All Hail, Liberia, Hail!
National anthem of Liberia
"All Hail, Liberia, Hail!" is the national anthem of Liberia. The lyrics were written by Daniel Bashiel Warner (1815–1880), who later became the third president of Liberia, and the music was composed by Olmstead Luca (1826–1869). It became the official national anthem upon Liberia's independence in 1847.
History
1974 proposed change to lyrics
On 22 July 1974, the Legislature of Liberia passed an act giving authorization to the president to establish a commission to give consideration to possible changes to a number of national symbols, including "All Hail, Liberia, Hail!" and the flag. President William Tolbert appointed 51 members to the Commission on National Unity. The commission was headed by McKinley Alfred Deshield Sr., and was also called the Deshield Commission. The commission sought to reexamine the symbols and remove divisive aspects of them. The commission submitted their report on 24 January 1978. The report recommended changing the word "benighted" in the anthem to the word "undaunted". The proposed change to the anthem was never made.
“All Hail, Liberia, Hail!” enters the record as national anthem of Liberia. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Hail, Liberia and National can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “All Hail, Liberia, Hail!” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.