It was the same issue as this country and any other settler society in which you have a native people and then others who have come to settle,

[Colonization] was supposed to be sort of a remedy for slavery and racial inequality in the country,

Maybe that facilitated the willingness of some people to project upon Africa their hopes and desires. Once they get there, many of them are shocked into a realization that they were very wrong about what Africa was about.

There was a certain amount of romantic sentiment that comes through some of the letters

Elections themselves are not the magic bullet,

I think many Liberians see the United States as sort of a godfather figure. They see the United States as the place of their ancestors ... [but] I think that's wishful thinking.