Charles Cobb Jr.
9 October 2002
interview
Washington, DC — Part of what her television film "Liberia -- America's Stepchild" portrays, says producer Nancee Oku Bright, is that Liberia's "usefulness" to the United States ended, in the eyes of U.S. policymakers, with the end of the cold war. "Essentially, no one had any use for Liberia any more. That's Liberia's tragedy," she says.
Following a failed coup attempt in 1985, President Samuel Doe launched a reign of terror that drove many young boys into neighboring countries. Civil war erupted in December 1989, when Liberia's current president, Charles Taylor, led a rebel militia known as the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) into THE country from the Ivory Coast. By the time the war ended in 1997, when Taylor won a contested presidential election, an estimated 200,000 people had perished. Virtually the entire population was uprooted, and thousands were forced into exile in neighboring states and further abroad. Unrest has continued, and serious fighting erupted earlier this year with a rebel group vowing to overthrow the Taylor regime.
The documentary premiers on public television stations Thursday at 10pm (check local listings).
The hopes of freeborn blacks from America, who emigrated to the west African nation early in the 19th century, should not have led to the late 20th century carnage that the world has witnessed, says Bright, who is Liberian herself. Liberia was the only black-ruled republic on a continent that was being colonized by Europe.
The film analyzes U.S./Liberian ties against the backdrop of the sometimes difficult relationship between incoming black settlers and the indigenous communities who had occupied the territory for centuries. "The film," Bright says, "is a testimony to the people who went before us, to the people who died during the course of the civil war, because many Liberians of all ethnic groups on all sides -- all of us -- have lost people. My own family." AllAfrica's Charles Cobb Jr. spoke with Ms. Bright about the film and about the Liberia of today and yesterday. Excerpts:
What is the origin of this film? You, of course, are Liberian, so I assume that heritage is part of the motivation. But what drives the production of this film now?
The film really comes out of two frames of thought. The first has to do with something that took place in 1994 -- the genocide in Rwanda. I was working for the United Nations at the time, and I was the deputy in charge of the Horn of Africa program in Geneva when the genocide began. I felt very, very helpless. And I felt very, very angry that a slaughter like this has been done to a population and the world stood by and did so little.
I stared to think about the power of media to influence people so negatively. I started to think that this thing [genocide] is happening; it's not just happening out of some vacuum. It's happening because people perhaps don't understand its historical antecedents. It's happening because people perhaps don't understand the role that they can play in actually determining history.
I think that every person who committed those acts of genocide didn't think about those things. They didn't think about their role in history, how history would see them. But the people who came up with the media strategy probably thought about it, and they didn't care. I thought, if you can use media to such ill, can't you use it for good. It was just one of those every simple things. And, I was thinking about all of the things that have happened over the centuries. I was thinking about the different perceptions, and I thought I was properly placed to make such a film, if I wanted to do a film about Liberia. I was the perfect person to do it.
You know people see me, they hear the name -- Bright -- and they make complete assumptions about the name. The first thing they assume is that if your name is Bright it has to be Americo-Liberian. I came from a fairly well-to-do family, but my father didn't wear shoes until he was probably about 15 -- really wear shoes. He didn't wear shoes at all until he was about ten. And he struggled. His parents had immigrated to Liberia from Nigeria and Sierra Leone. They had worked with missionaries and that's how they got the name 'Bright.' So they were indigenous Africans.
Then, there are also assumptions made about who would have married who, because in Liberia's history, people always assume that it's the native woman who will marry the settler man. And in my mother's case -- it is my mother who is the product of both 'Congo' -- which is the so-called 'Americo-Liberian' and the 'Country', which is 'indigenous.' And it was her mother who married my grandfather, who was a native man.
So everywhere there were challenges to all of the stereotypes of the whole Liberia dichotomy -- the way in which people look at the Liberia Story. My whole experience growing up was very much outside of the way in which my history has been told. I really wanted to understand how this history was created, because while I think there was some truth to it, I also think that people see black and white, and they don't see the gray. And I think that, to some extent, is what makes tragedy -- when people are so set in their ways that there is no room for compromise. that has been our problem to a large extent.
In the film you are really telling two stories: Liberia's internal story, the story of the people of Liberia's relationship with one another. And then, the story of Liberia's relationship with the United States. At least part of the subtext of these two stories, a way in which these two stories appear to me as linked, is that Liberia has been, if not betrayed, at least let down by the United Sates. Is that the story you're trying to tell? Part of the story you're trying to tell?
Yeah, but it's a strange story to try and tell, particularly in this climate that we have now. People are feeling very vulnerable in the United States, and they're feeling very prickly about any kind of criticism. I think there is, within Liberian society, and regardless of where you go you see it, there is this sense that there is some sort of disappointment in the relationship between Liberia and the United States and what has actually evolved. There is a sense that when it was useful....it's the cold war story to be frank with you. [Former assistant secretary of state for African affairs] Herman Cohen says that in the film.
He was quite frank in the film, I think.
He was extremely frank in the film. And he says, the cold war had ended and essentially no one had any use for Liberia any more. That's Liberia's tragedy. It felt closer to the United States than anyother African country. And probably any other country outside of Israel this country, Liberia, felt so close to the United States regardless of whether someone came from an "Americo-Liberian" background or "indigenous " -- "native" I guess I should say, because all Liberians are indigenous -- there was this real sense that...not that they were Americans, certainly not because I think that Liberians did identify themselves as very firmly in Africa, but in the way that so many African countries have had this colonial linkage; Nigerians often go to school in England; Senegalese often go to school in France; the Liberians went to school in America. If they ever had the opportunity to do so, that's where they went.
In the film we say that people called Liberia, "Little America". And that's true! So there was this great sense of disappointment, a sense that here's a country that it was useful during the time of the first world war, when Liberia was actually the only country in Africa, I believe, that was actually bombed by the Germans. And, at the time, Germany, not the United States, was Liberia's primary trading partner. Yet Liberia stood beside the United States and not beside Germany. And when Firestone came in [1926], it had access to a million acres of land, which is larger than the whole state of Rhode Island, to produce rubber -- at a time when the rubber industry in the United States was very, very low.
Do you think Americans, meaning U.S. citizens, are aware of this at the level at which Liberians are aware of this relationship? In the film we see some Black Americans, African-Americans -- Dubois, Ossie Davis, interested in Liberia. But in general do you think the U.S. public has any awareness or understanding of this relationship?
No, I don't think the bulk of the American population understands or even particularly cares. But it's a really interesting story to tell. It's a fascinating story when you think about it. The linkages were so strong from the Liberian side. Firestone came in and made agreements to do many things that Firestone simply didn't do. So I think that Liberia felt that, yes, there were many benefits, but there were many things that could have been done that were not done.
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