William Richard Tolbert Jr. was the 20th President of Liberia from 1971 until 1980, when he was killed in a coup d'état led by Samuel Doe.
Background
Tolbert was born in Bensonville, Liberia. An Americo-Liberian, he was the grandson of a former American slave from South Carolina who emigrated to Liberia in the Liberian exodus of 1878.[1] The Tolbert clan was one of the largest Americo-Liberian families in Liberia
Education
He attended Bensonville Elementary School, Crummell Hall Episcopalian High School, and graduated summa cum laude from the University of Liberia in 1934.
Career
Tolbert was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1943, and served until being elected vice president. A Baptist minister, in 1965 he became the first African to serve as president of the Baptist World Alliance, and was also a member of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity. He became Grand Master of the Masonic Order of Liberia.
Following Tubman's death in 1971, Tolbert succeeded him as president. To the outside world, this peaceful transition seemed to signal political stability in Liberia, remarkable in an Africa where political turmoil was the norm. However, Liberia was effectively a one-party state where civil liberties were limited and the judiciary and the legislative branches were subservient to the executive branch (compared to Separation of powers between branches of the United States government).
Politics
Upon becoming president, Tolbert initiated some liberal reforms. Though reelected in 1975, his government was criticized sharply for failing to address the deep economic disparities between different sectors of the population, notably the Americo-Liberians, who had dominated the country since independence, and the various indigenous ethnic groups that constituted the majority of the population.
Because Tolbert was a member of one of the most influential and affluent Americo-Liberian families, everything from cabinet appointments to economic policy was tainted with allegations of nepotism. Thanks to his father who spoke Kpelle, [9] Tolbert was the second Liberian president after President Benson to speak an indigenous language, and he promoted a program to bring more indigenous persons into the government.
This initiative caused a good deal of chagrin among Americo-Liberians who accused Tolbert of "letting the peasants into the kitchen." Indeed, it lacked support within Tolbert's own administration. While the indigenous majority felt the change was occurring too slowly, many Americo-Liberians felt it was too rapid.
Despite following Tubman's 27-year presidency, Tolbert refused to follow his predecessor's hold on office until death. He successfully worked for a constitutional amendment to bar the president from serving more than eight years in office, and in 1976 he vowed fierce opposition to members of the Legislature who sought to repeal the amendment and again permit what Tolbert called an "evil tradition". Three years later, when True Whig partisans petitioned him to seek the amendment's repeal, he replied that their statement would only encourage him in his previous position: "I will serve my country as long as I have life. I do not have to be President to do so."
Connections
He married Victoria A. Hoff, with whom he had eight children.
Some of Tolbert's children live in New York, North Carolina and Maryland. His brother Stephen A. Tolbert served as his finance minister in the government until his death on April 29, 1975, in a plane crash. One of his sons, A. Benedict Tolbert, was killed in the aftermath of the coup: he had taken refuge in the French Embassy but was arrested by members of Doe's security force who violated diplomatic immunity, and reportedly he was thrown out of a military aircraft while being transported to a prison in Lofa County.
Two of his daughters are no longer alive. Victoria Tolbert Yancy died in 1971, and Evelyn Tolbert Richardson (the wife of a government aviator) died in Westchester County, New York, United States, in 1993. His widow Victoria Tolbert died in Minnesota on November 8, 1997; she had moved to the United States after being released from house arrest in the aftermath of the coup.