>> Edward Miner: On behalf
of the Library's African
and Middle Eastern Division,
I wish to welcome you
to today's program in honor
of Black History Month.
I am Dr. Edward Miner, head
of the African Section.
For more than 60 years, the
African Section has served
as the focal point for
Africa-based research,
collections, and
services at the Library.
Within the division, it
is one of three sections,
including the Hebraic and Near
Eastern, that provide access
to research collections of
unmatched depth and breadth,
documenting the literatures,
cultures, and histories
of regions extending from
the Southern tip of Africa
to the Mediterranean Coast,
across the Middle East
to Central Asia and down to
the Indian Ocean Islands.
The Library holds
rich collections
in major African languages,
such as Hausa, Arabic Compart,
[phonetic] Tigrinya, Somali,
Kiswahili, Malagasy, and Zulu,
as well as hundreds of
Western [inaudible].
Today's program highlights
particular strengths
in the Library's collections for
Liberian historical research.
Dr. C. Patrick Burrowes
is a long-time user
of these collections.
In the following presentation
entitled Re-Patriots,
Re-Captives, and African
Abolitionists: The Untold Story
of Liberia's Founding in
1822, Dr. Burrowes takes us
on an adventure into uncovering
lost history in the archives.
Moderator for this program
is my esteemed colleague,
African Area Specialist,
Laverne Page.
Over to you, Laverne.
>> Laverne Page:
Thank you, Edward.
Good afternoon.
The Library of Congress pays
tribute during this Black
History Month to the
generations of African Americans
who struggled with adversity
to achieve full citizenship
in American society
by featuring programs
such as the feast
on our plates today.
It is my pleasure to
welcome you to this program.
Again, my name is Laverne Page,
and I am an Area Specialist
in the African Section at
the Library of Congress.
Many years ago, I believed that
I got this job as a librarian.
In addition to having
academic credentials,
I believed that I got this
job because of my connections
and knowledge of
Liberia at that time.
My father worked
in Zorzor, Liberia.
And my brother and I felt
that we knew Monrovia, Hakata,
and Zorzor like the
backs of our hands.
We loved being there in Liberia.
I'm going to introduce
you now to our speaker,
Dr. C. Patrick Burrowes, who
is no stranger at all to staff
in some of the reading
rooms at the Library.
He has spent much time
there conducting research
and also participating
in a major way
in African section activities,
like the Liberian-U.S.
Relations Symposium in 2007,
coordinated by Dr.
Angel Batiste.
So I'm going to take a minute
to provide some academic
background.
C. Patrick Burrowes, Ph.D., is
called the people's professor
because of his willingness
to share his deep knowledge
of Liberian history
freely with others.
Before returning to Liberia in
2017, he was a tenured Professor
of Communications and Humanities
at Penn State University.
From 1995 to 1997, he was
at the Carter G. Woodson
Distinguished Professor
of Journalism at
Marshall University.
Dr. Burrowes is the author
of Between the Kola Forest
and the Salty Sea: A History of
the Liberian People Before 1800,
and co-author of the Historical
Dictionary of Liberia.
His research has received awards
from the International
Communication Association
and the Association for
Education in Journalism
and Mass Communications.
Dr. Burrowes holds
a B.A. in Journalism
from Howard University in
1976, M.A. in Communications,
Syracuse University, 1979,
and a Ph.D. in Communications.
Since he knows so much about us,
I asked Dr. Burrowes what he
thought that you, our audience,
might want to know about
the Library of Congress.
And he said that
novices may want
to know how to do research here.
So using a few slides, I
will tell you about that.
Next slide, please.
First, the Thomas
Jefferson Building is one
of the most beautiful
buildings in the world.
The photograph to the left is
a view overlooking the main
reading room.
And the other photograph is the
new reading room for the African
and Middle Eastern Division.
And it too is quite beautiful.
Next slide, please.
Researchers for Africana
subjects will want to start
by contacting the African
Section staff and for several --
and there's several access
points here on this page,
you know, such as the --
Actually, I'm looking
at the wrong slide.
This is the slide that I
should refer to for researchers
who are coming to the Library
and want to acquaint themselves
with the Library's research
and reference services.
And we have collections in the
millions in all formats, books,
pamphlets, journals, newspapers,
photographs, manuscripts,
unpublished papers, maps, films,
and more in all languages
and scripts.
