William Tolbert | |
|---|---|
 Tolbert in 1978 | |
| 20th President of Liberia | |
| In office 23 July 1971 – 12 April 1980 | |
| Vice President | Vacant (1971–1972) James Edward Greene (1972–1977) Bennie Dee Warner (1977–1980) |
| Preceded by | William Tubman |
| Succeeded by | Samuel Doe |
| 23rd Vice President of Liberia | |
| In office 1 January 1952 – 23 July 1971 | |
| President | William Tubman |
| Preceded by | Clarence Simpson |
| Succeeded by | James Edward Greene |
| Personal details | |
| Born | William Richard Tolbert Jr. (1913-05-13)13 May 1913 Bensonville, Liberia |
| Died | 12 April 1980(1980-04-12) (aged 66) Monrovia, Liberia |
| Manner of death | Assassination by firearm |
| Resting place | Palm Grove Cemetery |
| Political party | True Whig |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 8 |
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|---|---|---|
President of Liberia 1971–1980 Government
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William Richard Tolbert Jr. (13 May 1913 – 12 April 1980) was a Liberian politician who served as the 20thpresident of Liberia from 1971 until hisassassination in 1980.
Tolbert was anAmerico-Liberian and trained as acivil servant before entering theHouse of Representatives in 1943 for theTrue Whig Party, then the only established party in Liberia. Tolbert was elected the 23rdvice president of Liberia toWilliam Tubman in 1952 and served in that position until he became president following Tubman's death in 1971.[1] Tolbert's early presidency sawliberal reforms and the adoption of aNon-Alignment stance, but growing economic troubles and tensions between Americo-Liberians and indigenous Liberians led toinstability.
Tolbert was assassinated in the1980 coup d'état by thePeople's Redemption Council led bySamuel Doe, marking the end of 133 years ofAmerico-Liberian rule in Liberia.
William Richard Tolbert Jr. was born inBensonville, Liberia, to William Richard Tolbert Sr. (1869–1948) and Charlotte Augusta Tolbert, née Hoff of Cape Mount, Liberia. The Tolbert and Hoff families wereAmerico-Liberian families ofAfrican American descent and the Hoff family originated fromVirginia. William Tolbert Sr. was the son of Daniel Frank Tolbert, who was formerlyenslaved inSouth Carolina andemigrated to Liberia in theLiberian exodus of 1878.[2]
Daniel Frank Tolbert, the South Carolinian grandfather of William Tolbert, emigrated to Liberia aboard the barqueAzor, alongside several other black South Carolinians who sought to settle in Liberia. The Tolbert clan was one of the largest Americo-Liberian families in Liberia.[3]
He attended Bensonville Elementary School, Crummell Hall Episcopalian High School.[4] He studied at theUniversity of Liberia and obtained aBachelor of Arts in 1934.[5] He marriedVictoria A. David, ofAmerico-Liberian andVai descent, with whom he had eight children.
Tolbert was first elected to theHouse of Representatives in 1943, and served until being elected vice president in 1951.[6] ABaptist minister, in 1965 he became the first African to serve as president of theBaptist World Alliance,[7][8][9] and was also a member ofPhi Beta Sigma fraternity.[10] He becameGrand Master of theMasonic Order of Liberia.[11]
In 1951Liberia held elections to decide president and vice president.William Tubman who was president in 1951 chose Tolbert as his vice president. They would go on to win and serve 6 terms until Tubman died in 1971.
In February 1968 William R. Tolbert arrived in Jamaica as a part of his Caribbean tour to meet as many Baptists as possible. He met with the prime minister to address a service at the East Queen Street Baptist Church, and other official functions.[12]
On 23 July 1971President William Tubman died in London during a visit which led Tolbert to become president.
