AN AFRICAN VICTORIAN FEMINIST
By the same author
Dynamics of the Afro-American Diaspora
AN AFRICAN VICTORIAN FEMINIST
The Life and Times of Adelaide Smith Casely Hayford 18681960
ADELAIDE M. CROMWELL
Afro-American Studies Program
Boston University
First published 1986 by
FRANK CASS & CO. LTD.
Published 2013 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY, 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright 1986 Adelaide M. Cromwell
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Cromwell, Adelaide M.
An African Victorian feminist : the life and times of Adelaide Smith Casely Hayford 18681960.
1. Hayford, Adelaide Smith Casely 2. Feminists Sierra Leone Biography
I. Title
966.4030924 DT516.72.H3
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN 13: 978-0-714-63226-1 (hbk)
To two friends,
Yvonne M. Simkins of Washington D.C.,
and
Frances Claudia Wright of Freetown, Sierra Leone,
and to my son, also my friend,
Anthony Cromwell Hill.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Mrs. Casely Hayford at the time of her marriage
The pictures of Anne Spilsbury Smith and Kathleen Easmon Simango are reproduced by permission of West Africa magazine.
This version of the life of Adelaide Smith Casely Hayford is largely autobiographical but, while one can honestly express feelings and describe important events in the course of ones own life time, others can better see the setting in which one lived and how ones life impacted on and was affected by others.
Mrs. Casely Hayfords life was not only long but expansive, affecting many persons and many cultures. Therefore, I am indebted to numerous persons in Sierra Leone and in the United States for the knowledge needed to understand and interpret Mrs. Casely Hayfords own story of her life.
Dr. Arthur Porter and the late Dr. M.C.F. Easmon introduced me to Mrs. Casely Hayford and through their writings to the world from which she came.
Many persons in Freetown have given generously of their time and knowledge, none more consistently and patiently than Miss Frances Claudia Wright who provided access to the contemporary society of Freetown, legal research and cordial hospitality. Others without whose assistance I could not have worked were Mrs. Phyllis Renner George-Coker, Mrs. Olivette Stuart Caulker, Mrs. Constance Cummings-John, Mrs. Agnes Smythe Macaulay, Mr. Samuel Collins Hayford, Mrs. Lena Spilsbury Johnson, the Reverend E.J.Y. Harris, Lady Bankole-Jones, the late Mrs. Jenner Wright and the late Mrs. Elizabeth Clinton Dawson.
The late Mr. Archibald Casely Hayford of Ghana permitted me to read and copy many letters exchanged between Mrs. Casely Hayford and his father, her husband. Mrs. Pearl Jones-Quarty, the sister-in-law of Mrs. Archibald Casely Hayford facilitated this contact.
Kobe (Cobina Sydney) Hunter, her grandson, permitted me to read the unpublished collection of his Mothers poetry and to select for inclusion those poems reflecting her feelings towards Mrs. Casely Hayford.*
Mrs. Mary Hayford Edmondson, her niece-in-law, reminisced about life at the Girls Vocational and Industrial School and provided some of the rare photographs still in existence of the school and its pupils.
Dr. Raymond Sarif Easmon and Dr. Davidson Nicol, who knew Mrs. Casely Hayford well, kindly read and criticized the manuscript in its entirety.
Parts of the manuscript were read by Dr. Arthur Porter of Freetown, Professor John Willis of Princeton and Miss Margaret Hickey, Public Affairs Editor of The Ladies Home Journal.
Mrs. Gloria Dillsworth of the Freetown Public Library, Mrs. Gretchen Walsh, Librarian of the African section of the Mugar Library of Boston University, Dr. Sylvia Lyons Render, Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, Mrs. Dorothy Cummings of the Museum at Freetown and Mr. Robert A. Hill, Editor of the Marcus Garvey Papers at the University of California were also most helpful in making material known to me and in following up leads I had.
Mr. Brian Willan of the London School of African and Oriental Studies and Dr. Leon P. Spencer of Talledga College, as young scholars pursuing the activities of other Africans who visited the United States at about the same time as Mrs. Casely Hayford, provided additional useful information, as did the Reverend Mr. Anthony Campbell on Nannie Helen Burroughs, Mrs. Casely Hayfords friend and American role model.
Finally, I am indebted to Mrs. Anna Louise McLaughlin for assisting a second generation of the Cromwell family through the troubled waters of biographical writing, and to Mr. Frank Bonitto for the design of the genealogical chart.
*See Memoirs and Poems by Adelaide Casely Hayford and Gladys Casely Hayford, ed. Lucilda Hunter (Sierra Leone University Press, 1983).
Ghana and the University of Legon were particularly exciting places to be in 1959, but I had promised an old friend, Professor Arthur T. Porter, that I would certainly visit Sierra Leone sometime during my stay on the Coast. So, after overcoming numerous bureaucratic interventions which might have interfered with my re-entry into Ghana, I set forth for Freetown never realizing the rather arduous trip such a short distance would entail at that time or the opportunity I would have of meeting the subject of this book, Mrs. Adelaide Smith Casely Hayford.
After a plane ride, a long lorry ride, and a boat ride, I was met on the quay at Freetown. As an Afro-American with an interest in Africa, I had some familiarity with the Settler country of Liberia which I had visited on my way down the Coast to Ghana; but I really had no knowledge of Sierra Leone or Freetown, its capital.
From the first, I was fascinated by this former British colony. Of course, I had the rare opportunity of being introduced to the country and to some members of the social and intellectual elite by Professor Arthur Porter, a person who was well known, respected, and knowledgeable. But more than that, to me, from an old Philadelphia and Washington family who by this time had spent more than sixteen years among Bostons black elite, there was a pleasant sense of dj vu of meeting and getting to know persons of African descent who were at home in the world of the West and who could, if they so desired, look both ways to roots in Africa or to historical and kinship ties with Europe and Great Britain, in particular. That this group in Sierra Leone had, to some extent, lost the basis of its early status and power by having been challenged by other blacks, was also a phenomenon familiar to me. In a sense, from the very beginning I felt quite at home and had the privilege of making friends with whom I have maintained the closest ties ever since and without whose encouragement and assistance I could not have met, nor could I have written about Adelaide Smith Casely Hayford. On my initial visit, with Professor Porters assistance, I was able to crowd within a week what on my own would surely have taken weeks, if not months, to learn.
