What exactly do you mean?

As a country, Liberia was independent from the 1840s, long before many other places in Africa had seen the worst of colonial exploitation, and more than a century before most of the continent would see independence.

During the peak of the 'back to Africa' movement between the late 1800s and 1920s, a distressingly familiar trend appeared: Immigrant colonists putting the native population to the plow while enjoying the vast bulk of the economic benefits.

Indeed, the Americo-Liberians very quickly became the ruling class in Liberia. That is: the former slaves and children of former slaves who emigrated to Liberia from the US became the plantation owners, business leaders, governors, and oppressors. They applied what they had learned.

It didn't hurt that the US maintained close economic ties with Liberia (particularly from the 1910s), and was more than willing to float by a warship or two to calm indigenous insurrection, not to mention periods of territorial pressure from neighboring British and French colonies. Basically, Liberia gave the US the benefits of a colony -- cheap resources and a strategic military position, without the costs of administration.

The US made significant infrastructure investments into the country during and after the second world war, particularly because of the strategic significance of Liberia as a source of rubber. In fact Liberia is still the home of the largest contiguous rubber plantation in the world, owned by the US tire manufacturer Firestone.

So are you asking if the US government "took Liberia seriously"? Yes, absolutely they they did, and they still do.

Are you asking if a former slave could do better for himself or herself by moving from a Mississippi cotton plantation to Liberia rather than, say, Chicago in the 1870s? The answer entirely depends. Is it better to be rich in a poor country, or poor in a rich country?

A former American slave's (or her child's) chances of becoming part of the dominant class (whatever moral sacrifices that may or may not have entailed) was far greater in Africa than in the US of the 1900s or 1920s.

I would say that for such a person with great ambition and few scruples, which is what the US in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was all about, Liberia was gold-rush territory.

There is an excellent episode of Frontline called Firestone and the Warlord that focuses on the relationship between Firestone and Charles Taylor, who launched a civil war in Liberia in 1989. This may or may not answer your question, but does have a lot to say about Liberia, about post-colonial ... colonialism, and about how important Liberia has been to the US from a strategic standpoint.

Do you mean taken seriously by African Americans or by people in the US in general?