[1] The town is named after Robert Goodloe Harper, a prominent U.S. politician and member of the American Colonization Society.

Cape Palmas, the region of which Harper is the center, is one of the traditional hometowns of the Americo-Liberians, descendants of free people of color and freed slaves from the United States who settled in Liberia and declared it an independent country in 1847.

Harper as it existed prior to the Civil Wars was based on the plantation architecture of the southern United States, where many of the Americo-Liberians came from.

[4] "Today [2016], no place captures the ambiguous world of the Americo-Liberians better than Harper, whose oldest neighborhoods are reminiscent of New Orleans.

The crimes have been regarded as "Liberia's most notorious ritual killing case" due to the number of murders, the involvement of high ranking government officials, and their subsequent public executions.