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| Margot James Capeland, national president of The Links, We came to support and uplift President Sirleaf's work |
In her memoir, This Child Will Be Great, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf tells the story of an old man who, within days of her birth, came to visit and pay his respects. The man looked at the baby and turned to her mother “with a strange expression,” telling her, “This child shall be great.” Though the President refers to the anecdote elsewhere in the book, usually with irony, her family would wryly remind her of it in many instances. For instance, when she was trapped in a physically abusive marriage, or when she fell into the latrine, or when she was locked up in prison by one of Liberia’s tyrannical regimes, with no idea whether she would be executed, raped or released; today, she has been branded “a great leader” by many on the global scene.
In our contemporary context, she is no doubt the darling of the international community – exceedingly acclaimed globally. Many of the world’s influential leaders – political, social and economic heavyweights – even those key figures in the women’s movement, consider this woman one of the “greatest leaders of the modern era”. And so the “greatness” professed by that old man some 75 years ago is indeed bearing its fruit. The struggle for self-redemption and self-determination exist side by side in this woman’s life.
As President, she has received some of the world’s highest accolades: the Nobel Prize for Peace (2011); America’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medial of Freedom (2007); France’s highest honor, the Grand Croix of the Legion d’Honneur (2012); and the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development (2012). She was selected by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as one of three co-chairs of the High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons, representing the voice of Africa and of women, to craft a new global development agenda as the successor regime to the Millennium Development Goals after 2015.
On Saturday evening, she became an honorary member of an influential U.S.-based organization comprising 12,000 top professional African-American women, The Links, Incorporated, one America’s oldest and largest service-providing organizations, founded in 1946. Besides that, the Washington-based National Museum of African Art of the Smithsonian Institution has already kicked off what many consider a unique project to name the pavilion of the Museum for President Johnson Sirleaf – a project expected to be fulfilled in five years, when President Johnson Sirleaf will have left office. To achieve this, the Museum has committed to raise US$10 million over the five-year period.
“Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is profoundly admired all over the world,” Dr. Johnnetta Betsch Cole, director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art, told me in an interview. Dr. Cole is also the former president of Spelman College, a historically black liberal arts college for women, located in Atlanta, Georgia.
As President, she has received some of the world’s highest accolades: the Nobel Prize for Peace (2011); America’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medial of Freedom (2007); France’s highest honor, the Grand Croix of the Legion d’Honneur (2012); and the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development (2012). She was selected by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as one of three co-chairs of the High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons, representing the voice of Africa and of women, to craft a new global development agenda as the successor regime to the Millennium Development Goals after 2015.
On Saturday evening, she became an honorary member of an influential U.S.-based organization comprising 12,000 top professional African-American women, The Links, Incorporated, one America’s oldest and largest service-providing organizations, founded in 1946. Besides that, the Washington-based National Museum of African Art of the Smithsonian Institution has already kicked off what many consider a unique project to name the pavilion of the Museum for President Johnson Sirleaf – a project expected to be fulfilled in five years, when President Johnson Sirleaf will have left office. To achieve this, the Museum has committed to raise US$10 million over the five-year period.
“Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is profoundly admired all over the world,” Dr. Johnnetta Betsch Cole, director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art, told me in an interview. Dr. Cole is also the former president of Spelman College, a historically black liberal arts college for women, located in Atlanta, Georgia.
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| Dr. Johnnetta Cole: “Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is profoundly admired worldwide” |
Dr. Cole continued: “What also motivates us is that her mission, her values are so in line with our own. She believes in Africa and so do we; we have the National Museum of African Art. She obviously has a strong interest in arts and in culture. She knows that a people without their culture and art have lost their souls. So, what she believes in, we believe in. And certainly, she has demonstrated her belief in the importance of education and at our Museum, not only do we put up exhibitions of great arts, we have a very vigorous educational program and so we can’t think of anyone more appropriate to honor than her Excellency.”
The $10 million will be used by the Smithsonian Institution to create a major endowment around education of girls and women in Africa. But what motivated Dr. Cole and the Smithsonian family to reach the decision of aptly renaming the pavilion of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art in honor of this first-elected woman president of Africa is what she described as the importance of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s ascendency to the presidency of a highly male dominated society.
