Statecraft & Independence
Landmark
Hilary R. W. Johnson
1837 – 1901
The first Liberian president born in Africa
Landmark is level 2 of 4 in the Liberia Hall of Fame: a first that opened a door, or the pre-eminent figure of their generation in this country. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
Every president before him had been born in America. He was the first born on the continent — a turning point in what Liberia understood itself to be.
Hilary Richard Wright Johnson was born at Monrovia in 1837, ten years before Liberia declared independence, the son of Elijah Johnson, one of the settlers who had arrived from the United States and refused to abandon the colony when it was nearly destroyed in its first years.
He was a teacher, a newspaper editor and then Secretary of State before being elected president in 1883, and served four two-year terms until 1892. Every one of his six predecessors had been born in North America; he was the first Liberian head of state born on African soil, which mattered in a republic whose settler elite had spent sixty years defining itself against the people already living there.
His presidency brought the beginnings of a shift. He pressed for the interior to be brought into the republic rather than treated as foreign territory, extended the reach of the government beyond the coastal settlements, and argued that Liberia's future depended on the Africans of its hinterland being made citizens rather than subjects — an argument the Americo-Liberian establishment largely resisted for another century.
He also had to hold the country together against European encroachment, as Britain and France pressed on Liberia's boundaries during the scramble, and Liberia lost substantial territory in that period despite his efforts. He was a considerable writer and orator, and died in 1901.
He was a teacher, a newspaper editor and then Secretary of State before being elected president in 1883, and served four two-year terms until 1892. Every one of his six predecessors had been born in North America; he was the first Liberian head of state born on African soil, which mattered in a republic whose settler elite had spent sixty years defining itself against the people already living there.
His presidency brought the beginnings of a shift. He pressed for the interior to be brought into the republic rather than treated as foreign territory, extended the reach of the government beyond the coastal settlements, and argued that Liberia's future depended on the Africans of its hinterland being made citizens rather than subjects — an argument the Americo-Liberian establishment largely resisted for another century.
He also had to hold the country together against European encroachment, as Britain and France pressed on Liberia's boundaries during the scramble, and Liberia lost substantial territory in that period despite his efforts. He was a considerable writer and orator, and died in 1901.
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