Family Background
Father, Jahmale Carney Johnson and Mother, Martha Dunbar
Madame Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's father was of the Gola Tribe and her mother was of mixed Kru and German ancestry. While not Americo-Liberian in terms of ancestry, Madame Sirleaf is considered culturally Americo-Liberian by some observers or assumed to be Americo-Liberian. However, Madame Sirleaf does not identify as such.
Her father, Jahmale Carney Johnson, was born into an impoverished rural region of Liberia. He was the son of a Gola chief named Jahmale and one of his wives, Jenneh, in Julijuah, Bomi County. At a very young age he was brought to Monrovia, where he grew up. He was raised by an Americo-Liberian family with the surname of McCritty.
Jahmale Carney Johnson later became the first Liberian from an indigenous ethnic group to sit in Liberia's national legislature.
Madame Sirleaf's mother, Martha Dunbar, was also born in Greenville, Sinoe County to a German father and Liberian mother. Her grandmother, Juah Sarwee, sent Martha to Monrovia when Sirleaf's German grandfather had to flee the country after Liberia declared war on Germany during World War I. Martha was adopted and raised by Cecilia Dunbar who was from a prominent Americo-Liberian famiy.
Early life and career
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was born in Monrovia in 1938 and attended the College of West Africa from 1948 to 1955. In 1956 She married James Sirleaf when she was 17 years old. James Sirleaf worked for the Department of Agriculture and Ellen worked as a bookkeeper for an auto-repair shop.The marriage resulted in four sons, Charles, Robert, James and Fomba. She later traveled with James to the United States in 1961 to continue her studies and earned an associate degree in accounting at Madison Business College, in Madison, Wisconsin. When they returned to Liberia, James continued his work in the Agriculture Department and Ellen pursued a career at the Treasury Department (Ministry of Finance). Following her divorce, Ellen, who did not have a bachelor's degree, decided to expand her education, so in 1970 she enrolled at the Economics Institute in Boulder, Colorado, where she spent the summer preparing for graduate studies. She later matriculated to Harvard University where she studied economics and public policy at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government from 1970 to 1971, gaining a Master of Public Administration.
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's Children
Charles Sirleaf Robert Sirleaf James Adama Sirleaf, MD Fomba Sirleaf
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf then returned to her native Liberia to work in the government of William R. Tolbert, where she became the Assistant Minister of Finance. While in that position, she attracted attention with a "bombshell" speech to the Liberian Chamber of Commerce that claimed that the country's corporations were harming the economy by hoarding or sending their profits overseas..
Madame Sirleaf served as assistant minister from 1972 to 1973 under Tolbert's administration. She resigned after getting into a disagreement about government spending. Subsequently, she was appointed Minister of Finance by Tolbert and served in that position from 1979 to April 1980. Master Sergeant Samuel Doe, a member of the indigenous Krahn ethnic group, seized power in a 12 April 1980 military coup; Tolbert was assassinated and all but four members of his cabinet were executed by firing squad. The People's Redemption Council took control of the country and led a purge against the former government. Madame Sirleaf initially accepted a post in the new government as President of the Liberian Bank for Development and Investment, but later fled the country in November 1980 after publicly criticizing Doe and the People's Redemption Council for their mismanagement of the country's economy.
Madame Sirleaf initially moved to Washington, D.C., to work for the World Bank before moving to Nairobi in 1981 to serve as Vice President of the African Regional Office of Citibank. She resigned from Citibank in 1985 following her involvement in the 1985 election in Liberia and went to work for Equator Bank, a subsidiary of HSBC. In 1992, Madame Sirleaf was appointed as the Director of the United Nations Development Programme's Regional Bureau for Africa at the rank of Assistant Administrator and Assistant Secretary General (ASG). She later resigned in 1997 to run for president in Liberia. During her time at the UN, she was one of the seven internationally eminent persons designated in 1999 by the Organization of African Unity to investigate the Rwandan genocide, one of the five Commission Chairs for the Inter-Congolese Dialogue and one of two international experts selected by UNIFEM to investigate and report on the effect of conflict on women and women's roles in peace building. She was the initial Chairperson of the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) and a visiting Professor of Governance at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA)
Return to Liberian Politics
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At the beginning of the First Liberian Civil War in 1989, Madame Sirleaf supported Charles Taylor's rebellion against Doe, helping to raise money for the war and found the National Patriotic Front of Liberia with Taylor and Tom Woewiyu. However, after realizing Taylor's true intent to aggregate power to himself, she later opposed Taylor's handling of the war and his treatment of rival opposition leaders such as Jackson Doe. By 1996, She began campaigning against him vigorously in Washington, D.C. and other European capitals, as well as among ECOWAS member states, leading to an agreement by ECOWAS to send an intervention force to Liberia. The presence of Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) peacekeepers led to a cessation of hostilities, resulting in the 1997 general election, which Madame Sirleaf returned to Liberia to contest. Now running as the presidential candidate for the Unity Party, she placed second in a controversial election, getting 25% of the vote to Charles Taylor's 75%. After the controversial election results and accusations of treason, Madame Sirleaf left Liberia and went into exile in Abidjan, Ivory Coast
