Background
Amos Claudius Sawyer was born in 1945 to Abel and Sarah Sawyer, who were of Americo-Liberian ethnicity. His siblings include Joe Sawyer.
politician President of Liberia
Amos Claudius Sawyer was born in 1945 to Abel and Sarah Sawyer, who were of Americo-Liberian ethnicity. His siblings include Joe Sawyer.
Sawyer was educated in local schools and was a 1966 graduate of Liberia College (now the University of Liberia) He traveled to the United States for graduate work, earning Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in political science from Northwestern University in metropolitan Chicago, Illinois.
The Sawyers were a prominent family in Sinoe County, with free African-American ancestors who came as colonists to what was called "Maryland in Africa", founded by the Maryland Colonization Society. The colony became independent as the Republic of Maryland before joining Liberia in 1857. After his return, Doctor Sawyer worked as an academic, but also became an activist and politician.
He ran for the position of Mayor of Monrovia, the capital, as an independent rather than within the True Whig Party.
The latter had dominated the country for more than 100 years. After the 1980 coup d"état, Sawyer returned to academia for a time, taking a position as a professor of political science at the University of Liberia.
In December 1980 he was appointed Dean of the College of Social Sciences and acting director of the University. In the period after the abduction (and eventual murder) of president Samuel Doe, from 9 September 1990 until 22 November 1990, principal mutineer Prince Johnson and co-conspirator Charles Taylor both made claims on the presidency.
They voted Sawyer as interim president and Bishop Roland Diggs as vice-president, to establish a government.
Such leaders extended Sawyer"s one-year appointment for four years during the civil war fought against rebels led largely by Taylor, Johnson, and David Nimley. In 1994, Sawyer was forced to step down as a part of the peace process, and subsequently the role of official leader of Liberia was held not by the president, but by the Chairmen of the Council of State. Fighting sparked again in 1996, and continued during Charles Taylor"s presidency from 1997 to 2003.
Sawyer is Chairman of the Governance Reform Commission in Liberia, which has recently become the Governance Commission.
He supported Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in the October 2005 and 2011 elections.
He was voted in by 35 leaders representing seven political parties and eleven interest groups. In late August an emergency conference was held in The Gambia by a delegation of 35 Liberians representing seven political parties and eleven interest groups. Sawyer returned to the United States for a period, invited to serve as Associate Director and Research Scholar, Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis in the Department of Political Science at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.
His book, Beyond Plunder: Toward Democratic Governance in Liberia (2005), explored the development of multi-party democracy in the country.
He was a founding member of the Movement for Justice in Africa (MOJA) and in 1983 founded the Liberian People"s Party.