This is something I JUST LEARNED at age twenty, and it took running into a Liberian to learn it. It baffles me how an American highschool history book doesnt go over this:
From wikipedia
Liberia, officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country on the west coast of Africa, bordered by Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Côte d'Ivoire. Liberia, which means "Land of the Free", was founded as an independent nation by free-born and formerly enslaved blacks from the United States. Recently it has witnessed two civil wars, the Liberian Civil War (1989–1996), and the Second Liberian Civil War (1999–2003), that have displaced hundreds of thousands and destroyed its economy.
Content
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberia