MOMOLU MASSAQUOI
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Momolu Massaquoi (1870-1938), a Prince of the Vai tribe, was among the first indigenous Liberians to study in America. For thirty years he played a vital role in the development of the Liberian hinterland, serving as an effective link between the indigenous people and the immigrants.
PHOTO CAPTION: Momolu Massaquoi. SOURCE:EA Library.
Momolu Massaquoi was the last-born son of Vai Queen Sandimani who ruled in the disputed Gallinas territory on the Liberian-Sierra Leone border. He was educated in 1884 at St. John’s School, Grand Cape Mount County, and taken by Bishop Pennick of the Protestant Episcopal Church to the United States where he attended secondary school in Boston and Central Tennessee College.
He returned to Liberia in the early 1890’s to assist his mother in a tribal dispute, revisiting the United States one year later. He attended the first African Ethnological Congress in 1893 at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. After lecturing in the United States and Canada he went to the University of Oxford during which period he attended Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee Celebrations.
He returned to Liberia before the turn of the century and became the first African principal of St. John’s School. On his father’s death, he ruled his people, the Gallinas, for four years, during which he supported the founding in 1905 of the School for Sons of Chiefs in Bo, Sierra Leone. Warned of an assassination plot against his life, he retired to Sierra Leone where he engaged in trading and commerce.
President Barclay sent a delegation to bring him back to Liberia where he served in the Interior Department, rising to the rank of Commissioner-General of the Department before World War I. He wrote the first legislation governing the Liberian hinterland, introduced the hut tax; and formed the first council of chiefs who were invested in rank by the President of the Republic.
During World War I he served the combined Department of Interior and War. Shortly thereafter he was made personal secretary of President Howard. In 1922, President King appointed him Liberia’s first Consul-General to Germany. After serving in Hamburg for eight years he became Liberia’s Postmaster General for a brief period. In the early 1930’s until his death in 1938 he engaged in commerce and served as a consultant to the government.
A man of strong character, honest and brilliant, he was resolute in the conviction that Liberia could not prosper without effectively utilising the tribal people of the hinterland. For thirty years he worked tirelessly for the integration of the indigenous people and the Americo-Liberia community.
In an Independence Day oration delivered on 26 July 1921, in which he critically reviewed conditions in Liberia, he reiterated his conviction that the tribal chiefs should be represented in the Legislature despite their ignorance of English, since they represented the majority of the Liberian taxpayers.
The immigrant Community in 1921 resented these views, but he stuck to them. His wisdom and foresight have since his death been vindicated, for his recommendations for the integration of all Liberians were implemented by President Tubman.
RAYMOND J. SMYKE