We collect on all subjects
except clinical medicine
and technical agriculture.
And this particular
webpage that we were looking
at just a second ago
is full of information.
And it's really so helpful.
It also provides what you
need to know about coming
to the Library during
this era of coronaviruses.
Now, this is the slide that
is about the African Section.
And those of you who
want to come might start
by contacting African
Section staff.
And several access points
are here on this page,
such as the list of
countries and who to contact
for reference assistance,
and so forth.
And then this next
slide is of --
it's about the Prints and
Photographs Reading Room.
And please note that
there are 328 photographs
on Liberia, with more coming.
The Library is continually
adding to its collections.
And then this last slide
shows you a finding aid
for the American
Colonization Society records
from 1792 to 1964.
And note the size
of this collection.
It's available also
to all researchers.
And now I will turn you over
to our friend of the Library
of Congress, our
researcher extraordinaire,
doctor C. Patrick Burrowes.
>> Carl Patrick Burrowes:
Thank you so much
for that generous introduction.
And I want to begin
by thanking the Africa
and Middle Eastern
Division of the Library
for inviting me to
give this talk.
It actually feels like a
homecoming in many ways
because the Library has
been like a second home,
no matter where I was
along my academic journey.
I, at times, worked
in California.
I would trek to the Library
every summer from West Virginia,
wherever, you know, life
in my career took me.
In fact, I'm going to share an
anecdote with you that I don't,
you know, speak about publicly.
I haven't before.
But I happen to be in the
reading room one evening.
And when I looked up, I noticed
that all the lights were off.
I had become so engrossed
in my work
that I didn't hear the very
gentle chime that was used
at the time to signal that
the reading room was closing.
And so I made my way
sheepishly to an exit.
Fortunately, this was pre 9/11,
and the security
precautions were not
as stringent as they are now.
So the security guard looked me
over and then allowed me to exit
with all my photocopies in hand.
Some of my relatives have
never let me live that down
because they said it was
predictable that, you know,
because I was so bookish,
they said, and into working
in libraries that it was
inevitable I would get locked
in at some point.
Well, being asked to give this
talk during Black History Month
is humbling, knowing as
I do the blood, sweat,
and tears that went into
creating the historical record
that February is now
set aside to celebrate.
The first step in that
long journey began
with debunking many
widely accepted myths
about Black passivity,
criminality,
immorality, and inferiority.
Those weeds had to be
cleared before the recognition
that people of African
descent had agency in humanity.
The work of debunking anti-Black
myths dates back at least
to Ahmed Baba, a
scholar in Timbuktu,
who lived between 1556 and 1627.
Baba produced several carefully
argued theses, rebutting claims
of African inferiority made
by Arab writers of his time,
some of whom offered theological
justifications rooted in Islam.
But as we all know, the
revolution in Black history,
which we take for granted today,
was sparked in the early
20th century by a small cadre
of scholars and activists.
Most of whom, noted --
most notable, I should say,
among them were Dr. W. E. B. Du
Bois and Dr. Carter G. Woodson.
Through their pioneering
efforts, the misrepresentations
and misconceptions that
veiled Black humanity were
stripped away.
Unlike African American history,
however, the history of Liberia,
which was impacted by slavery
and anti-slavery in the U.S.,
has remained shrouded
by unchallenged myths
for 200 years.
Some date back to the
early 19th century.
They have reduced Liberian
story to the status
of a children's fairy tale,
with a cast of local victims
and villains who are policed
by a few saviors,
usually Westerners.
In the Liberian context,
what passes for history
are often models
of the society derived from
political science as well
as an outdated, excuse me,
and discredited school
of anthropology.
In this brief talk, I cannot
present a fully developed
cura-narrative [phonetic]
complete
with empirical evidence.
Instead, I simply hope to
leave you questioning some
sacred dogma.
After all, questioning is
the first step in learning
and scholarship in all
disciplines, including history.
This year, 2022,
is the bicentennial
of Liberia's founding.
It provides a perfect
opportunity
to peel back the veil to see
what really lies beneath.
So here, in no particular order,
are five of the most
widely accepted myths
about Liberian history.
Myth Number 1: In
the 19th century,
the people of the
Windward Coast,
where Liberia is now located,
were primitives organized
into unchanging ethnic groups
committed to frozen traditions,
including the capture
and selling of Africans.
