Yes, I remember August 22, 1984 very well. That was the day of terror for students who attended the University of Liberia, students who attended schools in the city of Monrovia, faculty and staff going about their regular daily activities on the main campus of the University of Liberia and the soldiers of the Liberian Military Leader Samuel K. Doe.
The soldiers did a good job of brutalizing and giving grave bodily harm to all of the above-mentioned people on that fateful day. I also was at the University of Liberia. Well, not exactly physically present on the grounds of the campus when the confrontation with the soldiers took place but I was involved in a mental way.
It all began for me in December of 1983 on a holiday visit to Liberia and at a Christmas party in Monrovia where I met up with my favorite mentor and College of Education Professor at the University of Liberia, Dr. Mary Antoinette Brown Sherman. She was now the President of the University of Liberia. She confronted me at the party with a simple request.
“Emmett, we need you at the University. Since you are here for the break, why don’t you teach one of our vacation math courses?” Yes, during those days, the Liberian school year went from March to December, followed by vacation school in January and February.
I was in Liberia for my Christmas and New Year holiday from Greenville Technical College, Greenville, South Carolina, the school in the USA where I was teaching mathematics. The USA was my new home. I had graduated from the University of Liberia in 1972 with a degree in Mathematics and Physics while teaching in the Physics department as a Laboratory Demonstrator with my team leader James Maximore.
I left Liberia in 1973 on an AFGRAD Scholarship, nominated by the University of Liberia and sponsored by the African American Institute in New York to do my graduate studies in mathematics at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
The agreement was that upon the completion of my graduate studies, I must return to Liberia and the University of Liberia to become the first ever Liberian head of the UL Math Department. But there was a major civil disobedience in Liberia called the “Rice Riot” in 1979 that led to the killing of my favorite cousin Gabriel Scott, bringing me so much terrible grief.
Subsequent, in 1980, there was a Military Coup that overthrew the Liberian government, killed the President of Liberia, and led to the killing of some of my relatives by a Military firing squad. These events made it impossible for me to return to Liberia for good. My December 1983 visit was a test case to see for myself what was going on in Liberia.
It was hard to say no to the request from Dr. Mary Antoinette Brown-Sherman. She had done a lot for me as a role model while I was a student at the University of Liberia. She had also provided me with additional UL financial assistance while doing my doctorate studies at the University of Toledo in Toledo, Ohio.
I agreed to stay and teach a calculus course (Math 201) in the vacation school of the University of Liberia. It was a most wonderful experience. I enjoyed every moment with my Liberian students. They were eager to learn and with the meager resources at hand, I did the best I could to give them what they needed to learn calculus. Luckily, we had some good help in the mathematics department, courtesy of the US Fulbright Program that was active at the University of Liberia.
There were two outstanding Fulbright Professors of Mathematics from Oklahoma and New York teaching in the UL Math Department. The Professor from Ithaca College in New York, Dr Joseph Marchese assumed the role of Head of the Mathematics Department and had the affairs of the department running very smoothly.
As the vacation school ended in February of 1984, my students began to question me about the next upcoming calculus course (Math 202). Would I also be their teacher? But I had to return to the US to my school in Greenville, South Carolina. I could not stay away any longer. However, my Liberian students got to me emotionally.
I loved teaching my Liberian students. Why was I turning my back on them to go and teach white students in the US? I decided to go back to the US, talk to my people there at Greenville Technical College, and hopefully, return to Liberia for a year.
This is exactly what I did. My colleagues at Greenville Technical College were pleased to help. I returned to Liberia in March, just in time for first semester of the 1984 Academic Year with lots of donated calculus books from the teachers in my math department and lots of calculators for my students. I had a wonderful first semester with my Liberian students! My vacation school students had their request satisfied as I again met with them to teach Calculus II (Math 202).
We had 4 brand new computers donated to the math department by our Fulbright Professor from Oklahoma. I was able to introduce a new computer science course in the Math Department (Math 109) and write the textbook manual for it just as well.
Second semester began in July-August with the transition of our Math Department to a brand-new office setting in the newly built Science College of the University of Liberia.
This new Science College was located on the Fendall Campus of the University of Liberia, an approximately 50 minutes’ drive from Monrovia. We all had beautiful offices and classrooms. Our 4 computers were in a computer lab where I taught BASIC, Fortran and COBOL to my students in the Science College of the UL Fendall Campus.
My enthusiasm with my students and focus on the Fendall Campus kept me completely off-track with the political happenings in Monrovia and Liberia.