Tolbert succeeded to the presidency upon the death of incumbent William Tubman in 1971. To the outside world, the peaceful transfer of power was seen as a sign of continuing political stability in Liberia, a stark contrast with the political turmoil gripping much of the rest of Africa at the time. However, Liberia was effectively a one-party state, with the national legislature and judiciary subservient to the executive branch and only limited observation of civil liberties.[13]
Upon becoming president, Tolbert initiated some liberal reforms. Though he was re-elected in 1975, his government was criticized sharply for failing to address the deep economic disparities between different sectors of the population, notably theAmerico-Liberians, who had dominated the country since independence, and the various indigenous ethnic groups which constituted the majority of the population.
Because Tolbert was a member of one of the most influential and affluent Americo-Liberian families, everything from cabinet appointments to economic policy was tainted with allegations ofnepotism. Thanks to his father who spokeKpelle,[14] Tolbert was the second Liberian president, after PresidentStephen Allen Benson, to speak an indigenous language, and he promoted a program to bring more indigenous people into the government.
This initiative caused a good deal of chagrin among Americo-Liberians who accused Tolbert of "letting the peasants into the kitchen." Indeed, it lacked support within Tolbert's own administration. While the indigenous majority felt the change was occurring too slowly, many Americo-Liberians felt it was too rapid.
Despite following Tubman's 27-year presidency, Tolbert refused to follow his predecessor's hold on office until death. He successfully worked for a constitutional amendment to bar the president from serving more than eight years in office, and in 1976 he vowed fierce opposition to members of the Legislature who sought to repeal the amendment and again permit what Tolbert called an "evil tradition".[15] Three years later, when True Whig partisans petitioned him to seek the amendment's repeal, he replied that their statement would only encourage him in his previous position: "I will serve my country as long as I have life. I do not have to [be?] President to do so."[16]
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Abandoning Tubman's strong pro-West foreign policy, Tolbert adopted one which focused on promoting Liberia's political independence. To this end, he established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, China,Cuba, and several otherEastern Bloc countries, thus adopting a more nonaligned posture.
Sometime in 1974, Tolbert accepted aid from the Soviet Union for the first time.[17] While he was president (1971–1980)Liberia's relations with the United States strained because of the establishment of diplomatic relations with the Soviets andEastern Bloc.[18] Tolbert's official state visit to the USA took place in 1976.[19][20][21]
Tolbert severed Liberia's ties withIsrael during theYom Kippur War in October 1973[21] and spoke in favor of recognizing national rights of the Palestinian people. However, Tolbert supported the United States on theVietnam War, as had his predecessor, William Tubman. Tolbert was chairman of theOrganisation of African Unity from July 1979 until he was killed in April 1980.
Throughout the 1970s, the world price of rubber was low, putting pressure on the Liberian economy. Tolbert brought a new approach to the Liberian government's relations with foreign companies. Companies likeFirestone, which had operated for years without being audited by the government, were audited and forced to pay millions of dollars in back taxes. Old concession agreements were renegotiated, and new concession agreements were negotiated with an emphasis on accountability of the private sector to the Liberian government.
In May 1975, Liberia became a signatory to the treaty that established theEconomic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in order to create a common market in West Africa and promote regional economic integration and stability in 15 West African countries, with the intention that it would mirror the success of theEuropean Common Market.
By the late 1970s, Tolbert became increasingly open to overtures of economic assistance fromLibya and Cuba.
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Liberia had been a one-party state since 1877. However, in 1973, the country returned to a two-party system when theProgressive Alliance of Liberia, headed byGabriel Baccus Matthews, became recognized as a legitimate opposition party.[22]
Between 1965 and 1977 over 100 murders occurred aroundHarper inMaryland County, many of which involved mutilation and the removal of body parts. During the 1970s Liberians in Maryland County were constantly under the threat of ritual murders. Between November 1976 and July 1977, 14 people had disappeared in the county prompting Tolbert to fire the Superintendent of Maryland County, James Daniel Anderson, for failure to report the missing people and publicly declare "Anyone who kills deliberately: The law will kill that person".[23] Twelve suspects were eventually arrested; seven, including four government officials, were convicted and executed.[24]
In early April 1979, Tolbert's minister of agriculture,Florence Chenoweth, proposed an increase in the subsidized price of rice from $22 per 100-pound bag to $26. Chenoweth asserted that the increase would serve as an added inducement for rice farmers to continue farming instead of abandoning their farms for jobs in the cities or on the rubber plantations. Political opponents criticized the proposal as self-serving, pointing out that Chenoweth and the Tolbert family operated large rice farms and would therefore realize a tidy profit from the proposed price increase.