This myth is rooted in a
19th-century assumption
of cultures as genetically
determined and unchanging.
In reality, ethnicity, power,
and culture in the region had
all been remade many times
over by more than 300
years of engagement
in the trans-Atlantic trade.
By the mid-1600s, Africans along
the coast of what is now known
as Liberia were, among other
patterns, drinking French brandy
and Caribbean rum, eating smoked
herring from the Mediterranean
and salted codfish from Norway,
wearing wax print from Java,
and hunting with Danish muskets.
Cassava, originally
imported from Brazil,
have been integrated into local
cuisines, both in a stew known
as cassava leaf and
dumbo, which was derived
from the pounded
root of the plant.
Some residents spoke
Dutch, French, and English,
while Portuguese words
like palava [phonetic]
were already embedded
in local languages.
While some warlords and gangs
of kidnappers were committed
to maintaining the
human traffic,
there were anti-slavery
rulers and communities
who provided land for
the colony of Liberia.
If you don't acknowledge
the existence
of African abolitionists
in the early 19th century,
you cannot understand
the founding of Liberia.
Myth Number 2: Those who came
from the U.S. were culturally
incommensurate and hence,
incompatible with those
already living in the area.
This misconception assumes
that the God-like enslavers
in the Southern United States
had remade the enslaved
descendants of Africa in
their own image, culturally,
psychologically,
and spiritually.
But reality was messier
and far more complex.
In truth, the cultural roots
of those who immigrated
from the U.S. to the
Windward Coast drew sustenance
from their continent
of ancestral origin.
The shaping influence of Africa
is still evident in the rhythm
of go-go music in D.C., the
sounds of Gullah Geechee speech
in South Carolina and in Coastal
Georgia, in the okra gumbo
of New Orleans, in the
swaying of bodies brought
on by the joyful noise
of rhythmic clapping,
and in the aesthetic of Ku,
[phonetic] which the Gola people
of Liberia define as
quote, "the ability
to be nonchalant at
the right moment."
And when I think of
that stance, of course,
I think of Miles
Davis, among others.
If African culture continues
to echo throughout the
diaspora even today,
imagine then how much more
pronounced those patterns were
in the 19th century.
When Blacks began immigrating
to Liberia in the early 1800s,
they were not citizens
of the U.S. As a result,
they were not regarded
as Americans by others.
Nor did they regard
themselves as such.
That sense would emerge
in the 1830s and grow,
you know, subsequently.
Their sense of African identity
was reflected in the names
of churches and other
institutions,
such as the African
Methodist Episcopal Church
and the First African
Baptist Church of Savannah,
Georgia, to name a few.
So when Baptist leader Lott
Cary was asked why he chose
to leave the U.S., it is
recorded that he responded,
quote, "I am an African
and in this country,
however meritorious my conduct
and respectable my character,
I cannot receive the
credit due to either.
I wish to go to a country where
I shall be esteemed by my merits
and not by my complexion.
And I feel bound to labor
for my suffering race."
In some ways, this
phrasing anticipates a part
of Dr. King's address at
the March on Washington.
Myth 3: The American
colonization society founded
Liberia with support
from the U.S. Navy's
Anti-slavery Squadron.
That half-truth was fueled
by the Great White Man Theory
of history, which prevailed
in the early 19th century,
as well as by the
self-mythologizing
of ACS leaders.
So while both the U.S. and
the U.S. Navy provided crucial
resources, neither gave the
blood, sweat, and tears,
which cemented together the
building blocks of the nation.
After 200 years, it is time
to broaden the spotlight
to illuminate the actions of
people previously confined
to the shadows, specifically,
the repatriates from the U.S.,
recaptives taken from
aboard slave ships bound
to the Americas, and
African abolitionists,
who constituted the
country's founding generation.
Myth Number 4: Liberia's
founders were all men.
A recurring use of
masculine-inflected labels
like kings has effaced the
power held by some women
in the Cape Mesurado region that
became the site of Monrovia.
According to the oral traditions
of the Dade ethnic group,
a woman named Woloo
[phonetic] played a significant
behind-the-scenes role
in the negotiations
for land for the colony.
And she furnished housing
and transportation
to the repatriates.
She was a matron in the female
initiation society known
as the Sande Society.
In addition, a biracial woman
named Philippa [phonetic] lived
on Bali Island near
what is now Monrovia.
