Charles D. B. King

Charles Dunbar Burgess King ( born March 12, 1875 in Monrovia, † September 4, 1961 ) was a Liberian politician. He was president of Liberia from 1920 to 1930 and a member of the True Whig Party, which ruled the country from 1878 to 1980.

By the time he was elected president, a king was foreign minister since 1912. In this capacity he took part in the 1919 Paris Peace Conference as the representative of Liberia and was a signatory of the Versailles Treaty.

Although he was a moderate supporter of reform, he continued to support the dominance of the ruling apparatus and the True Whig Party. He was challenged in the presidential campaign of 1927 by Thomas J. Faulkner. The official results gave a majority of 600,000 votes, although there were only 15,000 registered voters. This victory earned King an entry in the English edition of the Guinness Book of World Records for the " deceitful election in history." After Faulkner had lost the election, he accused members of the Government of the sale of workers as slaves, the affair became known as Fernando Po scandal. A report by the League of Nations, the delegation headed by the British lawyers Cuthbert Christy anfertigte, supported many of the allegations Faulkner and drew members of the government, among them the Vice-President Allen N. Yancy, in the scandal into it. Yancy and King were so back in December 1930.

From 1949 to 1951 King first ambassador of Liberia was at the United Nations.