ABSTRACT
As noted in part one, in the early 1800s, diasporan people of African descent returning to West Africa obtained a measure of freedom and authority. They held positions of responsibility such as principal of Fourah Bay College and governor of the colony. By the late 1800s, due to rising racism, greed, and perhaps to the improved survival rates for Europeans, Europeans had begun to replace prominent black administrators in Sierra Leone and throughout West Africa. By the end of the century, such political opportunities for Africans had all but disappeared. British colonial leaders, novelists, and the popular press openly criticized Africans who had begun to succeed in business endeavors. On the one hand, as one Sierra Leonean scholar has noted from a late twentieth century perspective, the Krio were “badgered by constant reminders of their [alleged] racial inferiority, [and] rejected by those whose culture they sought to promote, Creoles fell into a paroxysm of self-deprecation.”1 On the other hand, another Sierra Leonean scholar has concluded that “the ascendance of the Creoles, and their increasing tendency to challenge their former benefactors and question various aspects of colonial rule, were already making it disturbingly clear that education was very much a double-edged sword. Its spread therefore needed to be controlled and calculated, to ensure that it served the best interest of the colonial power.”2 Fourah Bay College was a battleground for political control and cultural influence, particularly between Krio and British forces. The fact that FBC was the only Western-styled institution of higher education in sub-Saharan Africa, with the possible exceptions of the Lovedale Institution in South Africa and Liberia College in Monrovia, underscored its tentative, fragile existence.3