In fact, metropolitan Monrovia
now incorporates Bali Island.
She lived there with
hundreds of her dependents.
Had Philippa not died
shortly before the arrival
of the Americans seeking land,
she probably would
have participated
in the purchase negotiations.
Another woman, Mary
McKenzie, sold her portion
of Bushrod Island
to Liberia in 1827
without any male
support or opposition.
The existence and prominence
of these women was documented
in primary sources
from their era.
A quote-unquote, traditional
African culture did not exclude
them from power as
some might presume.
They were erased from history
by enlightened modern scholars
who went looking for
men as the embodiment
of rulership and authority.
And now Myth 5: The people
of Liberia have spent their
entire existence locked
in ethnic conflicts without
cross-ethnic collaborations
or fusions.
They are like billiard
balls banging
against each other
on a pool table.
This myth is the most
insidious of all.
It generalizes blame for
the wrongdoing of any member
of an ethnic, religious, or
other group on to all members.
After a military coup took
place in Liberia in 1980,
it was the dependents -- the
descendants -- excuse me --
of the repatriates who
were all villainized.
But guilt by association,
which underpins this mindset,
has not remained
focused on one group.
It never does.
In 1985 group animists and
widespread violence was directed
against members of the
Mano and Dan ethnic groups
because the leader of a
failed coup attempt was
from their region of Liberia.
Five years later, the owners
of group guild [phonetic]
and victimization was redirected
towards the Krahn in Mandingo.
That mindset has
never been challenged
in the decades of
post-war peace.
It is dangerous because it forms
the basis for genocidal actions.
And it is especially
dangerous in a country
with 16 relatively
small ethnic groups.
The ascribing of
criminality or immorality
to an entire group is a ticking
time bomb waiting to explode.
Now, members of this audience
who aren't Liberian might be
inclined to view the existence
of these myths as uniquely
Liberian in origin and solution.
But that view rests upon ideas
embodied in Myth Number 1.
If Africans along the
Windward Coast were living
in a globalized environment in
1822, that is much more the case
for Liberians 200 years later.
They do not shape their
destiny in isolation.
They never have.
From Liberia's founding,
U.S. media stories
about the country have
carried an obligatory paragraph
about the role of
ex-slaves in its history.
Although that phrase is
no longer ubiquitous,
it is still often used.
In contrast, new stories on
Australia never reference,
quote, "British convicts"
who settled there.
Repeated evocation
of the ex-slave label
by American journalists
and scholars has helped
to entrench a form of othering
that suggests a less
than human existence.
In the words of sociologist
Orlando Patterson,
that language imprints the
quote, "disposable status,"
that results in what
he calls social death.
After 200 years, it is time
to drop the various
tropes about Liberia.
It is time to demand evidence
in precise language instead
of sweeping emotional claims.
It is past time to replace the
caricature of villains, victims,
and saviors with
images of complete
and complex human beings.
It is urgent that the legacy
of Baba, Du Bois, Woodson,
and others be brought to
bear on Liberian history.
One important lesson of their
work is this: Reducing people
of African descent to mere
caricatures has consequences.
Repetition doesn't
make stereotypes true,
neither does widespread
acceptance.
Left unchallenged, some
caricatures can be deadly.
Thank you.
>> Laverne Page: Thank
you so much, Dr. Burrowes,
for that wonderful presentation.
It's given me lots
to think about.
And I'm sure that our
audience feels the same way.
And we should open
up this portion now
of the program to
questions for you.
And we ask if you could put your
questions in the Q and A box.
And Dr. Edward Miner is going
to assist with this portion.
So Edward.
>> Edward Miner:
Thank you, Laverne.
Firstly, the Library is very
grateful to all of the greetings
from the audience and
expressions of appreciation.
This is what we're all
about, making our collections
and the stories that they --
that they tell and that are --
and that they retell and that
are reinterpreted to the world.
I have a couple of questions
I can answer directly.
One, can the books written
by Dr. Burrowes be
presented in the text chat?
I don't have that
immediately at my fingertips.
But if -- we will put up a
link, or I will, and I'll get
out the link to Ask A Librarian.
And if you write your request
to that, we can provide you
with that information.
Also, someone asked about
the photographs from Liberia
that were referenced in
Laverne's introduction.
And if, again, if you
can send that request
to the Ask A Librarian link that
I'll put into the chat shortly,
we can provide you with that.
