class="apple-converted-space"> American Colonization
Society. They landed at
Sherbro
Island
in present-day
Sierra Leone. The undertaking was a
shambles and many settlers died. In 1822, a second ship rescued the settlers
and took them to
Cape Mesurado,
establishing the settlement of
Christopolis.
In 1824, the city was renamed to
Monrovia after
James Monroe, then President of the
United States, and a prominent supporter of the colony in sending freed Black
slaves to Liberia, saw it as preferable than
emancipation
in America. In 1845, Monrovia was the
site of the constitutional convention held by the American Colonization Society
which drafted the constitution that would two years later be the constitution
of an independent and sovereign
Republic
of Liberia.
At the beginning of
the 20th century, Monrovia was divided into two parts: Monrovia proper,
where the city's Americo-Liberian population
resided and was reminiscent of the Southern
United States in architecture;
and Kru town, which was mainly
