Item: i114239


Authentic Medal of:

United States of America
Franklin Mint’s Official Bicentennial Visit Medal
President of the Republic of Liberia: William R. Tolbert, Jr.
1976 Proof Silver Medal 51mm (48.60 grams) .925 Silver (1.4436 oz. ASW)
Reference: Franklin Mint 2302 Cf N# 201592 
WILLIAM R. TOLBERT, JR. PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF LIBERIA, William facing 1/5 left, Palm and bird on branch to left.
UNITED STATES BICENTENNIAL VISIT MAY 1976, Liberty Bell with mint mark on right side of bell under bell holder.
Edge Lettering:
GRAINS STERLING 750 2302

Medal Notes:
From the included letter (1976, Franklin Mint):
…During Dr. Tolbert’s state visit to the United States, he met with President Gerald R. Ford at the White House, addressed a Joint Session of Congress, traveled to Philadelphia to visit Independence Hand the Liberty Bell, address the United Nations General Assembly in New York and participated in a special convocation at New York university. In addition the president of Liberia met personally with students at Morehouse College, received a honorary doctorate of law degree at Howard University, delivered a sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, and was presented with a proclamation of welcome by Mayor Beame of New York City.

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William Richard Tolbert Jr. (13 May 1913 – 12 April 1980) was the 20th President of Liberia, a position he held from 1971 until 1980, when he was killed in a coup d’état led by Samuel Doe.

Trained as a civil servant, he entered the country’s House of Representatives in 1943 for the True Whig Party, then the only established party in the country. He was elected Vice President to William Tubman in 1952 and served in that position until he became President following Tubman’s death in 1971.

Liberia had been a one-party state since 1877. However, in 1973, the country returned to a two-party system when the Progressive Alliance of Liberia, headed by Gabriel Baccus Matthews, became recognized as a legitimate opposition party.

In March 1980 Tolbert ordered the banning of the PAL, and had Gabriel Bacchus Matthews and the rest of the organization’s leadership arrested on charges of treason.

In the early hours of 12 April 1980, 17 non-commissioned officers and soldiers of the Armed Forces of Liberia led by Master Sergeant Samuel Doe launched a violent coup d’état; all of them were “indigenous” Liberians who later became the founding members of the People’s Redemption Council, the governing body of the new regime. The group entered the Presidential palace and killed Tolbert, whose body was dumped into a mass grave together with 27 other victims of the coup. A crowd of angry Liberians gathered to shout insults and throw rocks at the bodies. Tolbert’s body was later moved to a spot in Monrovia’s Palm Grove Cemetery, not far from the bodies of those killed in the Rice Riots.

By the end of the month, most of the cabinet members of the Tolbert administration had been put on trial in a kangaroo court and sentenced to death. Many of them were publicly executed on 22 April at a beach near the Barclay Training Center in Monrovia. Only four Tolbert cabinet heads survived the coup and its aftermath; among them was the Minister of Finance, future president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles (9.8 million km²), the United States is the world’s third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe’s 3.9 million square miles (10.1 million km²). With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city by population is New York. Forty-eight states and the capital’s federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world’s 17 megadiverse countries.

Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century. The United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, and the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776. The war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. The United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, and gradually admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848.

During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery. By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, and its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish-American War and World War I confirmed the country’s status as a global military power. The United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 Moon landing. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world’s sole superpower.

The United States is the world’s oldest surviving federation. It is a federal republic and a representative democracy, “in which majority rule is tempered by minority rights protected by law”. The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States (OAS), and other international organizations. The United States is a highly developed country, with the world’s largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for approximately a quarter of global GDP. The U.S. economy is largely post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world’s largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U.S. holds 33% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. It also suffers from growing levels of income inequality and wealth inequality.

The United States ranks among the highest nations in several measures of socioeconomic performance, including human development, per capita GDP, and productivity per person. The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, and is a leading political, cultural, and scientific force internationally.