Research notes on Dr. Bankole-Bright (1883-1958): his life to 1939

This is a revisionist attempt to put into per-spective the career of one of the foremost Sierra Leonean politicians in the colo-nial era – Dr. Herbert Christian Bankole-Bright. Many believed that he was a devious character, that he was an inflexible opponent of the then protectorate people, and more recently, an informant was very definite in asserting that he was the man most responsible for the present political insignificance of the Creoles. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how far these ‘popular’ ideas about him relate to the real man. A more ambitious aim is to try and re-interpret certain aspects of Sierra Leone history in order to correct some of the myths. Attempted is to show that the Creoles, the colony politicians, never had an opportunity or the privilege of exercising political power. Notes.