Marking a Different Thanksgiving Tradition, From West Africa
The New York Times
Liberian Americans have a complicated relationship with their holiday that plays out in the foods they make and the ways they reflect on a proud and difficult history.
On a pivotal day in July, a nation declared its independence. Years later, it set aside a day in November to celebrate Thanksgiving.
But while some of that new republic’s inhabitants had connections to the United States, its birth year wasn’t 1776, but 1847. The country was named Liberia by its founders, formerly enslaved Africans from the United States who returned to the continent in the early 19th century.
Today, people of Liberian descent in the United States — who in 2019 numbered about 120,000, according to the Pew Research Center — are among only a few immigrant groups who arrived with their own Thanksgiving tradition. Many have come in the past three decades, fleeing the violence and political turmoil that have torn the West African nation.
