"Once you learn to read, you will be forever free." - Frederick Douglass
Today I spent $315 on anti-diarrhea, anti-malaria and anti-yellow fever medicine. All of this in preparation for a two-week trip to Africa.
Welcome to my regular (hopefully daily) blog about our upcoming trip to Liberia. I will get to the why we're doing this trip and who we are soon enough. For now, let's begin with Frederick Douglass: African-American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman who lived in the 1800s.
Douglass fits very well into the background story of what this humanitarian adventure is all about. For starters, the title of this blog is a Douglass quote: "Once you learn to read, you will be forever free."
Ours is certainly an expedition for freedom and literacy. And you can't have the former without the latter, as Douglass so succinctly stated. This fits very well with the name Liberia itself.
Liberia means freedom.
During the 1820s and 1830s the American Colonization Society established the colony of Liberia in Africa and by 1865 over 10,000 African American slaves had migrated to Liberia. Supporters included Henry Clay, James Monroe and Abraham Lincoln (source).
And to drive the reading = freedom point even further, there is this. The words "book" and "free" have at their Latin roots the word liber.
We want to make sure Liberia is not just a meaningless title but one that symbolizes the best principles upon which the country was founded, where literacy engenders liberty. Thus, it is our mission to help this country teach itself to read so it will be forever free.
Wonderful Colin. I am looking forward to working with you on this project and to your ongoing narrative. For those not familiar, the background photo you have chosen shows the "West Point" community of Monrovia, one of the most challenged areas of the country, with Freeport beyond. Best, Tim
ReplyDelete