Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the president of Liberia, is the first elected female head of state in Africa, and the first elected black female president in the world. But beyond her groundbreaking election, Sirleaf has made enormous strides during her presidency, becoming perhaps the most popular and successful leader in Liberia’s history. She was co-awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with two other women in 2011 for her commitment to nonviolence and the peace-building process. Much of her life is common knowledge. Here are 10 things you didn’t know about Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
Sources: Biography.com, EMansion.gov.lr, Mtholyoke.edu, AfricanHistory.About.com, “The News,” New York Times Magazine, HollywoodReporter.com, “The New Dawn”
President Sirleaf’s ancestors were native to Liberia, but were taken as slaves to America for a time. Once they regained their freedom, they returned to their native land – in fact, Sirleaf is descended from some of the original colonists of Liberia. She does not identify as Americo-Liberian, however, as her father is Gola and her mother has mixed Kru and German ancestry.
Sirleaf’s grandfather on her dad’s side was a minor Gola chief in Western Liberia known as Jahmale. Her father changed his last name to Johnson later in life out of loyalty to President Hilary R.W. Johnson, Liberia’s first native-born president. Her father would also go on to become the first indigenous Liberian to sit on the country’s national legislature.
Ellen Johnson married James Sirleaf at age 17, and moved with him to America to pursue her studies in 1961. They later divorced. She is the mother of four, and has eight grandchildren.
While studying in America, Sirleaf earned a degree in accounting from the Madison Business College, a degree in economics from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and a master’s of public administration from Harvard University, finishing in 1971. She also became a member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.
While working as assistant minister of finance under the government of William Tolbert in Liberia, Sirleaf attracted much attention with her now-famous speech to her former high school, the College of West Africa, in 1972. She sharply criticized the government for failing to address the vast inequalities in Liberian society and made a name for herself for speaking “truth unto power.”
In 1980, President William Tolbert was overthrown and killed by army Sgt. Samuel Doe, representing the Krahn ethnic group. As the assistant minister of finance for Tolbert’s administration, Sirleaf went into exile in Nairobi, Kenya. There, she worked in the international banking community.
In 1985, Sirleaf returned to Liberia from exile and ran for a seat in the Senate, publicly speaking out against the brutal Doe regime. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison for her criticism, and served a partial sentence before moving back to America, to Washington, D.C. It wasn’t until 1997 that Sirleaf returned to Liberia to begin working as an economist for the World Bank and Citibank in Africa.
The “Put Ma Ellen There” project ensured that Sirleaf joined the ranks of Mahatma Gandhi and Eleanor Roosevelt in the U.N. Garden of Nations. The effort to put her there was spearheaded by 15 young Liberians who represented the country’s 15 political subdivisions. The group said it believed President Sirleaf deserved to be in the garden because of her significant contributions to peace and development in her country and the world.
Source: Emansion.gov.lr
An electrical malfunction in July 2006 caused a fire in Liberia’s executive mansion, seriously damaging the building. Sirleaf and her administration deemed repairing the mansion a low priority, choosing instead to work out of the nearby foreign ministry building and her personal home in Monrovia.
Sirleaf announced in 2010 that she intended to run in the October 2011 presidential election, claiming that she still had work to do. This went against her pledge in her first presidential campaign that she would only stand for one term. Just one month before the election, her eligibility was challenged on another front — a constitutional provision that all presidential candidates must live in Liberia for 10 years prior to an election. The country’s supreme court dismissed the challenge days before the election, ruling that the writers of the 1986 constitution could not have foreseen the years of conflict that would force many Liberian leaders into exile.