Word: tubman
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
They laughed when William Vacanarat Shadrach Tubman was inaugurated as the 18th President of Liberia back in 1944. He had a reputation as a playboy, and it was freely predicted that within six months he would be impeached or simply resign from office. But "Uncle Shad" has endured. Now in his sixth term, he has been busy the last two weeks celebrating his 25th anniversary as chief executive of Africa's oldest republic. TIME Correspondent James Wilde went to the party, a ten-day long binge of dinners, dances, agricultural exhibitions, parades and fireworks. His report...
...streets of Monrovia, the capital, were jammed with parked cars that spilled over into the alleys. Inside the Centennial Ballroom, a babel of people in long white Moslem robes and colored bubus (tribal gowns) mingled with those in formal tie and tails wearing rows of medals. Guided by Tubman and his daughter Coocoo, they marched, then switched to a rumba, a quick step, the Lindy hop, a quadrille. "Faster, faster!" shouted the President, roaring with laughter. For 50 minutes the crowd of nearly 1,000 stomped to John Philip Sousa marches. Leaving most of his guests wilted, the 73-year...
...Tubman and Liberia have come a long way since his first inauguration. Monrovia, now a city of 100,000, at that time was a town of scarcely 15,000 people sporting only four blocks of paved streets, no sewage system, no streetlighting, no radio nor telephones. Liberia's annual budget came to $750,000, and government departments were quartered in shabby, corrugated-metal reproductions of Southern U.S. ante-bellum mansions. An Americo-Liberian elite, descendants of the American slaves who declared Liberia independent in 1847,* was in power, ruling with little regard for the tribal people of the bush...
...iron-ore mines, and low shipping-registration fees (which netted the government $3,000,000 last year) give Liberia, in name anyway, the world's biggest merchant fleet. Although only 5% of the population is literate, some 1,600 youngsters have been or are being educated abroad, and Tubman says ruefully: "I'm committing political suicide. These boys will come back experts, and I know nothing but the Bible...
...really took place in this democratic U.S. 100 years ago that I was not taught in high school or college. While the people of this country are paying homage to such men as Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson and Patrick Henry, they would do well to honor Stevens, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, William Lloyd Garrison and Denmark Vesey. The greatest personal commitment one can make to himself today is "Learn, Baby, Learn...