DATE: Sunday, July 20, 1997                 TAG: 9707200074

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A19  EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: STAFF REPORT 

                                            LENGTH:   36 lines

EARLY LEADERS OF THE NATION CAME FROM HAMPTON ROADS

Liberia's fate has particular significance for Norfolk, which played a key role in the nation's birth and continues to have connections.

One of Liberia's founders, and its first president, was Joseph Jenkins Roberts, a Norfolk native born in 1809. Roberts went on to serve six terms as president of the new country in the mid-1800s.

Another Hampton Roads native, Anthony Gardner, also became president of Liberia in the 19th century. More recently, Portsmouth native Bismarck Myrick was an American diplomat in Liberia before he became U.S. ambassador to Lesotho in 1995.

Roberts' life forms the strongest link to Liberia. Called the ``Father of Liberia,'' he is commemorated by a statue in the capital, Monrovia. He is remembered in Norfolk in the name of Roberts Village, as well as Roberts Road.

Roberts Village includes Monrovia Drive and Liberia Drive, as well as Colson Drive, which honors the Rev. William N. Colson of Petersburg.

Roberts was born free, unlike many of the former slaves who would form Liberia. Roberts' mother was a freed slave and his father was a free black man.

Joseph Roberts lived in Petersburg with his parents during his childhood. He acquired much of his early education in Colson's library.

After the War of 1812, amid a growing international movement to end slavery, the American Society for the Colonization of Free Persons of Color began. The society ultimately sent nearly 7,000 African Americans to Liberia, including Roberts and his family in 1829.

Roberts and Colson became merchants trading between Africa and America. Roberts became sheriff, lieutenant governor and then governor. When Liberia declared itself an independent nation in 1848, Roberts became president. He served until 1855 and again from 1871 to 1876. He died in 1876.

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