One audience member is
asking about any connections
between Marcus Garvey's
idea of African return
and the development of Liberia.
Dr. Burrowes?
>> Carl Patrick Burrowes:
Yes, there was a connection.
Garvey acknowledges
being influenced
by Edward Wilmot Blyden,
who lived in Liberia before
moving to Serra Leone.
And so those ideas about
Liberia and return played a role
in the development of
Garvey's own ideas.
And there was an attempt
by the Garvey movement
to connect with Liberia.
And that effort was aborted.
>> Edward Miner: Thank you.
Another audience member asks,
how many people did the American
Colonization Society actually
repatriate to Liberia?
And did any of them return?
>> Carl Patrick Burrowes:
This is a question
that comes up very often.
So let me answer the question
up front quantitatively.
There are about 15,000 from
the U.S. who were repatriated
under the auspices of the
American Colonization Society.
In addition, about
5,000 recaptives taken
from aboard slave
ships that were headed
to the Americas were settled
in Liberia by the U.S. Navy.
And they were mainly
from the area of Angola
and the Congo, the Congo River.
But there are also some from
the Coast of Nigeria, et cetera.
The question often comes
up in the context of saying
that the ACS effort failed
because quantitatively,
there weren't that many
who ended up being removed.
But if one pulls the
lens back to look at all
of the African Americans
who found a way out,
the picture that
emerges is complex.
And, you know, it shows
that there was a drive before
the Civil War on the part
of many to find a way to freedom
in whatever form it took.
So we know that there are
thousands who went to Canada.
But there were others
who went to Mexico.
And there were thousands
who went to Haiti as well.
And so there was a repeated,
you know, drive on the part
of many African Americans
to find, you know, security
and liberty in some other space.
>> Edward Miner: Thank
you, Dr. Burrowes.
Another audience member asks,
thank you for an
enlightening and necessary talk.
When you speak of
Liberia's 16 ethnic groups,
are you not counting the
settlers as an ethnic group?
>> Carl Patrick Burrowes: Yeah,
that's a very good question.
And I must say that I went
with the official, you know,
designation, and I should
have included the repatriates
as a 17th, yes.
>> Edward Miner: Another
audience member asks,
my mother's family is Vai,
[phonetic] is there any evidence
that the Vai people
participated in the slave trade?
>> Carl Patrick Burrowes:
Well, that, again,
very interesting question.
So what I would say is
that members of just
about every ethnic
group along the coast
of West Africa participated
in the slave trade.
But that participation
was not unidirectional.
And again, I caution
the audience
from extending responsibility,
blame, et cetera,
for the actions of some,
you know, kidnappers
and slave sellers to all
members of their ethnic group.
But yeah, Cape Mount,
where the Vai are located,
was an embarkation point for
large numbers of captives
who ended up in the
Americas in enslavement.
But the truth of the matter
is oftentimes, people will,
in West Africa, characterize
the Mandingoes
as having played a critical role
in the slave trade or the Fula,
another large ethnic group.
In reality, both of those
groups are extremely large
because they were at the
center of major empires.
When one looks at those
the ethnicity of people
who were brought
to the Americas,
you find that the Mandingoes
and the Fula were also
highly represented.
They were among the top
10 ethnic groups exported.
So you had individuals who
were engaged in the traffic
from both of those groups.
But then you also had people
who ended up victimized,
who were taken from
those groups.
And I think a classic example
of this would be the subject
of a book called A
Prince Among Slaves.
And that is Abdulrahman
Ibn Ibrahim Sori.
He was a Fula prince.
And at the time, the Fula empire
was engaged in the slave trade,
or some of the officials were.
And he ended up being captured
and spent decades
enslaved in Mississippi.
When he finally was emancipated,
he made his way to Liberia
with his wife and
some of his children.
But he died shortly after.
>> Edward Miner: An
interesting follow-on
to this last question is
this, what are the prospects
for the re-interpretation
of Liberian history
through the lens of
current developments
in West African historical
research?
In other words, does situating
the Liberian experience
in the broader West African
context help with rounding
out the fuller-lived
experiences of Liberian --
of various Liberian
people, societies,
cultures, and so forth?
>> Carl Patrick Burrowes: I
would argue that one needs
to be careful about
fitting the Liberian reality
into frameworks derived
from the rest of the region
or from what has been the case
before of the U.S. experience.
