Written by Lisa Murimi
In the quiet hush of Tuesday morning, beneath the Liberian sun and the heavy weight of history, a nation will pause.
Forty-five years after President William Tolbert was slain in a violent coup, his legacy — along with the memories of 13 cabinet members executed days later — will be honored with a symbolic state reburial.
The ceremony, to be attended by President Joseph Boakai and other dignitaries, marks a solemn attempt to mend a wound that has bled for nearly half a century.
For the families of the fallen, the pain is as raw as it was in 1980.
“It has been 45 years and the pain is still fresh,” said Yvette Chesson-Gibson, daughter of executed Justice Minister Joseph Chesson.
“This is not just a ceremony, it is the beginning of a closure. Reconciliation is not an event,” she said.
The men were killed by firing squad on a Monrovia beach, after swift and brutal trials by a kangaroo court.
Their bodies, never found, were believed dumped in a mass grave. Today, they will be remembered not as victims of vengeance, but as men who served their country.
Bindu Dennis described the executions as “one of the world’s most despicable and inhumane public acts of cruelty.”
“There are many facets to healing, but for us primarily this is just one of the many ways we continue to pay homage to deserving Liberian fallen heroes,” Bindu Dennis, the daughter of Tolbert’s Foreign Minister Charles Cecil Dennis, said.
“Our fathers were simply murdered in one of the world’s most despicable and inhumane public acts of brutality, violence and cruelty born out of an ugly spirit of greed for political power.
“As long as you understand that closure doesn’t mean forgetting, then we’re on the same page.”
A 21-gun salute. A folded Liberian flag. A tearful silence. These gestures cannot bring the dead home, but they speak to a country trying to reckon with its past.
“This is not just a burial,” said President Boakai. “It is a time to reconcile, to heal, and to remember with purpose.”
After decades of silence, Liberia is finally listening to the echoes of 1980 — and laying its ghosts to rest.
