Thomas J. R. Faulkner

Thomas Jefferson Richelieu Faulkner (1869 to 1943) was a Liberian engineer, businessman and politician who brought some of the first modern utilities to his adopted country. Born in North Carolina, he emigrated to Liberia in 1881. As an engineer and businessman he is recorded as the person who first introduced and established electricity and telephones there, and he also set up the first ice factory in Liberia. He served one term as mayor of Monrovia during the First World War, when the city was bombarded by a German submarine. He then turned to national politics as a People Party candidate, running for vice president in 1923 and for president in 1927 and 1931, and in 1929 he accused Liberian officials of exploiting indigenous Liberians for forced labour, which led to a League of Nations inquiry in 1930. His name is carried by the Mount Coffee Hydropower Project, named for him in part in 1967, and by the Thomas J. R. Faulkner College of Science and Technology at the University of Liberia, founded in 1974.