{"id":9834,"date":"2023-11-06T15:09:19","date_gmt":"2023-11-06T15:09:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=9834"},"modified":"2023-11-06T15:11:47","modified_gmt":"2023-11-06T15:11:47","slug":"adelaide-casely-hayford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=9834","title":{"rendered":"Adelaide Casely-Hayford"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Serendipity is a beautiful word and a beautiful concept. Just as I was pondering what to do write about for my next blog, an email arrived from a friend of damesnet<\/strong>, asking if I\u2019d heard of Adelaide Casely-Hayford and attaching an article. I hadn\u2019t, but the name rang a vague bell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I remembered that Joe Casely-Hayford was a high-profile fashion designer whose son had followed him into the business. Other influential Casely-Hayfords include lawyer Dr Margaret Casely-Hayford, chair of trustees of the Globe theatre; Peter Casely-Hayford of production company TwentyTwenty, responsible for a raft of popular television programmes; and Dr Gus Casely-Hayford, director of the Smithsonian\u2019s National Museum of African Art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No shortage of over-achievement there, but when Adelaide Smith married briefly into the Casely-Hayford dynasty, she set the bar very high.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hers was no ordinary childhood, though. She came to England from Sierra Leone at the age of four, and was educated at Jersey Ladies\u2019 College, where she and her sister were \u2018singled out for extra bits of love kindliness and good will\u2019 on account of their colour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This feeling of contentment and belonging did not survive a move to Germany to study at the Stuttgart Conservatoire. Worse still, she discovered on her return to Sierra Leone that growing up in Europe had turned her and her sister into \u2018black white women\u2019 who didn\u2019t really fit in anywhere.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, she joined the Ladies\u2019 Division of the Freetown branch of Marcus Garvey\u2019s Universal Negro Improvement Association, responding to his call for racial pride and co-operation and becoming a leading African feminist, quick to challenge African notions of male supremacy. She also toured the US, giving lectures that aimed to eradicate the many misconceptions about Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The need for the sisters to support themselves inspired Casely-Hayford to found a school that would enable girls to earn their own living and redress the imbalance in the education on offer to boys and girls. It was also her stated aim that young Sierra Leonians be taught the value of their own heritage rather than subscribing to the notion of the superiority of Western culture. Local benefactors proved thin on the ground, but she managed to raise money in the US. She opened her school in 1923, with fourteen pupils.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following year she became the only woman on Sierra Leone\u2019s Education Board, where she would continue to press for equal educational opportunities for boys and girls, delivered through professionally trained and remunerated African teachers using textbooks produced in Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was also keen to uphold local tradition in the matter of dress, and would have preferred her pupils to wear \u2019native dress\u2019 instead of \u2018blindly copying European fashions\u2019, but the highly Westernised Krio community of Freetown were having none of it, so she had to settle for a Mother Africa Day, on which the pupils of the Girls\u2019 Vocational School would wear African clothes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1949 she received an MBE from the colonial government of Sierra Leone. She spent the last years of her life writing her memoirs and short stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adelaide Casely-Hayford\u2019s life is undeniably an inspiring one, characterised by pride in the best possible sense: in her country, in black Africa, in women, and in the boundless scope for education to allow girls to take their place in the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Growing up in Europe had turned them into ‘black white women’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,324,309,58,355,59],"tags":[540,541],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9834"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9834"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9845,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9834\/revisions\/9845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}