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Love of Liberty: The Liberian Flag Story and Quilt Pattern Kyra E. Hicks Who stitched the first US flag? I'd bet you'd say Betsy Ross. Who sewed the first Liberian flag? Did you know it was seven African American women? Learn more about these 1847 seamstresses, some born free and others former slaves: Susannah Lewis, who chaired the flag committee, Sarah Draper from Philadelphia, Mary L. Hunter from South Carolina, Rachel Johnson, Matilda Newport, Mrs. J. B. Russwurm from Baltimore, MD, and Collinette Teage Ellis from Virginia.
The design of the Liberian flag, first unfurled on August 24, 1847, has remained the same through the decades. It is the same design that whipped in the wind on January 16, 2006 when Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf took the solemn oath of office as the twenty-fourth President of the Republic of Liberia.
This article includes an easy-to-make pattern for a queen-sized Liberian flag quilt. Article: 3,700 words. 15 pages including quilt pattern diagrams and photograph.
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A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier Ishmael Beah This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them.
What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But until now, there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this hell and survived.
In A Long Way Gone, Beah, now twenty-five years old, tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts.
This is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.
"My new friends have begun to suspect I haven't told them the full story of my life.
'Why did you leave Sierra Leone?'
'Because there is a war.'
'You mean, you saw people running around with guns and shooting each other?'
'Yes, all the time.'
'Cool.'
I smile a little.
'You should tell us about it sometime.'
'Yes, sometime.'" |
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Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War Leymah Gbowee WINNER OF THE 2011 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE In a time of death and terror, Leymah Gbowee brought Liberia’s women together—and together they led a nation to peace. As a young woman, Leymah Gbowee was broken by the Liberian civil war, a brutal conflict that tore apart her life and claimed the lives of countless relatives and friends. Years of fighting destroyed her country—and shattered Gbowee’s girlhood hopes and dreams. As a young mother trapped in a nightmare of domestic abuse, she found the courage to turn her bitterness into action, propelled by her realization that it is women who suffer most during conflicts—and that the power of women working together can create an unstoppable force. In 2003, the passionate and charismatic Gbowee helped organize and then led the Liberian Mass Action for Peace, a coalition of Christian and Muslim women who sat in public protest, confronting Liberia’s ruthless president and rebel warlords, and even held a sex strike. With an army of women, Gbowee helped lead her nation to peace—in the process emerging as an international leader who changed history. Mighty Be Our Powers is the gripping chronicle of a journey from hopelessness to empowerment that will touch all who dream of a better world. |
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King Peggy: An American Secretary, Her Royal Destiny, and the Inspiring Story of How She Changed an African Village Peggielene Bartels, Eleanor Herman The charming real-life fairy tale of an American secretary who discovers she has been chosen king of an impoverished fishing village on the west coast of Africa. King Peggy has the sweetness and quirkiness of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series and the hopeful sense of possibility of Half the Sky.
King Peggy chronicles the astonishing journey of an American secretary who suddenly finds herself king to a town of 7,000 souls on Ghana's central coast, half a world away. Upon arriving for her crowning ceremony in beautiful Otuam, she discovers the dire reality: there's no running water, no doctor, and no high school, and many of the village elders are stealing the town's funds. To make matters worse, her uncle (the late king) sits in a morgue awaiting a proper funeral in the royal palace, which is in ruins. The longer she waits to bury him, the more she risks incurring the wrath of her ancestors. Peggy's first two years as king of Otuam unfold in a way that is stranger than fiction. In the end, a deeply traditional African town has been uplifted by the ambitions of its headstrong, decidedly modern female king. And in changing Otuam, Peggy is herself transformed, from an ordinary secretary to the heart and hope of her community. |
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The Kings of Mauretania (The Forgotten Civilisations of Africa) Bob Idjennaden The Kingdom of Numidia was the most powerful autochthonous civilisation in North Africa until Rome set foot on the African soil. Numidia became even too powerful for its own good and Rome (that just got rid of its rival Carthage) did not intend to let a new rival develop in its vicinity.
Rome fought many times against the Numidian kings and at some stage they managed to occupy completely their lands.
