Figure 11. This is an account in The Times (London) of a fundraiser in which Kathleen performed ... before *Royalty*!. It is not clear why she was identified as “Miss Easmon Monesah”.
Figure 12. A 1917 travel document for Kathleen's mother – issued by the (British) Foreign Office. This was for her return to Sierra Leone with Kathleen in November of that year.
- Figure 13. Article by Ma Mashado in the Sierra Leone Weekly News [Freetown, 12 June 1920]
- The Proposed Technical and Industrial School for Girls
Reflections of this nature may, no doubt, be exercising the minds of many people here, on reading the flamboyant advertisements about "A Grand Oriental Concert," "under the distinguished patronage of His Excellency the Governor and Mrs. R. J. Wilkinson,"[1] etc., to which Miss Kathleen M. Easmon[2] and Mr. Alec D. Yaskey have subscribed their names as Secretaries.
Ere this sees the light of day, those who had spare cash to throw into the concern, would be discussing how oriental the Oriental Concert has been and what degree of grandeur attended the efforts of its promoters. But what concerns the thinking section of Freetown is this—to what object are the proceeds to be devoted?
Mrs. Casely Hayford's[3] name has been associated in the public mind, during the last three months, with a scheme for a technical and industrial school for our girls, operating under the aegis of the Universal Negro Improvement Association. Mrs. Hayford is known to be President of the women's section of the local division of that Association.
With this knowledge and understanding the U.N.I.A. members took up the scheme warmly. Posters were placarded about the streets and notices were read from most of the Freetown pulpits announcing the scheme. Collection boxes marked U.N.I.A. were distributed to the women members who tramped from house to house and collected something like sixteen pounds odd. Concurrently with these events, subscription lists were prepared and issued to the female members of the Association, Mrs. Hayford and her niece Miss Easmon, undertaking to solicit funds from the Europeans of this city. So far, so good.
At this juncture arrived the Sierra Leone Delegates[4] to the Accra Conference, one of whom took strong exception to the movement for raising funds. This Delegate contended that funds were urgently needed to carry out the mandate of the National Congress and that any attempt to divert the pecuniary resources of Sierra Leoneans would operate disastrously against the interests of the Congress. At the same time it became known that Mrs. Hayford had, without the privity of the U.N.I.A., approached the Accra Congress for help towards the scheme, and that she virtually received a rebuff.
Mrs. Hayford had given out in public and at meetings of the U.N.I.A. that she and Miss Easmon would travel down the coast to solicit funds for the scheme. The Delegate above alluded to gave her distinctly to understand that any such move by her would be countered by him: that he would cable to the various centres down the coast, warning the people of her probable activities among them. If however [s]he would sit tight for a while and throw in her lot with the Congress[,] she and her scheme would be favourably entertained in the near future. That gave the quietus to the "Coast" excursion.
Almost immediately after, Mrs. Hayford engaged the members of the U.N.I.A. in a wrangle as to the legal interpretation of certain clauses in the Constitution of the Association and after a while publicly appeared under the new role of sole protagonist of the Technical and Industrial scheme, without so much as deigning officially to inform the executive of the U.N.I.A. of her intention.
But the U.N.I.A. was not to be so cavalierly treated. The Executive Secretary demanded accounts affecting the funds raised for the scheme.
After a rather stormy women's meeting, she handed fifteen pounds odd to the lady-treasurer as amount raised through the collection boxes. This was reported at the last general meeting of the Association which decided on sending a deputation to demand a full statement affecting all moneys collected for the scheme.
Thus far my information goes; but I have since learnt that Mrs. Hayford informed the ladies and gentlemen whom she has congregated under her wings for the purposes of her new move that she had sixty-five pounds in hand which she had banked.
The interesting question naturally arises, To whom does this amount belong? To Mrs. Hayford, the new body, or the U.N.I.A., the members of which laboured to create this fund?
These are questions the public have a right to ask, hence this article, which I trust will elicit a satisfactory reply from Mrs. Hayford, before she leaves for America, whither she is bound on a mission connected with this self-same scheme.
Printed in SLWN, 12 June 1920.
[1] Richard James Wilkinson (1867–1941) became governor of Sierra Leone in 1916 and retired in 1922 (BDBCG).
Figure 14. An ad in The Weekly News for the classes Kathleen and her aunt taught at the YWCA.
Figure 15. The frontpiece of the monograph on Sierra Leone Country Cloths which Kathleen's brother, Charles, prepared for the British Empire Exhibition. 1924/25. This copy is from a book he autographed (it has since been donated to the Yale University Library) sometime after 1954, the year he received the O.B.E. award. He obtained the M.D. degree in 1925, a year after the monograph was published. These events explain the hand-written additions!
Figure 16. A postcard of the Sierra Leone Village Exhibit at the British Empire Exhibition, Wembley. 1924-25. M C F Easmon prepared a monograph on Sierra Leone Country Cloths for the event. He must have visited the exhibition in 1925 when he was in London to take the London University M.D. Examination (the degree was then only awarded by examination, not based on a submitted thesis!). Shipping records show him returning to Freetown on July 25, 1925. Interestingly, the manifest for the return voyage to Freetown had three other passengers who had the same London address, viz. Mrs Easmon (presumably, his wife, Enid Winifred), Mrs. A. K. Easmon (his mother, Annette Kathleen), and a Miss S. I. Campbell(unknown to us). (All four of them were in 1st Class cabins!)
FIGURE 17. A rather sensationalized New York Times report of the arrival of Kathleen and her Aunt in New York City.(August 18, 1920)
Figure 18a. An announcement of one of their presentations in New York City. This was just a few weeks before Kathleen's wedding.
Figure 18b. Their stop in Atlanta was advertised in the city's most important newspaper. It is revealing that the paper refers to Kathleen, then a twenty-nine year old woman as "a native African girl"!
FIGURE 19. The Tuskegee Institute portrait of Kathleen. The mounting board with the imprint of the Photography Department of the Institute is not shown here. The robe appears to have been made from Kente cloth, very likely from her aunt Adelaide's collection.
Figure 20. Here are two other photographs of Kathleen – in the same outfit, but different poses:
The Woodard Studio in Chicago was very famous for its portraits of VIPs, so Kathleen and husband must have attracted a lot of favorable attention. It is not clear why the mounting of the photo on the left has a New York City (Harlem) address. Was that where they lived after they got married? The left photo was probably meant to be given out to friends. There is a photograph of her husband (below) in what looks like traditional warrior attire from his part of Africa. He probably used it in their pageants. It is endorsed, just as Kathleen's. Unfortunately, the last digit of the year in his endorsement is missing, but we can guess that the year was either 1921 or 1922, since they were in England by December 1923.
When once Kathleen became exposed to African fashion, she embraced it …proudly, it seems.
Figure 20.1. A photograph of Kamba Simango, Kathleen's husband, in warrior attire (genuine?), probably for the pageants Kathleen and her aunt staged.
Figure 21. This photograph is of a scene in the pageant they staged on their fund-raising tour. It appeared in the Norwalk Hour newspaper account of the wedding. Her aunt, Adelaide Casely Hayford is in the center. She was married to the Gold Coast lawyer and political activist, J. E. Casely Hayford., and she lived there for several years. She must have acquired an extensive collection of Kente cloths which seem to be the theme of their outfits in this photo.