It is really important
for Liberians to try
and recapture the uniqueness
of the Liberian experience while
recognizing that, you know,
there were sources of influence
from several other places.
But together, those make the
Liberian experience particularly
rich and unique.
So let me give you
just one example.
I did a book called Between the
Kola Forest and the Salty Sea:
A History of the Librarian
People Before 1800.
And what I came to find, in
the course of my research,
is that the people of Liberia
were, in many ways, anti-empire.
They were committed to a
very decentralized form
of governance based in part on
the experiences of having lived
on the margin of
Sahelian empires.
As those Sahelian empires
were developing and growing,
they were engaged
in the trafficking
of Africans across the Sahara.
And people living
on the periphery
of the empire were
being victimized.
In addition, the empires,
the rulers of those empires
and the merchants had
converted to Islam.
And traditional African
beliefs in, you know,
religious practices
were being marginalized.
So those on the periphery
moved south.
And many of the groups living
in Liberia today
trace their ancestry
to the area around Mali.
This is documented in
the oral traditions.
So the Vai were mentioned
earlier,
also came from Mali,
the area of Mali.
So they came to the forest belt,
seeking to preserve African
traditional religious practices
and theology known as the way
of the ancestors [phonetic]
and also to escape, you
know, the possibility
of being kidnapped and
sold across the Sahara.
So you have a experience
in the forest
of highly decentralized
governing structures
that contrasts dramatically
from the empires of the Sahel,
or the Ashanti, or
the Yoruba, et cetera.
One needs to focus
on the experience
of the particular environment
that's being studied.
>> Edward Miner: Thank
you, Dr. Burrowes.
Here's another question.
There is so much history here
that many likely do not know.
Is this history being taught
to Liberian school children?
>> Carl Patrick Burrowes: No.
So like history is not
a part of the curriculum
in Liberia, unfortunately.
And what makes the situation
worse is that because
of the almost two decades
of civil war in Liberia,
institutions were destroyed.
Schools, you know,
were not operating
as they should have been.
You didn't have history being
portrayed through the media,
television, radio, none of that.
And the result is that
there's a vacuum as far
as historical knowledge
is concerned.
And that's one of the reason
you have so many myths sort
of circulating among Liberians.
>> Edward Miner: Sorry.
Another audience member asks,
Dr. Burrowes, can you speak
about the document you
discovered recently
that shed light on the sale
of land that became Monrovia?
>> Carl Patrick Burrowes: Oh,
thank you for that question.
So there was a purchase
agreement executed
by Dr. Eli Ayers, who was Agent
of the American Colonization
Society,
and Captain Robert
Stockton of the U.S. Navy,
along with six local rulers of
the area around Cape Mesurado,
the area now the
site of Monrovia.
So that document relates to a
tract of land upon, you know,
the top of the Cape,
in particular.
And the document went
missing in the 1830s.
The American Colonization
Society, at that point,
about 10 years after the
agreement was signed,
decided it would compile the
separate treaties it had,
you know, executed
with local rulers.
And when they went looking,
the original document,
the first purchase
agreement, was missing.
So since the 1830s,
it hadn't been seen.
Historians hadn't been able to
cite it as a primary document.
People relied on the text
as published in newspapers
at the time, the text
of the agreement.
But I'd spent so much time
at the Library of Congress,
including in the Manuscript
Division with the ACS Papers
and so on, that as I was
writing about the founding,
I began to think about where
that document might
have ended up.
I wanted to use the primary
source if I could find it.
And I knew that there
were three lawyers
who volunteered to
work with the ACS.
Oftentimes legal matters were
passed over to them as a kind
of subcommittee of the board.
And so I went tracking down the
papers of those individuals.
One is relatively
obscure, and it didn't seem
like there were any preserved
documents from, you know,
his law practice or
anything of that sort.
But then there was
Francis Scott Key,
and his legal papers are
in the Maryland area.
So I went looking.
Fortunately, the Maryland
Center for History
and Culture was open during
a period of the pandemic.
Went through his legal papers.
They weren't there.
The last person that
I needed to track
down was the Secretary
of the ACS.
And he was Elias Caldwell.
And long story short,
searching for the papers
of Elias Caldwell, I
found them in the papers
of Justice Bushrod Washington.
So Caldwell had acted as
Clerk to Bushrod Washington.