So, when the UL students decided to have a protest rally on the UL Capitol Hill Campus on behalf of their UL Professor Amos Sawyer on Thursday, August 22, I was clueless as to what was happening in Monrovia. Amos Sawyer was a UL Professor who had announced his intentions to run for the Presidency of Liberia in a soon to be announced election for President of Liberia.
The enthusiasm of his student supporters was felt as a strong political challenge by the Military leader of Liberia, Samuel K. Doe who also wanted to be the President of Liberia. Trump-up charges were invented against Amos Sawyer claiming that he was planning to overthrow the Military leader Doe. He was arrested and jailed.
The UL students demanded his release from prison and planned a protest rally on the UL Capitol Hill campus scheduled for Thursday, August 22, 1984. Students from all high schools in the Monrovia area were invited to join in the protest rally. This was a regular working day, and it was supposed to be a peaceful protest rally.
However, the Liberian soldiers came on the UL campus that Thursday and ruthlessly and brutally disbanded the students, thereby ending the protest rally. On the Friday after the brutal attack by the soldiers, I heard all kinds of the terrible news from my students. Girls were corralled in the President’s house on the UL main campus, stripped naked and raped repeatedly. University employees were forcefully evicted from their offices.
The high school and university students were beaten and shot, and the bodies taken to the Liberian Military Camp in Schefflin for secret burials. Wounded students fell over the Jallah Town cliff as they fled from the soldiers and were rushed to the nearby Maternity Center Hospital for treatment. However, the soldiers went to the hospital in search of these wounded students and took them away to the Military Camp in Schefflin.
The Fendall campus was raided by the soldiers on Friday and all 4 of our computers were destroyed. Hundreds of soldiers had the Main UL Campus and the Fendall UL Campus on complete lock-down by Friday evening.
Checking the newspapers on Friday and Saturday, I saw nothing about the brutal attack on the UL Capitol Hill Campus. The major newspaper story headlines were all about the upcoming Saturday football game between Barrolle and IE. On Saturday evening, I went searching for answers at a local night club located in the Libya Building across the street from the Monrovia City Hall.
There I met up with some buddies who began to fill me in on more of the terrible things done by the soldiers. I was extremely angry. I told them that I was going to write letters to all the Monrovia newspaper editors expressing my anger. I was going to submit these letters to the newspapers on Monday.
However, a good older buddy and former CWA high school mate, S. Raymond Horace, cautioned me seriously to not send in any letters to the newspapers. In his words, “Emmett, this is Liberia, not America, don’t do it!”
I did a lot of soul-searching on Sunday. I wrote my letter with all intensions to send them to the newspapers on Monday. But S. Ray’s words of advice kept ringing in my ears. I finally decided to wait a while and see how things would calm down on Monday before doing anything. Monday came and went. UL did not reopen.
Soldiers were all over the two campuses. No one was allowed anywhere near the campuses. It was the same thing on Tuesday, and Wednesday. UL did not reopen. By the end of the week, I was completely frustrated and about to lose my mind. So, I politely got on the next available plane the following week and returned to the USA.
The University of Liberia remained close for the rest of 1984 and part of 1985. I never returned to Liberia. I never saw any of my students again. Up till now, I have not gotten over my grief since I never saw or heard from any of my former 1984 UL students. I never found out who died or survived that terrible August 22, 1984 mess. So sad. So sad.
UPDATE Twenty-five years later, I began a new chapter in my life with Liberia. I finally went back to Liberia in December of 2009. This time my trip to Liberia was in the capacity of a Scholarship Committee Chairman for the Liberian Community Association of Connecticut where I now lived.
After awarding tuition and fees scholarships to 20 randomly chosen UL students, it was my duty to take a trip to Liberia to meet and greet these 20 students on behalf of the Liberian Community Association of Connecticut. It was a teary-eyed return trip to Liberian soil.
I fell on the ground and wept, right out of the airplane at the Roberts International Airport. The reunion with my native land was a solid one this time. I made it my duty to return to Liberia every year after that first 2009 visit.
For the 2012-2013 Academic Year I took a one-year sabbatical leave of absence from my USA University to participate in an $18 million USAID EHELD Grant that was focused on a five-year program to begin an Agriculture College at Cuttington University and an Engineering College at the University of Liberia.
My responsibility was to lead the change to improve the math skills of the UL students who would become the future civil engineers, electrical engineers, mining engineers and geology graduates of the engineering program.
I am finally at peace with my native land Liberia. I have a regular routine now where I spend at least 4 months of the year in Liberia teaching mathematics, conducting workshops, and motivating my Liberian students to succeed in life. I love every moment of this new live. But that is another story, still in the making for another day.
