Charles McArthur Ghankay Taylor was born on January 28, 1948, in the Liberian town of
Arthington outside
Monrovia. His mother was a native of the country's
Gola tribe, and his father was a descendent of the
African-Americans that had settled in
Liberia in the nineteenth century. Taylor's childhood was uneventful, save for having been expelled from
prep school as a teenager. He developed an interest in the country's history and its connections with the
United States, and in 1972 received a
student visa to study there. He chose to arrive in
Boston specifically because many of the freed slaves that
colonized Liberia had left on ships from Massachusetts.
While studying at
Newton's
Chamberlayne Junior College, Taylor held a variety of odd jobs. In 1977, he graduated with a
B.A. in economics from
Bentley College. While a student at Bentley, he joined the
Union of Liberian Associations and eventually became its national chairman. When
William Tolbert, then the president of Liberia, visited the U.S. in 1979, Taylor led a demonstration outside the
New York City mission of Liberia. Having noticed Taylor's protest, Tolbert invited him to a
debate. Taylor was successful in the debate, but then got out of hand and wound up in jail. Rather than
pressing charges against him, Tolbert invited Taylor to return to his homeland.
Taylor arrived in Liberia in the spring of 1980, just before the April 12 murder of the country's president. When army sergeant
Samuel Doe took over the government, he selected Taylor as head of the
General Services Agency. This post put Taylor in charge of purchasing for the Liberian government, but in May 1983 he was accused of
embezzling nearly one million dollars into a
Citibank account. He fled back to Massachusetts in October, but was arrested in 1984. Taylor was held in the
Plymouth House of Corrections while awaiting
extradition, but somehow managed to escape in September of 1985.
For the next four years, Charles Taylor remained
underground. On Christmas Eve 1989, he returned to Liberia leading several hundred men , whom he called the
National Patriotic Front of Liberia. He claimed that he had returned to
take over the government, and over the next seven months gained recruits and land along a path to Monrovia. When the NPFL entered Monrovia in July 1990, it split into two groups - one led by Taylor, and one led by
Prince Johnson. It was Johnson's group that occupied the capital and executed Doe when he attempted to leave the country. A
civil war followed for a few years, and a peace agreement was eventually signed in 1995. In July 1997,
elections were held and Taylor was chosen as President with
75.3% of the vote.
Although he was not without troubles at home, Taylor chose to begin assisting
rebel forces in nearby
Sierra Leone. On June 4, 2003, a
United Nations tribunal announced that they had indicted Taylor for war crimes connected to the ongoing unrest in
West Africa. Taylor promised to give up his presidency and leave the country, possibly accepting
asylum in
Nigeria. He finally did so on August 11, relinquishing control of the country to
Moses Blah, who had served as Taylor's
vice president.
Sources
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/africa/liberia/taylor-bio.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/country_profiles/1043500.stm
http://www.infoplease.com/cgi-bin/id/A0908422.html