Liberia - Famous liberians

Joseph Jenkins Roberts (1809–76), who was governor under the Colonization Society at the time the republic was established, became its first and later its sixth president (1848–56, 1872–76) and gained the respect of the European colonial powers by his able exposition of Liberia's rights as a free and independent nation. The national heroine is Matilda Newport, who helped to repel an attack on the first struggling settlement. Among white Americans who went to Liberia to assist the early black settlers were Jehudi Ashmun (1794–1828) and Ralph Randolph Gurley (1797–1872), who together reorganized the colonists in 1824. William Vacanarat Shadrach Tubman (1895–1971) was president of Liberia from 1944 until 1971. Angie E. Brooks-Randolph (b.1928) served as president of the 1969/70 UN General Assembly. William Richard Tolbert, Jr. (1913–80) succeeded Tubman as president. He was killed in the 1980 coup led by Samuel Kanyon Doe (1950–90), who subsequently assumed the titles of commander in chief of the armed forces and chairman of the PRC. Doe was in turn tortured and killed in 1990 by rebels loyal to Charles G. Taylor (b. 1948), the leader of the faction that gained control during the civil war.