Edna Elliott-Horton | |
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Born | Edna Elliott 13 September 1904 Freetown, British Sierra Leone |
Died | 26 March 1994 Freetown, Sierra Leone | (aged 89)
Occupation | Political activist |
Nationality | British Subject, Sierra Leonean |
Education | University of Cambridge, Boston College |
Edna Elliott-Horton (13 September 1904 – 26 March 1994) was the second West African woman from a British colony to receive a university degree after the Nigerian physician Agnes Yewande Savage, who received a medical degree from the University of Edinburgh in 1929.[1] A Sierra Leonean, Elliott-Horton became the first West African woman to complete a BA degree in the liberal arts, after graduating from Howard University in 1932,[2] where Dr. Edward Mayfield Boyle, her maternal uncle, had graduated as a medical doctor. Elliott-Horton was a political activist who challenged the colonial authorities in Sierra Leone through her participation in the West African Youth League which was formally established in her living-room.