A MEMORABLE GATHERING OF SIERRA LEONIANS IN LONDON, 1919

Abstract

TWO RECENT ARTICLES have stressed the close links that existed between Africans and people from the Caribbean living in, and visiting Britain, and especially London, in the early decades of this century.l Many of these men, and some women, belonged to the professional classes as businessmen, clergymen, lawyers, journalists and musicians. This photograph overleaf, of a 'memorable gathering of Sierra Leonians' appeared in the African Telegraph and Gold Coast Mirror, a West African owned newspaper published in London, in November 1919. It helps to illustrate the strong bonds that existed among the Freetown creoles and the close ties between members of the various English-speaking elite communities on the West African coast. Those close ties owed much to a common social and spiritual heritage, bonded by trading relations and inter-marriage. They were further strengthened by the determination of West African merchants to resist the oligoplistic power gained by British trading companies during the First World War, and to demand the franchise and reforms from colonial governments. During 1919 elite politicians from the four British West African territories prepared the ground for the formation of the National Congress of British West Africa, which met in Accra in March 1920, and sent a delegation to London later that year. The immediate post-war years produced a surge of political activity in West Africa, in particular among the educated elite who expected political reforms as a matter of right as well as a reward for their loyal support during the war. And conscious of the historical import of their political protests they were photographed as groups and delegations, besuited men of respectability, senior chiefs in traditional dress, serious and determined to represent communities whose interests were being increasingly disregarded by the colonial authorities and foreign commercial concerns. All photographs pose questions: where was the image taken? when was it taken? by whom? and how was the photograph used?.2 With this