“There is something so unique, so extraordinary about Liberia. And it is the nation, for the first time in the history of Africa, to have elected a woman as head of state. We cannot overstate that importance and it’s not only that it is a woman; it is because it is a woman who is one of the greatest leaders of the modern era,” the former president of Spellman College said. “Let me use an expression from American-Indians, the Sioux tribe, which says: ‘women hold up half the sky.’ And so, it is time to acknowledge that we hold up half the sky. We are not asking for the whole sky; we are saying women hold up half the sky. It is an era when women are rightfully taking their places as leaders in all kinds of areas: the political arena; certainly the arena of philanthropy; we see women now in the arts, far more prominently then we’ve seen before.”
According to Dr. Cole, it has taken her institution this long to jumpstart this project “because we wanted to be really sure that we could be successful. I’ve been at the Museum for four years. We are young, under my administration, and I can’t think of anything that would be more disrespectful to her Excellency than beginning a project that we could not finish. We will raise the $10 million to place her name in that pavilion and to place her name on an educational program about girls and women in Africa.”
Dr. Cole said the process of raising the $10 million starts with Liberia “because she is of Liberia.” And so, “the very first thing that had to be done was for me to come to Monrovia and to respectfully meet with some of the most respected, admired leaders in the Liberia society: government officials, leaders of the corporate world and the civil society.”
She acknowledged that this is not going to be a quick fix thing. “We have quite a job ahead of us. Ten million dollar is no small amount of money. These funds will not simply come from Liberia. We have gotten positive signs from here and also in the United States; each person we have spoken to has said ‘YES’. So we will be going to the next step in this process which is to form an honorary committee that will be composed of people from different countries who admire this Nobel Peace Laureate.”
Of course, on the local front, things seem very different when analyzing perceptions of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf among many Liberians. But only in time, even as the old man who visited Ellen as an infant had projected, will the greatness of this pending honor mature in the minds of our people and manifest the pride that, once again, Liberia is leading Africa in ways that challenge the rest of the world to think differently.
The $10 million will be used by the Smithsonian Institution to create a major endowment around education of girls and women in Africa. But what motivated Dr. Cole and the Smithsonian family to reach the decision of aptly renaming the pavilion of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art in honor of this first-elected woman president of Africa is what she described as the importance of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s ascendency to the presidency of a highly male dominated society.
“There is something so unique, so extraordinary about Liberia. And it is the nation, for the first time in the history of Africa, to have elected a woman as head of state. We cannot overstate that importance and it’s not only that it is a woman; it is because it is a woman who is one of the greatest leaders of the modern era,” the former president of Spellman College said. “Let me use an expression from American-Indians, the Sioux tribe, which says: ‘women hold up half the sky.’ And so, it is time to acknowledge that we hold up half the sky. We are not asking for the whole sky; we are saying women hold up half the sky. It is an era when women are rightfully taking their places as leaders in all kinds of areas: the political arena; certainly the arena of philanthropy; we see women now in the arts, far more prominently then we’ve seen before.”
According to Dr. Cole, it has taken her institution this long to jumpstart this project “because we wanted to be really sure that we could be successful. I’ve been at the Museum for four years. We are young, under my administration, and I can’t think of anything that would be more disrespectful to her Excellency than beginning a project that we could not finish. We will raise the $10 million to place her name in that pavilion and to place her name on an educational program about girls and women in Africa.”
Dr. Cole said the process of raising the $10 million starts with Liberia “because she is of Liberia.” And so, “the very first thing that had to be done was for me to come to Monrovia and to respectfully meet with some of the most respected, admired leaders in the Liberia society: government officials, leaders of the corporate world and the civil society.”
She acknowledged that this is not going to be a quick fix thing. “We have quite a job ahead of us. Ten million dollar is no small amount of money. These funds will not simply come from Liberia. We have gotten positive signs from here and also in the United States; each person we have spoken to has said ‘YES’. So we will be going to the next step in this process which is to form an honorary committee that will be composed of people from different countries who admire this Nobel Peace Laureate.”
Of course, on the local front, things seem very different when analyzing perceptions of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf among many Liberians. But only in time, even as the old man who visited Ellen as an infant had projected, will the greatness of this pending honor mature in the minds of our people and manifest the pride that, once again, Liberia is leading Africa in ways that challenge the rest of the world to think differently.
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