Joseph Jenkins Roberts, born a free black in Norfolk, Virginia in 1809, and a migrant to Liberia in 1829, was sworn in as the first president of the newly independent Republic of Liberia. He had served earlier as the governor of the colonial settlement and when Liberia became independent on July 26, 1847 he had been chosen as its first chief executive. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
Joseph Nathan Kane, ed., Famous First Facts (New York: H.W. Wilson Company, 1981), 495.
American Colonization Society, The African Repository, Vol. XLV, 1869, p.182
American Colonization Society, The African Repository, Vol. XLV, 1869, p.182
Record Data
Date Certainty
Exact
Type
Slavery/Abolition
