had moved there since 1948. This shows great mobility between the rural areas and the capital in this postwar era. People perceived as Americo-Liberian—that is, born or adopted into the Americo-Liberian elite—accounted for some 16 percent of the population. Businessmen and traders, mostly from the growing Lebanese community, also were by then a key component of Monrovia’s population, and nearly as many Ghanaians also lived in the city (1,193). Government remained a key employer in Monrovia. There was also a growing business sector in construction and commerce, owned primarily by foreigners, which employed nearly as many people as the government.5
Aerial view of downtown Monrovia, Liberia. 1954. Photo by John T. Smith Jr. in A History of Flying and Photography: In the Photogrammetry Division of the National Ocean Survey, 1919–1979.
Sirleaf grew up on Benson Street, one of the major streets in the city. The American Embassy sits at the end of Benson Street on the corner of United Nations Drive. Sirleaf was the third of four children and recalls a very happy childhood, which saw the family becoming increasingly wealthy as her father moved up in the Tubman government. Her mother opened an elementary school, which Sirleaf and her sister Jennie attended, and also became a Presbyterian preacher. By the 1940s and ’50s, churches proliferated in Monrovia. By far the largest number of Monrovians attended the Methodist Episcopal Church. The next-largest denomination was Roman Catholic, followed by smaller numbers of the other denominations, including the Liberian Baptist Missionary and Educational Convention, the National Baptist Mission USA, AME and AME Zion churches, and the Presbyterians. In this era a relatively small number of people in Monrovia were Muslim, though the numbers grew with the movement of rural people into the city. The 1959 survey undertaken by Fraenkel showed some 13 percent of adults interviewed identified themselves as Muslim and 59 percent as Christian.6
Christianity was a marker of civilized status and upward mobility in the Monrovia in which Sirleaf grew up. Discrimination against Muslims, who were not allowed to hold government posts, contributed to the movement of young people to Christianity. During this era, most Muslims in Monrovia were uneducated. Conversion to Christianity and education happened at the same time in schools. Although Christianity was an essential ingredient for being part of the Americo-Liberian or “civilized” community, it was membership in particular churches that was crucial. Most of the key Christian denominations had a church in the center of town and a smaller building in the suburbs. The Protestant Episcopal Church was the “favoured church of the elite,”7 although Sirleaf’s parents were Presbyterians.
During her early life Sirleaf had the opportunity to learn about the different religious traditions of the country. In Monrovia she attended church, but back in Bomi County many people in her father’s village were Muslim. People also practiced indigenous religions. Sirleaf’s mother was a preacher in the Presbyterian Church, and her children went with her as she preached around Liberia. Sirleaf’s childhood experiences of diversity in income, religion, and geography in some ways prepared her more than some other Liberians whose experiences were limited to Monrovia. As she writes in her autobiography, “My feet are in two worlds—the world of poor rural women with no respite from hardship and the world of accomplished Liberian professionals, for whom the United States is a second and beloved home. I draw strength from both.”8
Sirleaf did well at school and attended the prestigious College of West Africa in Monrovia from 1948 to 1955, graduating with a diploma in economics and accounting. This Methodist high school, founded in 1904, was a product of mission education in the nineteenth century. The school’s prestige remains. In 2011, the Liberia Annual Conference approved the CWA as a United Methodist Historic Site, one of only six sites outside the United States.9 At school, Sirleaf excelled in academics as well as sports. But during her high school years, her father had a stroke, which changed the family’s fortunes and led to Sirleaf feeling that her educational opportunities after school were now limited. However, Sirleaf was fortunate to come of age at the time when women were gaining political rights in Liberia.
One of President Tubman’s achievements was to open up opportunities for women. In 1947, one hundred years after the official founding of the country of Liberia, women received the vote. Women soon started organizing to champion further rights. Under the leadership of the newly formed National Liberian Social and Political Movement, the act was amended to allow women to hold any political office. Americo-Liberian women in particular were able to take advantage of these new opportunities and soon held many posts in both government and civil society. For example, in an article published in 1968, Angie E. Brooks, then president of the Trusteeship Council of the United Nations, listed a number of women in high government positions at the time. These included roles such as Under Secretary for Public Works and Utilities, Assistant Secretary for Information, Secretary of the Liberian Senate, Director of American and European Affairs in the Department of State.10 That so many women were able to get positions in government speaks mostly to the smallness of the Liberian elite, where everyone knew everyone and where relationships between key families anchored politics.
Sirleaf was thus part of a cohort of women who could aspire to participate fully as Liberian citizens as well as enter government. However, when Sirleaf was growing up, young women were expected to start a family, and that is what she did. She married at seventeen, in 1956. According to her autobiography, while her wealthier friends went off to college in the United States, Sirleaf wondered how she was going to fare. In this context, marriage seemed a way to a secure future, and it presented itself in the form of James (“Doc”) Sirleaf. He was seven years older than Ellen Johnson and had already been to the Tuskegee Institute, the famous historically black college in the United States. Ellen married James, and they had two boys, James T. and Charles Sirleaf, only some nine months apart.11As her autobiography recounts, for the first few years, they lived with Doc’s mother, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf worked as a secretary and later as an accountant. Then Doc got a job teaching at a school outside of Monrovia, and the family settled on a farm. Two more boys arrived before Ellen and Doc returned to Monrovia, where Doc took up the always coveted government job. Robert Sirleaf was born in 1960, and James H., known as Adamah, in 1962. For many women of the Liberian elite, the rest of their life would have been the story of working, bringing up the children, and nurturing the family. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf decided to lead a different kind of life focused on work, leadership, and nationbuilding.
2
Scholar and Government Employee
The 1960s and 1970s
In 1962, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf went to the United States to study. The catalyst for her going was the scholarship that Doc had received to study at the University of Wisconsin. Sirleaf saw that her school friends were faring better with higher educational opportunities. Sirleaf decided that she too needed to study in the United States. It is hard to know exactly what drives individuals, but clearly Sirleaf believed in herself from a young age and was driven to achieve. She overcame the kinds of obstacles (domestic violence, imprisonment, exile) that would have derailed a more timid personality. With perhaps only a hint of irony, Sirleaf’s autobiography is titled This Child Will Be Great, evidence of a strong ego. Indeed, the book is framed to show how “the path of greatness unfolded.”1
In order to study, Sirleaf had to leave her children behind. Having to choose between taking up educational or job opportunities and staying with one’s children was a common dilemma for many women across West Africa. In Sirleaf’s case, going to the United States offered a number of advantages: furthering her education, thus helping the family’s future, and staying with her husband. Like many Africans, Sirleaf and Doc left their children, including baby Adamah, in the care of relatives: two sons went to Doc’s mother and two to Ellen’s. But such separations did not come without cost: Sirleaf says while she had to do this, it did cause a “hairline fracture” in the relationship with her children, although as we will see, three of her sons have helped support her presidency in one way or another.
In moving to the United States for further study, Sirleaf joined