THE FIRST BLACK TEACHER IN LEEDS
Born Agnes Cole in the Gambia, her father, Melville, was a vicar from Sierra Leone, and her mother, Louise Brown, was a teacher.
When Agnes became a teenager, she was sent to Sierra Leone for her education. There, she lived with an aunt, whilst going to Freetown Secondary School for Girls.
Once she had graduated from there, Agnes trained to be a primary school teacher.
It was in Freetown that Agnes married Joseph Labor, a clerk at the city council. He would eventually become Town Clerk. The couple were to have three sons, Sebastian, Philemon and Victor.
Agnes was then given permission to travel to the UK, to get a British teaching qualification. She went to study at the Yorkshire Training College of Housecraft, later known as Ilkley College and now part of the Leeds Beckett University.
She lived in digs in Leeds.
Agnes noted that for many months, she did not see another black face in Leeds. One day, she was waiting for a bus back to her hostel when Agnes saw another bus going in the opposite direction with a black face on it.
Agnes ran across the crowded road and managed to get on the second bus. She introduced herself to a Nigerian lady – and the two became lifelong friends.
Agnes gained her teaching qualification in 1956 and became a Home Economics teacher. When she got a job at Bewerley Street First School in Beeston, she became the very first black teacher in the city of Leeds.
One year later, Agnes got a job working for the Leeds Education Authority as a peripatetic Home Economics teacher, travelling around schools in the city.
Agnes returned to Sierra Leone in 1959, to be appointed Headteacher of the Roosevelt Preparatory School in Freetown.
In 1963, she returned to the UK, being appointed as a food and nutrition teacher at East Ham Grammar School for Girls in London.
Agnes kept moving back and forth. In 1970, she was appointed lecturer in Home Economics at a teachers’ college in Freetown and returned ‘home’.
Agnes believed so much in education that she kept studying herself. She got a diploma in Educational Administration from Reading University, followed by an MA in Education from the University of Maryland.
In 1978, Agnes was elected to Sierra Leone’s legislative assembly, the first female member of parliament from the west of the country. She worked tirelessly for equal rights for women.
Four years later, she achieved ministerial office, being made Minister of Food Affairs.
Agnes retired in 1985 and took up voluntary work.
In 1990, she was made a member of the Order of the Rokel, for promoting African excellence in the field of public services.
She died at home.
RIP – Really International Pedagogue
