[¹] Charles Dunbar Burgess King (1875?–1961) was president of Liberia from 1920 until his resignation in 1930. His father was a West Indian who had settled in Sierra Leone and later emigrated to Liberia. King began his formal education at Trinity Parish School and the Church Missionary Society Grammar School in Sierra Leone, and he graduated from Liberia College. In 1897 he was admitted to the bar and in 1900 he became prosecuting attorney for Montserrado County. President Arthur Barclay appointed King attorney general in 1906, and President Daniel Howard later selected him as his secretary of state. In January 1919 the True Whig party nominated him for the Liberian presidency, thus assuring him the presidency in 1920. In May 1919, when he was Liberian delegate to the Paris Peace Conference, he was elected president of Liberia. In Paris the Haitian Eliézer Cadet, UNIA high commissioner in France, called on King to solicit his support for the movement. From France King traveled via the United Kingdom to the U.S. to carry out negotiations for the five-million-dollar loan.

In the U.S. King also met with the trustees of the American Colonization Society and numerous leaders from the black community, including John E. Bruce, who would shortly join the Garvey organization, and F. Wilcom Ellegor, the UNIA high commissioner who had spent many years in Liberia as a missionary. Elie Garcia has claimed that King met with Garvey during his visit to the U.S., but no corroborating evidence has been found. In October 1919 King addressed the Grand Lodge Prince Hall Masons of New York, speaking of future relations between American blacks and Liberians.

King came away from America deeply impressed with the breadth and depth of the emigration sentiment among black Americans. He found that "most of the masses" were "enthusiastic in their desire to return to Africa. Everywhere I went, I met an earnest desire for specific information with reference to this country" (Inaugural Address of Charles Dunbar Burgess King, President of the Republic of Liberia, Delivered January 5, 1920 [Monrovia: College of West Africa Press, 1920]). King believed that immigration to Liberia should be planned carefully because of the difficulty of absorbing large numbers into the body politic. Before Liberia could accept sizable numbers of immigrants, King argued, roads, railroads, and harbors must be built and improved. Black laborers were needed at this stage, but once this infrastructure was created, new possibilities in farming and industry would attract skilled workers as well as cultured, educated, and wealthy blacks. King wanted the Liberian government to establish its own immigration agencies in the U.S. to supervise immigration. The Liberian legislature, however, did not establish an immigration agency until 1926.

After details of the U.S. conditions for the loan reached Liberia in June 1920, the Liberian legislature rejected the provisions on the basis that they interfered too profoundly in Liberian internal affairs; instead, the legislature voted to send a plenary commission to the United States to renegotiate the provisions.

King headed this commission, which also included John L. Morris and the associate chief justice, F. E. R. Johnson, brother of UNIA potentate Gabriel Johnson. In a meeting between President King and Morris and the U.S. Department of State representative Wiley, King and Morris "declared that the time had come to announce publicly and definitely that the Liberian Government disapproved" of the UNIA (despite the Liberian government's sanction in June 1920 of the UNIA plan as put forth by Elie Garcia) (DNA, RG 59, file 811.41065/55). In the June 1921 issue of the Crisis, King reiterated his position on black emigration. He stated, "Our present need is especially for strong young men trained as artisans, engineers and merchants who can bring with them some capital for investment." In a thinly veiled reference to the UNIA, King added that Liberia respected her neighbors and that "under no circumstances will she allow her territory to be made a center of aggression or conspiracy against other sovereign states" (Crisis 22, no. 2 [June 1921]: 53).

The loan terms that the plenary commission negotiated were approved by the Liberian legislature in January 1922, but the U.S. Senate refused to approve the loan on 28 November 1922. The senate rejection was a setback for King's plans to rescue Liberian government finances from bankruptcy and promote economic development. In April 1924 he began negotiations with representatives of the Firestone Company for a private loan, in exchange for official business concessions in Liberia.

In February 1924 King met unofficially with the third UNIA delegation, consisting of Henrietta Vinton Davis, Robert L. Poston, and James Milton Van Lowe. King was reported to have offered them a trial concession of five hundred acres. In July 1924 King deported three UNIA members who had arrived in Liberia to initiate UNIA colonies on the Cavalla River, a scheme that King claimed never to have approved. In defense of his deportations the president declared that

He went on to add that

King remained firm in his opposition to the UNIA throughout the remainder of his administration. During an official visit to Sierra Leone in January 1925, at which time he received a hero's welcome by the colonial government, King was praised by Governor Slater of Sierra Leone for his strong stance against the UNIA. The governor noted that King had earned "the gratitude not only of every West African government but of all who have the true welfare of the African at heart" ("Speech of His Excellency the Governor at the Banquet at Government House on January 22nd, 1925, in Honour of Their Excellencies the President of Liberia and Mrs. King," PRO, CO 267/607).

During a 1927 tour of European capitals, King was praised for his opposition to Garvey's ideas. King believed that Liberia's viability as an independent state depended on the influx of American and European capital in the development of its resources. In Hamburg King declared that he was president of Liberia and not of all "negroes. I intend and wish to produce a cultured nation by elevating the population of Liberia to be a cultured, civilized people. For this reason we have rejected all Pan-African endeavors forming in the United States," including that of Marcus Garvey (DNA, RG 59, file 088.8262).

In 1929 international criticism of alleged domestic slavery and forced labor in Liberia caused King to request a League of Nations investigation. Although he was not personally implicated, his vice president, Allen Yancy, was, and at the end of 1930 both resigned. Succeeded by Edwin Barclay, King returned to public life after World War II, first as minister and then as ambassador to the U.S.; he retired in 1951 (NW, 11 October 1919, 27 August 1927; DAHB).

[²] Bruce, an active lodge member, was secretary to the committee that sponsored a Masonic banquet for C. D. B. King in New York in 1919. Four hundred Masons from New York and elsewhere attended the banquet, and the hall was decorated with various lodge banners as well as with the American, Liberian, and Haitian flags (NW, 11 October 1919).