The Woman Who Stitched Our Star | Commentaries

On the morning of August 24, 1847, when the young Republic of Liberia was scarcely a month old, a crowd gathered in Monrovia to witness the unfurling of a new national emblem. What rose into the West African air that day was not merely cloth and thread. It was the labor, the vision, and the leadership of Liberian women, stitched into the very fabric of the nation. The Lone Star flag, which has flown over every triumph and every trial of our Republic for nearly one hundred and eighty years, was designed and hand-sewn by a committee of seven women, chaired by a remarkable citizen named Susannah Elizabeth Lewis.

As we approach Flag Day, it is fitting that we return to this founding truth and hold it up to the light. In an age when the world beyond our shores routinely denied women a voice in public life, Liberia entrusted the design of its most sacred national symbol to the hands and judgment of its women. This was not an accident of history. It was a deliberate act of confidence, and it belongs at the very center of our national heritage.

A Commission of Trust

The story begins with a letter. In correspondence dated July 10, 1847, Governor Joseph Jenkins Roberts, soon to become the first President of the Republic, formally asked Susannah Elizabeth Lewis to head the committee charged with designing and producing the national flag. In doing so, Governor Roberts and the founding fathers of the Republic did something quietly revolutionary for their era: they placed the authorship of the nation’s identity in the hands of its women, and they trusted that judgment completely.

It is here that we must correct a lazy reading of history. The men who built Liberia were not rivals to the leadership of women; they were its patrons and its guarantors. Governor Roberts did not merely permit women to sew a design chosen by others. He commissioned them to conceive it. He created and protected the space in which female leadership could flourish, and the women of Liberia filled that space with distinction. This partnership, the man opening the door and the woman walking boldly through it to lead, is one of the oldest and most honorable threads in the Liberian story. 

The Seven Mothers of the Flag

The committee that Susannah Lewis chaired was composed of seven women, all born in the United States, and each connected by blood or marriage to the founding leadership of the Republic. They were not bystanders to nation-building. They were its architects. Their names deserve to be spoken aloud, in full, in every Liberian classroom:

Susannah Elizabeth Lewis, the chairperson, was the daughter of Colston Waring, a former vice colonial agent; the sister of Jane Waring Roberts, the first First Lady of the Republic; and the wife of John N. Lewis, a signatory of the Liberian Declaration of Independence. She stood, therefore, at the very crossroads of Liberian leadership, and she led the committee with vision and authority.

Matilda Newport, a name already woven into Liberian legend, brought the courage and resolve associated with the earliest defenders of the settlement.

Rachel Johnson was the wife of Elijah Johnson, one of the original founders of Liberia and a veteran of the War of 1812, a lineage of steadfastness and sacrifice.

Mary Hunter lent her skill and devotion to the community that had entrusted the committee with so solemn a charge.

Sarah McGill Russwurm was the wife of John Brown Russwurm, founder of the first Black newspaper in America and later Governor of Maryland-in-Africa, the territory that would in time join the Liberian union.

Colonette Teage Ellis was the sister of Hilary Teage, the author of Liberia’s Declaration of Independence. Where her brother wrote the words of a nation’s freedom, she helped stitch its enduring symbol.

Sarah Draper, a widow from Philadelphia, held the distinction of being the first woman to have her name recorded on a title deed for land in Liberia, a pioneer of property, permanence, and belonging in the new Republic.

Consider what this roster represents. Around a single table sat the sister of the man who wrote our Declaration of Independence, the wife of a signatory to that Declaration, the wife of a founding defender of the settlement, and the first woman to hold land in her own name. These were not women standing in the shadow of history. They were history, gathered in one room, deciding what a nation would look like to itself and to the world.

The Design and Its Meaning

Under Susannah Lewis’s chairmanship, the committee produced a design of quiet genius. They retained the red and white stripes and the blue canton that echoed the flag of the United States, honoring the origins of the settlers who had crossed the Atlantic seeking liberty. But in place of a field of many stars, they set a single, solitary white star upon the blue, the Lone Star, proclaiming Liberia as the first independent republic on the African continent, a lone light of self-governance in a world of empires.

The eleven stripes they arranged, six red and five white, stand for the eleven signatories of the Declaration of Independence. The blue canton represents the African continent upon which the Republic took its stand. In these choices, the committee did not simply copy; they interpreted, they distinguished, and they declared. They gave a young nation a face by which the world would come to know it.

The Voice That Matched the Hand

The leadership of Susannah Lewis did not end with needle and thread. When the flag was unveiled to the public for the first time on August 24, 1847, businesses closed and the people assembled, and it was Susannah Lewis who rose to address the nation. She delivered a patriotic speech on the significance of the flag, reminding her fellow Liberians of the sufferings of those who had been enslaved in the United States and the Caribbean, and of the freedom they had at last secured through long struggle and abolitionist effort.

Let this be remembered clearly: on the day Liberia raised its flag, the voice that gave meaning to the moment was a woman’s voice. She did not merely make the symbol; she explained it to the nation. She was designer, leader, and orator, all at once, on the most important civic morning of the young Republic’s life.

A Heritage to Carry Forward

For too long, the global narrative has held that women’s leadership in public life is a modern invention, granted grudgingly and late. Liberia’s own history rebukes that narrative. Before women in many powerful nations could vote, before they could own property or address a public assembly, Liberian women were commissioned to design a nation’s flag and were called upon to speak to a people about the meaning of their freedom. This is not borrowed progress. It is Liberian heritage, native to our soil and as old as the Republic itself.

That heritage has borne fruit across the generations. It is the same soil from which would later rise the leadership of Liberian women in every sphere of national life, culminating in Liberia becoming the first African nation to elect a woman as President. The line runs unbroken from the seven mothers of the flag to the daughters of Liberia who lead today. And at each step, the honorable men of Liberia have played their proper part: not as gatekeepers who exclude, but as patrons who invite, protect, and celebrate the leadership of the nation’s women.

The nation has not forgotten. In 2022, the contributions of these seven women were permanently honored when their images were placed upon Liberia’s five-hundred-dollar banknote, so that every hand that holds our currency also holds a reminder of who gave us our flag. 

As the Star Rises Again

When the Lone Star climbs the pole this Flag Day, and children in every county give their salute, let us teach them the whole truth of what they honor. Let them know that the flag above them was not handed down from on high, nor imported from abroad. It was conceived, designed, and hand-sewn by seven Liberian women, led by Susannah Elizabeth Lewis, in a Republic wise enough to trust them and generous enough to celebrate them.

The Lone Star was sewn by their hands. Let us carry it forward with theirs in mind. Long live the Republic, and long live the daughters and sons who built her. 

The Author

Atty. Dogba K. Norris, Jr. is a licensed Liberian attorney and serves as Deputy Director General for Planning, Research and Development at the Liberia National Tourism Authority.