Adelaide Casely-Hayford

Adelaide Smith was born on June 2, 1868, in Freetown to an elite Creole family and educated in England and Germany. In 1903, she married eminent Gold Coast barrister and nationalist J.E. Casely-Hayford.

Passionate about female vocational empowerment and cultural pride, she travelled to the United States in 1920 to study Black industrial schools, lecturing in African dress to promote racial dignity. In 1923, she opened the Girls' Vocational and Technical Training School in Freetown. Her short story 'Mista Courifer' was one of the earliest West African literary works published in the United States.