William Tolbert was assassinated in the 1980 coup d'etat by the People's Redemption Council led by Samuel Doe, marking the end of 133 years of Americo-Liberian rule in Liberia.
20 Facts About William Tolbert
2.
Daniel Frank Tolbert, the South Carolinian grandfather of William Tolbert, emigrated to Liberia aboard the barque Azok, alongside several other black South Carolinians who sought to settle in Liberia.
3.
The William Tolbert clan was one of the largest Americo-Liberian families in Liberia.
4.
William Tolbert attended Bensonville Elementary School, Crummell Hall Episcopalian High School.
5.
William Tolbert studied at the University of Liberia and obtained a Bachelor of Arts in 1934.
6.
William Tolbert married Victoria A David, of Americo-Liberian and Vai descent, with whom he had eight children.
7.
William Tolbert was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1943, and served until being elected Vice President in 1951.
8.
William Tolbert became Grand Master of the Masonic Order of Liberia.
9.
Thanks to his father who spoke Kpelle, William Tolbert was the second Liberian president, after President Stephen Allen Benson, to speak an indigenous language, and he promoted a program to bring more indigenous persons into the government.
10.
William Tolbert successfully worked for a constitutional amendment to bar the president from serving more than eight years in office, and in 1976 he vowed fierce opposition to members of the Legislature who sought to repeal the amendment and again permit what Tolbert called an "evil tradition".
11.
William Tolbert severed Liberia's ties with Israel during the Yom Kippur War in October 1973 and spoke in favor of recognising national rights of the Palestinian people.
12.
William Tolbert was chairman of the Organisation of African Unity from July 1979 until he was killed in April 1980.
13.
William Tolbert brought a new approach to the Liberian government's relations with foreign companies.
14.
Political opponents criticized the proposal as self-serving, pointing out that Chenoweth and the William Tolbert family operated large rice farms and would therefore realize a tidy profit from the proposed price increase.
15.
In March 1980 William Tolbert ordered the banning of the PAL, and had Gabriel Bacchus Matthews and the rest of the organization's leadership arrested on charges of treason.
16.
William Tolbert's body was later moved to a spot in Monrovia's Palm Grove Cemetery, not far from the bodies of those killed in the Rice Riots.
17.
Undisputedly, William Tolbert was dead by the end of 12 April 1980, the day of the coup d'etat.
18.
Steven Ellis, in his book Mask of Anarchy, says the President was found sleeping in his office, where the soldiers killed him, while Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's biography, This Child Will Be Great, says William Tolbert was seized and killed in his bed.
19.
Victoria William Tolbert Yancy died in 1971, and Evelyn William Tolbert Richardson died in Westchester County, New York, United States, in 1993.
20.
William Tolbert had moved to the United States after being released from house arrest in the aftermath of the coup.