After that Numidia disappeared completely from the maps but the neighbouring kingdom of Mauretania survived and grew in power and in importance. Mauretania and Rome co-existed “in peace” for a while but at some stage, the Romans, decided to expand further in Africa and moved towards… Mauretania.
This book will deal with this other great civilisation (too little known too) that existed more than 2000 years ago. |
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This Child Will Be Great: Memoir of a Remarkable Life by Africa's First Woman President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf In January 2006, after the Republic of Liberia had been racked by fourteen years of brutal civil conflict, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf—Africa's "Iron Lady"—was sworn in as president, an event that marked a tremendous turning point in the history of the West African nation. In this stirring memoir, Sirleaf shares the story of her rise to power, including her early childhood; her experiences with abuse, imprisonment, and exile; and her fight for democracy and social justice. She reveals her determination to succeed in multiple worlds, from her studies in the United States to her work as an international bank executive, to campaigning in some of Liberia's most desperate and war-torn villages and neighborhoods. It is the tale of an outspoken political and social reformer who fought the oppression of dictators and championed change. By telling her story, Sirleaf encourages women everywhere to pursue leadership roles at the highest levels of power, and gives us all hope that we can change the world. |
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Indigo: In Search of the Color That Seduced the World Catherine E. McKinley For almost five millennia, in every culture and in every major religion, indigo-a blue pigment obtained from the small green leaf of a parasitic shrub through a complex process that even scientists still regard as mysterious-has been at the center of turbulent human encounters. Indigo is the story of this precious dye and its ancient heritage: its relationship to slavery as the "hidden half" of the transatlantic slave trade, its profound influence on fashion, and its spiritual significance, which is little recognized but no less alive today. It is an untold story, brimming with rich, electrifying tales of those who shaped the course of colonial history and a world economy. But Indigo is also the story of a personal quest: Catherine McKinley is the descendant of a clan of Scots who wore indigo tartan as their virile armor; the kin of several generations of Jewish "rag traders"; the maternal granddaughter of a Massachusetts textile factory owner; and the paternal granddaughter of African slaves-her ancestors were traded along the same Saharan routes as indigo, where a length of blue cotton could purchase human life. McKinley's journey in search of beauty and her own history ultimately leads her to a new and satisfying path, to finally "taste life." With its four-color photo insert and sumptuous design, Indigo will be as irresistible to look at as it is to read. |
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Journey Without Maps (Penguin Classics) Graham Greene His mind crowded with vivid images of Africa, Graham Greene set off in 1935 to discover Liberia, a remote and unfamiliar republic founded for released slaves. Now with a new introduction by Paul Theroux, Journey Without Maps is the spellbinding record of Greene’s journey. Crossing the red-clay terrain from Sierra Leone to the coast of Grand Bassa with a chain of porters, he came to know one of the few areas of Africa untouched by colonization. Western civilization had not yet impinged on either the human psyche or the social structure, and neither poverty, disease, nor hunger seemed able to quell the native spirit. BACKCOVER: “One of the best travel books [of the twentieth] century.”
—Norman Sherry
“Journey Without Maps and The Lawless Roads reveal Greene’s ravening spiritual hunger, a desperate need to touch rock bottom within the self and in the humanly created world.”
—The Times Higher Education Supplement |
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The Secret Story of the Guanches (The Forgotten Civilisations of Africa) Bob Idjennaden The Guanches lived in the Canaries Islands way before the Spanish conquest of their archipelago in the 14th century.
They were peaceful people that lived in harmony with nature and they were leading a life similar to that of the native Indians of America.
The surprise of the Europeans when they found them was massive because the Gaunches were tall people with blond hair and often blue eyes (especially in Tenerife)!
These mysterious "blond Africans" had kings, were monotheists, mummified their dead (as the Egyptians did) and even had a writing system using an alphabet!
This people completely disappeared in the early 16th century leaving many questions unanswered. The most important one is the following: where did they come from? |
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Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire, Book 2: Origin of Civilization from the Cushites Drusilla Dunjee Houston Classic history of Ancient Ethiopia, as researched and written by a heralded African American woman activist. |