He died in the period where
this document went missing.
And it turned out that he had
documents related to the ACS
in his Supreme Court office.
And they seem to have been
tucked away with the papers
of Justice Washington.
So that's how I found
that document.
>> Edward Miner: Intriguing.
Dr. Burrowes, another
audience member asks,
what roles do these five
myths you've outlined have
on influencing the present
situation of people coming
to move permanently to a
nation such as Liberia?
A number in the diaspora are
espousing a new Back-to-Africa
movement, which is at
an all-time high now
with the outreach from Ghana.
>> Carl Patrick Burrowes:
Well, from what I've seen,
those who have expressed
an interest, you know,
to return have focused
on Ghana very heavily
because the invitation,
you know, was extended
from the government
of that country.
And there are other African
countries that have been making,
you know, such overtures.
But I think as long as those
ways of imagining Liberia,
of seeing Liberia
remain entrenched.
Liberia doesn't carry the
same degree of attractiveness
for people in the diaspora,
you know, as other places do.
I think before Liberians
can consider the possibility
of others coming in to
join, there are a number
of lingering questions
and issues,
challenges from the civil war
that needs to be resolved.
So there's a need, you know, for
some inward thinking and work.
Who are we?
We need to answer the basic
questions of the humanities.
Who are we?
You know, where did
we come from in order
to understand where
we're headed.
If we don't settle those
issues and we start suggesting,
you know, that others come into
the picture, they're entering
into a state of confusion.
>> Edward Miner: Here's a very
currently focused question
from the audience.
How do you see these myths
influencing the U.S.'s
diplomatic relationship
with Liberia?
>> Carl Patrick Burrowes:
Well, what I will say to you is
that -- I have an example
at the top of my head.
It doesn't relate
to the myths per se.
But when I explain
what I'm talking about,
you perhaps will
understand why I'm citing it.
Very recently, the U.S. House
of Representatives passed a
resolution relating to Liberia.
And the bulk of the text
references Liberia's history
and the relationship, you know,
that has existed for 200 years
between the U.S. and Liberia.
And in that text, the resolution
refers to January 6th,
I believe, as the date when
the African Americans landed
in the area of Monrovia.
That's something
that's been repeated.
It's circulated widely,
but it's not true.
And it hasn't been investigated.
The House, in drafting
the resolution, relied,
I would believe, on
sources, you know,
collected by the
State Department.
And the State Department,
in turn, relied on the work
of historians or, you know,
scholars who haven't done
the necessary spadework.
And the result is that
we have these notions
that are often repeated
that just aren't accurate.
Now that's not one of the five
myths that I mentioned, right,
the myth about when the
African Americans landed.
But it just illustrates the
fact that there's so many
of these assertions that
are accepted as truths
that haven't been examined.
And there needs to be a
much more careful, you know,
study of the Liberian story.
>> Laverne Page: I should
interject here and say
that we thank you, Dr.
Burrowes, for being here today
and for telling us
about so much.
We have additional
questions in the queue,
but we're running short of
time, and we can't get to them.
So we are encouraging
our audience
to send their questions directly
to you or to send them to us
through our Ask A
Librarian service.
We would welcome that.
We want to thank
everyone for coming.
And thank you for your questions
that we have received today.
This is just extremely
enlightening.
There is also a question about
whether or not this is recorded
or when the recording is
going to be available.
The turnaround time
now should be something
like at least two weeks, maybe
three at the very, very most.
And so you could also submit
that to Ask A Librarian.
And the moment that the
video is up, we could respond
and send you the link.
So, thank you so much
for coming, Dr. Burrowes,
and thank you, our audience.
And you've had a very
good audience today.
So anyway, thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
>> Carl Patrick Burrowes:
It's been my pleasure.
>> Laverne Page:
Any closing words?
>> Carl Patrick Burrowes:
No, I just --
>> Laverne Page: Or
you said [inaudible].
>> Carl Patrick Burrowes:
Yeah, I really appreciate it,
you know, the homecoming.
And I wish, you know,
there had been turkey
and other trimmings
on the table.
Appreciate the invitation.
>> Laverne Page: Okay.
Well, thank you.
And until the next time.
So I'll say goodbye for now.
>> Carl Patrick Burrowes:
Bye now.
>> Laverne Page: Thank you.
Okay. Goodbye.