Dr. Pailey Challenges Negro Citizenship Clause – As House Debates Liberia’s 178-Year Citizenship Law
Published: 8/Jul/2026
Source: Analyst Liberia Online
MONROVIA – A 178-year-old constitutional clause restricting citizenship to persons of Negro descent has returned to center stage. Dr. Robtel Neajai Pailey, an LSE scholar, brought a decade of research on the clause to the House of Representatives Tuesday. Her comparative study covers Liberia and Sierra Leone, the only two African nations with such a provision. The central question she posed: is the clause racist, protectionist, neither, or both? The debate is not merely academic. It implicates land ownership, foreign investment, and Liberia’s democratic future. Pailey’s 250-plus interviews across four countries reveal that citizens fear non-black land acquisition above all else. Any reform that sidesteps that anxiety, she warned, is dead on arrival. THE ANALYST reports.
Members of the 55th Legislature’s House of Representatives on Tuesday participated in a legislative dialogue led by Dr. Robtel Neajai Pailey, Assistant Professor in International Social and Public Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
Pailey presented findings from her ongoing book-length research project titled “Africa’s Negro Republics: How Race, Citizenship and Migration Impact Development in Liberia and Sierra Leone.” The dialogue gave lawmakers an opportunity to examine the historical roots and contemporary consequences of constitutional provisions commonly known as the “Negro clauses,” and their implications for governance, migration, citizenship, land ownership, and national development.