William Vacanarat Shadrach Tubman

William Vacanarat Shadrach Tubman (1895-1971) was the nineteenth president of Liberia. His efficient management during six terms began the transformation of his country into a modern state.

William V. S. Tubman was born on Nov. 29, 1895, in Harper, Maryland County, Liberia. His father, the Reverend Alexander Tubman, was a general in the Liberian army, former Speaker of the Liberian House of Representatives, former senator, and a Methodist minister. His mother, Elizabeth Rebecca Barnes Tubman, came from Atlanta, Ga. Tubman attended primary school in Harper, then the Methodist Cape Palmas Seminary, and finally Harper County High School. Between 1910 and 1917 he took part in several punitive military expeditions, rising in the ranks from private to officer status. He studied law under private tutors, served as a recorder in the Maryland County Monthly and Probate Court and as a collector of internal revenue, and in 1917 was appointed county attorney.

Tubman entered the national political scene in 1923, when, at the age of 28, he was elected senator from Maryland County to the national legislature. He served in this capacity until 1937, when President Edwin Barclay appointed him to the post of associate justice of the Liberian Supreme Court. An official biography contends that Tubman's elevation to the Supreme Court was designed to remove him from active contention for the presidency.

However, Tubman remained active in Liberia's dominant political party, the True Whig party, and by 1943 had risen to such political standing that President Barclay personally nominated Tubman to succeed him. Tubman was elected president in 1943 and reelected in 1951, 1955, 1959, 1963, 1967, and 1971, for seven consecutive terms, which gave him the longest tenure of any modern president anywhere. For reasons intrinsic to Liberia's political system, Tubman's presidential opponents never garnered more than a minuscule portion of the votes cast.

As president, Tubman's most significant contribution to Liberian politics was his "unification policy, " by which the hinterland counties, previously economically and politically neglected, were gradually brought into the national framework. The inland counties became fully represented in the Congress, roads and amenities were brought to the interior, and, most significantly, hinterland leaders began to play an important role in all areas of government. The open-door policy of Tubman, another major political line of his administration, permitted extensive foreign investment in Liberia's economy, particularly with respect to the development of the rich iron ore areas of Mt. Nimba and in the Bong and Wologosi ranges.

Tubman was a devout Methodist, a past grand master of the Masons, and a patron or officer in most of Liberia's important civic and voluntary organizations. He died on July 23, 1971, in London after surgery. He left a widow, Antoinette Padmore Tubman, and six children, one of whom, William V. S. Tubman, Jr., was president of the Congress of Industrial Organization, Liberia's principal trade union federation. Tubman was succeeded in the presidency by his vice president, William R. Tolbert.

Further Reading

There is no scholarly biography of Tubman. A. Doris Bank Henries, A Biography of President William V. S. Tubman (1968), is an uncritical study. Thomas Patrick Melady, Profiles of African Leaders (1961), has a sympathetic chapter on Tubman. Less sympathetic are the profiles of Tubman in Rolf Italiaander, The New Leaders of Africa (trans. 1961), and John Gunther, Procession (1965).

Additional Sources

Wreh, Tuan, The love of liberty: the rule of President William V. S. Tubman in Liberia, 1944-1971, London: C. Hurst; New York: distributed by Universe Books, 1976. □

William Vacanarat Shadrach Tubman 1895–1971, president of Liberia (1944–71). As a young man he was a lawyer, a collector of internal revenue, a teacher, and an officer of the Liberian militia. He was elected to the senate in 1923 but resigned in 1931 after a League of Nations investigation found Liberia (governed by Tubman's party) guilty of selling its people into slavery. He was reelected to the senate in 1934, but he resigned again in 1937 to become an associate justice of the Liberian supreme court. He was elected president in 1943 and took office in 1944. He was reelected several times, with the help of constitutional amendments, serving until his death. Tubman greatly modernized the economy of his country and its educational facilities and gave the vote to women and other ethnic groups. However, he and high officials were often criticized for living in luxury while the vast majority was poor. Other African leaders accused Tubman of being too much under the influence of the United States.

Bibliography: See biography by R. A. Smith (1967); E. R. Townsend, ed., President Tubman of Liberia Speaks (1959); D. E. Dunn, The Foreign Policy of Liberia during the Tubman Era, 1944–1971 (1979).

Tubman, William Vacanarat Shadrach (1895–1971) Liberian statesman, President (1944–71). A member of an Americo-Liberian family, he was elected to the Liberian Senate in 1930 and became President in 1944. He encouraged economic development to remove Liberia's financial dependence on the USA and successfully integrated the inhabitants of the country's interior into an administration.

Tubman, William Vacanarat Shadrach (1895–1971) Liberian statesman, president (1944–71). A descendant of US freed slaves who settled the country during the 19th century, he preserved Liberia's close connections with the USA, maintained prosperity, and showed respect for the customs of the non-Westernized people of the interior.