Africa-Press – Liberia. As the United States prepares to mark 250 years since the American Revolution, the Free Liberia Movement (FLM) has announced what it calls the formal escalation of the Fourth & Final Remonstrance, a sweeping declaration demanding truth, accountability, and reparative justice over America’s historic relationship with Liberia and people of African descent.
A remonstrance is a formal declaration of principled objection that holds authority accountable to its own laws and values.
In a statement issued in Monrovia, the movement said the moment of America’s semi-quincentennial must be accompanied by an honest reckoning with what it describes as centuries of racial deception — from slavery disguised as liberty to the forced exile of Black Americans under colonization policies that created Liberia.
FLM leaders argue that the Fourth Remonstrance is not symbolic protest but the culmination of a nearly 250-year legal and moral record in which Black Americans and colonized Africans repeatedly challenged contradictions in American democracy, only to be ignored or silenced.
The movement acknowledged the support of several U.S. officials, including retired Massachusetts State Representative and Honorary Paramount Chief Ben Swan, Representative Bud Williams, Hon. Malo Brown, and members of the Massachusetts Congregational Delegation, for backing Liberians who have lived in the United States for decades without legal status.
A Chain of Four Remonstrances
According to FLM, the Fourth Remonstrance builds on three earlier historical challenges to American law and conscience.
The First Remonstrance, traced to 1781, is attributed to Elizabeth Freeman, also known as Mum Bett, an enslaved Black woman in Massachusetts who successfully sued for her freedom by invoking the state constitution’s declaration that “all men are born free and equal.” Her victory in Brom and Bett v. Ashley contributed to the collapse of slavery in Massachusetts and affirmed equality under the law.
The Second Remonstrance, issued on December 5, 1823, came from colonized Black American citizens in Liberia, who protested that they had been exiled from the United States, stripped of their rights, and misrepresented as “freed slaves” rather than citizens.
The Third Remonstrance, articulated in 1830 by Joseph Shephard of Monrovia, confronted the American Colonization Society over broken promises, racial subjugation, and the denial of rights settlers said they were guaranteed as American citizens.
FLM maintains that each of these challenges placed truth on the public record but failed to produce meaningful repair.
The Fourth & Final Remonstrance
First issued in 2023 by Rev. Torli H. Krua and now being formally escalated, the Fourth Remonstrance unites the earlier claims into a single demand for what FLM describes as truth, confession, reconciliation, and restoration.
Among its central assertions are that the 1790 Nationality Act racialized U.S. citizenship, that American colonization of Liberia amounted to the exile of U.S. citizens, and that these racial frameworks later influenced Jim Crow laws, apartheid South Africa, and Nazi race laws.
The movement contrasts the United States with Germany and South Africa, noting that both acknowledged apartheid as a crime, apologized, reconciled, and paid reparations — steps FLM says the U.S. has yet to take.
It also cites contemporary immigration outcomes as evidence of ongoing exclusion, pointing to a reported 79.39 percent U.S. visa refusal rate for Liberians, higher than rates for several countries facing conflict or sanctions.
FLM’s demands include a formal congressional confession and apology, reparations, and recognition of what it argues is U.S. birthright citizenship for all persons born in Liberia. The movement further calls for Liberia to be recognized as a U.S. state — initially as the 25th, with an eventual upgrade to the 51st.
A Call Ahead of the 250th Anniversary
As part of what it calls a concrete act of repair, the Free Liberia Movement has invited 250 Liberians from across the country and diaspora to participate in Massachusetts’ 250th-anniversary commemorations without visa restrictions, honoring what it describes as shared sacrifices by Black and white patriots.
Rev. Krua is expected to formally present the Fourth & Final Remonstrance at the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia on Tuesday, December 30, 2025, at noon.
“As America approaches its 250th anniversary, anniversaries without honesty are hollow,” the statement said, warning that unresolved racial divisions threaten the nation’s future.
“History has heard four remonstrances,” the movement declared. “The question now is whether the nation will finally answer.”
The Free Liberia Movement (FLM) is a transnational civic and advocacy movement that seeks historical truth, legal recognition, and restorative justice for Liberia and people of Liberian descent, grounded in the shared history between Liberia and the United States.
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