26 Facts About Fatima Massaquoi

Fatima Massaquoi-Fahnbulleh was a Liberian writer and academic.

Fatima Massaquoi won an injunction barring others from publishing it, and returned to Liberia in 1946, immediately beginning collaboration to establish a university there, which would become the University of Liberia.

Fatima Massaquoi co-founded the Society of Liberian Authors, helped abolish the practice of usurping African names for Westernized versions, and worked towards standardization of the Vai script.

Fatima Massaquoi was born in Gendema in the Pujehun District of southern Sierra Leone in 1911, the daughter of Momolu Fatima Massaquoi, who in 1922 became Liberia's consul general in Hamburg, Germany, and Massa Balo Sonjo.

Fatima Massaquoi was the great-great-granddaughter of King Siaka of Gendema who ruled over the Gallinas in the 18th century.

Fatima Massaquoi spent her first seven years with her father's sister, Mama Jassa, in Njagbacca in the Garwula District of Grand Cape Mount County.

Fatima Massaquoi later became a highly competent player, though she remained self-conscious about the scarring even as an adult.

Momolu Fatima Massaquoi sought to give his favourite child, and only daughter, the very best education.

Fatima Massaquoi went with him to Hamburg in 1922, where she lived at the consulate at 22 Johnsallee.

Fatima Massaquoi then started to study medicine at the University of Hamburg but broke this off when she left Germany.

Fatima Massaquoi arrived that same year in the United States and experienced the racial segregation and Jim Crow laws of the Southern States.

Fatima Massaquoi first attended Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee, graduating in sociology.

Fatima Massaquoi assisted her professor, Mark Hanna Watkins, in his understanding of the Vai language, cooperating with him in compiling a Vai dictionary.

Fatima Massaquoi agreed to accept a fellowship as a linguistic advisor, after her father died in 1938.

Fatima Massaquoi taught French and German at Fisk and paid her way by giving instruction in African and European folk dancing, as well as teaching the violin, thanks to her own competence on the instrument.

In 1940, Fatima Massaquoi finished writing an autobiographical account of her early life as a tribal child, her life experiences with Europeans and education in Germany and Switzerland, and impressions of America.

Fatima Massaquoi felt that she had been "conspired against" because she was foreign and a presumption that she did not have the strength to fight for her rights.

In 1946 while at Boston University, Fatima Massaquoi completed editing the autobiography.

Fatima Massaquoi became Professor of French and Science in March 1947 at Liberia College, later the University of Liberia.

In 1962 Fatima Massaquoi founded and directed a programme for African Studies, which would evolve into the Institute of African Studies at UL.

Fatima Massaquoi's husband changed his own name back to Fahnbulleh.

In 1968, while living in Monrovia, Liberia, with her daughter Vivian Seton and her grandchildren, Fatima Massaquoi suffered a stroke.

Fatima Massaquoi retired from the university in the summer of 1972, receiving an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree.

Fatima Massaquoi was decorated as a Grand Commander of the Grand Star of Africa by the president of Liberia.

Fatima Massaquoi was bestowed with the Tricentenary Bust of Moliere by the French Government in 1955.

When Fatima Massaquoi died, a tribute was held at the University of Liberia.