John Mensah Sarbah

John Mensah Sarbah was born on June 3, 1864, in Anomabu, Central Region. Educated at the Wesleyan High School in Cape Coast and Queen's College, Taunton, England, he was called to the Bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1887, becoming the first native African from the Gold Coast to practice as a barrister.

In 1897, when the colonial government introduced the Lands Bill to expropriate 'unoccupied' ancestral lands as Crown property, Sarbah co-founded the Aborigines' Rights Protection Society (ARPS). Using formidable legal scholarship in his seminal treatises Fanti Customary Laws (1897) and Fanti National Constitution (1906), he demonstrated that every inch of land in the Gold Coast possessed customary owners, forcing the British government to withdraw the bill. He also co-founded Mfantsipim School.