Sources beyond UNESCO and Wikipedia: 1 (1 press). Check each source's status in the list at the end of the card. It was published without a prior review by people from the place. If something is wrong or missing, tell the project.
This card keeps two kinds of knowledge apart: what the documented record says, and what the people who know the place say. Each is labelled, so a reader always knows which one they are reading.
In the record cited to a source
From people who know this place one person's experience, shown as theirs
Providence Island was the site of the first successful settlement of American freedmen by the American Colonization Society in Liberia, according to Wikipedia. It was also known as Perseverance, Dozoa or Darzoe Island.[1] The article says the government of Liberia has proposed it as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.[1]
Remembering 1822, as reported at the 2022 bicentennial
Arab News reported on the launch of Liberia's bicentennial on 14 February 2022, marking the arrival in 1822 of free Black Americans, sent by the American Colonization Society, at Providence Island, now part of Monrovia. President George Weah opened the year-long celebrations.[2]
The report says Liberia became an independent republic in 1847, the second Black republic after Haiti, and that the descendants of former US slaves governed it until a coup in 1980, followed by a civil war from 1989 to 2003. Heads of state from Togo, Niger, Gambia and Sierra Leone attended, and a US delegation was led by a presidential assistant, Dana Banks.[2]
Not yet sourced
Almost everything. The history of the Colonization Society and of the people already living there is contested and needs strong sources and Liberian voices.
This place was chosen by the project as one of Liberia's best known; Liberia has no site on the World Heritage List.
Local voices: none yet.
That report covers the 2022 ceremony: the Indigenous peoples who lived on the coast, the terms on which land was obtained, and today's residents' views of the island are not included.
Sources
Encyclopedia · to verify[1] Providence Island, Liberia. Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.orgretrieved 7 Oct 2026 Used for background that the UNESCO record does not give. Each statement is limited to the article's lead and opening sections; confirm against specialist sources.
Press[2] Liberia kicks off bicentennial celebrating arrival of Black Americans. Arab News, 15 Feb 2022. www.arabnews.comretrieved 7 Oct 2026 A wire report on the launch of the bicentennial on 14 February 2022; the publication date is the day after the launch, as the page's own date was not shown.
