Liberia

The Republic of Liberia adjoins the Atlantic Ocean on the west coast of Africa and shares borders with Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast). Liberia was founded in 1841 by freed American slaves as a refuge from the racism and discrimination they faced in the United States, and in 2005, the country elected an American-educated woman as the first female African head of state. Since the first American Christians arrived in 1822, the history of this country has been shaped by American influences.

The slaves who immigrated to Liberia were primarily born and raised in the culture of the antebellum American South. As such, they brought with them Christianity as well as the belief that anything natively African was necessarily primitive and inferior to ...