Paper short abstract:

This paper examines historical memory in Sinoe County, Liberia. Based on fieldwork in Liberia, it highlights how historical settlement, interethnic relations, and conflict are remembered in Sinoe County today. It explores how social relations and positions influence oral histories and hybrid memory.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the persistence and ambiguity of historical memory in Sinoe County, Liberia. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted in in Greenville, Lexington, Louisiana, and Monrovia in 2022, it highlights the diverse ways in which the historical settlement of Liberia, interethnic relations between Americo-Liberians and Indigenous groups, and the era surrounding the Liberian coup and subsequent civil conflicts (1980-2003) are remembered today in Sinoe County. Historical memory of these eras and events sometimes varies among settlers' descendants and Indigenous people, but the differences are more ambiguous than often acknowledged. The paper discusses how intermarriage, formal education, and Americo-Liberian practices of adopting and raising Indigenous children complicate these narratives. Hybrid accounts emerge that go beyond the classic divisions, separating "Americo-Liberian" and "Indigenous" perspectives, which often continue to structure Liberian historiography. Historical memory provides a discursive space in which identities and understandings are constructed, reproduced, and contested among contemporary Liberians and through which local meanings are formed that help to elucidate the past and present.