TheProgressive Alliance of Liberia called for a peaceful demonstration in Monrovia to protest the proposed price increase. On 14 April about 2,000 activists began what was planned as a peaceful march on theExecutive Mansion. The protest march swelled dramatically when the protesters were joined en route by more than 10,000 "back street boys" causing the march to quickly degenerate into a disorderly mob of riot and destruction. Widespread looting ensued with damage to private property estimated at over $40 million.[25] At least 41 demonstrators were killed by shooting.[26] This incident set fire to the powder. During the following year, riots and demonstrations shook the country. Tolbert tried in vain to restore order by arresting the opposition leaders, but his attempts were unsuccessful and the disorder increased. Tolbert's credibility was severely damaged by the Rice Riots.[27]
In March 1980 Tolbert ordered the banning of the PAL, and hadGabriel Bacchus Matthews and the rest of the organization's leadership arrested on charges of treason.[13]
In the early hours of 12 April 1980, 17 non-commissioned officers and soldiers of theArmed Forces of Liberia led by Master SergeantSamuel Doe launched a violent coup d'état; all of them were "indigenous" Liberians who later became the founding members of thePeople's Redemption Council, the governing body of the new regime. The group entered the Presidential palace and killed Tolbert, whose body was dumped into a mass grave together with 27 other victims of the coup. A crowd of angry Liberians gathered to shout insults and throw rocks at the bodies.[28] Tolbert's body was later moved to a spot in Monrovia'sPalm Grove Cemetery, not far from the bodies of those killed in the Rice Riots.[29]
By the end of the month, most of the cabinet members of the Tolbert administration had been put on trial in akangaroo court andsentenced to death. Many of them were publicly executed on 22 April at a beach near the Barclay Training Center in Monrovia. Only four of Tolbert's cabinet heads survived the coup and its aftermath; among them was the minister of finance, future presidentEllen Johnson Sirleaf.[30]
Undisputedly, Tolbert was dead by the end of 12 April 1980, the day of the coup d'état.[31] There are competing stories as to the time and manner of his death.
Steven Ellis, in his bookMask of Anarchy, says the president was found sleeping in his office, where the soldiers killed him, whileEllen Johnson Sirleaf's biography,This Child Will Be Great, says Tolbert was seized and killed in his bed.[32]
Some of Tolbert's children live in the US. His brotherStephen A. Tolbert served as his finance minister in the government until his death on 29 April 1975, in a plane crash.[33] One of his sons, A. Benedict Tolbert, was killed in the aftermath of the coup: he had taken refuge in the French Embassy but was arrested by members of Doe's security force who violateddiplomatic immunity, and he was reportedly thrown out of a military aircraft while being transported to a prison inLofa County.[34]
Three of his daughters are no longer alive. Victoria Tolbert Yancy died in 1971, Evelyn Tolbert Richardson (the wife of a government aviator) died inWestchester County, New York, United States, in 1993.[35] and Christine Augusta Tolbert-Norman died from cancer in Cary, North Carolina in 2021. His widow, former First LadyVictoria Tolbert, died inMinnesota on 8 November 1997 at the age of 81. She had moved to the United States after being released fromhouse arrest in the aftermath of the coup.[36] His grandson Tolbert Williams currently lives and works in the UK.
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Media related toWilliam R. Tolbert, Jr. at Wikimedia Commons| Political offices | ||
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| Preceded by | Vice President of Liberia 1952–1971 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | President of Liberia 1971–1980 | Succeeded by |
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