page_title: History of Liberia
section_title: Americo-Liberian and indigenous segregation (1847–1940)
hierarchical_section_title: History of Liberia / Americo-Liberian rule (1847–1980) / Society / Americo-Liberian and indigenous segregation (1847–1940)
caption_attribution_description: English: Charles D. B. King, 17th President of Liberia (1920-1930), with his entourage on the steps of the Peace Palace, The Hague (the Netherlands). Dated Thursday 29 September 1927. Photo collection Carnegie Foundation.
context_page_description: Liberia is a country in West Africa which was founded by free people of color from the United States. The emigration of free people of color, and later former slaves, was funded and organized by the American Colonization Society. The mortality rate of these settlers was the highest in accurately recorded human history. Of the 4,571 emigrants who arrived in Liberia between 1820 and 1843, only 1,819 survived.
  In 1847, the ACS encouraged Liberia to declare independence, as the organization could no longer support the colony against territorial incursions by the neighboring British and French. The ACS as well as several northern state governments and local colonization chapters continued to provide money and emigrants as late as the 1870s. The United States declined to act on requests from the ACS to make Liberia an American colony or to establish a formal protectorate over Liberia, but it did exercise a "moral protectorate" over Liberia, intervening when European powers threatened its territory or sovereignty.
context_section_description: The social order in Liberia was dominated by a group of Americo-Liberians. Although descended from peoples of African origin, the ancestors of Americo-Liberians had been born in the United States for generations before emigrating to Africa. As a result, they held American cultural, religious, and social values. Like many Americans and Europeans of the period, the Americo-Liberian held beliefs in the religious superiority of Protestant Christianity and the cultural power of systematic oppression over indigenous animism and culture.
  The Americo-Liberians created communities and social infrastructure closely based on what they knew from American society. They spoke English and built churches and houses in styles resembling those found in the southern United States. Although they never constituted more than five percent of the population of Liberia, they controlled key resources that allowed them to enslave the local native peoples, and control their access to the ocean, modern technical skills, literacy and higher levels of education, and valuable relationships with many United States institutions, including the American government.
  Reflecting the system of segregation in the United States, the Americo-Liberians created a cultural and racial caste system with themselves at the top and indigenous Liberians at the bottom. They believed in a form of "racial equality" which meant that all residents of Liberia had the potential to become "civilized" through western-style education and conversion to Christianity.
caption: Charles D. B. King, 17th President of Liberia (1920–1930), with his entourage on the steps of the Peace Palace, The Hague (the Netherlands), 1927.
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