" In 1821, the American Colonization Society bought a piece of Africa. In Washington the new country was christened Liberia and its capital was called Monrovia, in honor of James Monroe, who at the time was president of the United States. Also in Washington, they designed the flag to be just like their own, except with a single star, and they elected the country’s government. Harvard drew up the constitution. The citizens of the newborn nation were freed slaves, or rather slaves expelled from the plantations of the southern United States. No sooner did they set foot in Africa than those who had been slaves became masters. The native population, “those jungle savages,” owed obedience to the newcomers, who had suddenly risen from the bottom to the top. Backed "

― Eduardo Galeano , Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone