he wrote in the Lone Star Forever:
Then forward sons of freedom march
Defend our sacred heritage
A nation’s call from age to age
A nation’s loud triumphant song
The song of liberty
The lone star forever, the lone star forever
Oh, long may it flow over land and o’er sea
Desert it no never
Uphold it forever Oh shout the lone starr’d banner all hail!
Defend our sacred heritage
A nation’s call from age to age
A nation’s loud triumphant song
The song of liberty
The lone star forever, the lone star forever
Oh, long may it flow over land and o’er sea
Desert it no never
Uphold it forever Oh shout the lone starr’d banner all hail!
Happy July Twenty Six!!
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