ABSTRACT
FBC faced on-going financial difficulties throughout this period but managed to provide for itself primarily through African initiative. Members of the Westerneducated African elite, many of whom attended FBC, began to organize political opposition to colonial rule across the region. As noted in the previous chapter, in 1908 the future of FBC was again in peril. It survived primarily through the efforts of West Africans. In 1908, the Church Missionary Society withdrew its yearly contributions of approximately 1000 pounds and issued a warning that it could give no guarantee for the continuance of Fourah Bay College after 1911.1 In addition, the CMS did not appoint a European principal for the College. Instead, a Sierra Leonean, Charles Nicholas Lewis, who had been a tutor at FBC since 1899, became acting principal in 1908 and served in this capacity until 1911. Lewis remained a tutor at the college until 1924.2 The number of degree-seeking students enrolled at FBC during the first two years of principal Lewis’s tenure rose from seven to twenty.3 Sierra Leonean tutor, W.W.Macfoy assisted Lewis in running the College. Although the CMS withdrew its financial support to FBC, this only intensified the PanAfrican call to nationalism.
