Melvin Barrolle

SYLFF Final Report

In the summer of 2012, I traveled to Liberia, West Africa to gather more backgroundinformation on the subject of my dissertation, Thomas Narven Lewis. The life and work of Thomas
Narven Lewis (also referred to as Thomas Flo Darvin Lewis and Thomas Gbianvoodeh Lewis) wasenigmatic. No official biographies or academic studies have been written on him.1 Yet, despite thelimited primary source material on the man and his life, numerous historians have found it difficult
to resist referencing his story. It was certainly a compelling biography. Lewis was born in Liberia
around 18702 and died in 19353. During the course of his life he traveled extensively, received a firstrate education at some of the most prestigious schools in the United States and invented the Bassa
Vah script, a writing system based on the language of the Bassa peoples of Liberia.
While consensus on what inspired Lewis to create the Bassa Vah script has yet to beachieved, Lewis’ story has nonetheless captured the imagination of cultural historians,
anthropologists and linguists alike with his fabled travels to Brazil and the West Indies at the turn of
the twentieth century. Allegedly, Lewis serendipitously encountered descendants of the Bassa
peoples (whose ancestors were captured and taken to that region for forced labor) in the region whohad managed to preserve the script in its rudimentary form. Inspired by this, Lewis began working
on rendering the script as a syllabary with the assistance of a printing press.41To date, there is only one academic biography on Thomas Lewis which was authored by Augusta H. Clawson, thedaughter of his “sponsor” and friend Frank Clawson. See Clawson, Thomas Narven Lewis: An African Bushman, AScholar, A Doctor and a Man. This biography is unpublished as are the two biographies written by Liberian scholars
Joseph Gbadyu (1974) and Dr. Abba Karnga (2002).
2Thomas Lewis admitted to the Syracuse University Post-Herald that his birthdate and consequently his age wasunknown to him. H estimated that he was “between 27 and 28” years of age in 1907. He was listed on the ship
manifest of the Liberia, a German steamer, which carried him to the United States as a twenty-year old male in1892. As such, the approximate birth year I concluded must be 1870, a year that is cited in one of his unpublishedbiographies.
3This information was gleaned from his youngest daughter, Utopia, during our interview.
4
Based on archival records, this was done during his time at Syracuse University. Fascinatingly, he utilized theprinting press at a local shop he was interning that was owned and managed by L. Frank Baum, the author of The
Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Melvin Barrolle

SYLFF Final Report

Utilizing the available archival sources here in the United States, I managed to piece together
a relatively full composite of Dr. Lewis’ life in America. However, the archival trail proved fruitlesswhenever I attempted to explore life in Liberia for Dr. Lewis before and after his visit to the UnitedStates. I recognized early on that there was only one way to gather information about his life inLiberia—that was to travel to the country personally and interview surviving family members,friends and institutions familiar with and/or affiliated with him.
I gained access to critical information concerning Dr. Lewis and the Bassa Vah script
through the oral interviews I conducted. Beginning with the former, one of the most frustrating
aspects of my archival research in the United States was my inability to locate a formal obituary. As aconsequence, I was unable to speak with any confidence on the exact dates of his birth and death.
Fortunately, one of the people I interviewed was Utopia Lewis-Greenfield Johnson, the youngest
daughter of Dr. Thomas Flo Darvin Lewis.5Mrs. Lewis confirmed for me that her father, Dr. Lewis,
died through a malicious act of food poisoning perpetrated by his younger brother (Paul) and his
first wife, Yeotoe. It appears to have been a conspiracy between his wife, brother, and members of
the settler government who increasingly viewed him as a threat to their national project. In the 1920s
Liberia was pressured by the Western powers to demonstrate authority over the entire country. If aninstance were to arise where Great Britain, France or Germany felt that authority over a particularterritory in Liberia was rhetorical, they proceeded to annex the territory and append it to theirrespective colonies. The Liberian government responded by launching a nationalization campaignthat forced the indigenous peoples to relinquish land for mining and other commercial interests, pay
a hut tax, and pledge their allegiance to the Liberian polity. Dr. Lewis, witnessing the gruesome
torture techniques being employed against the Bassa peoples (and other indigenous communities) to5

Utopia is now 82 years old. It was truly a chance encounter as she usually resides in another part of the country
but only traveled to Grand Bassa to assist in the construction of a new home.

Melvin Barrolle

SYLFF Final Reportforce them to pay taxes utilized his legal background to defend the community from the marauders.
He paid for his intervention with his life as his wife confessed she was paid off by the Liberian
government to kill him.6Some of the most fascinating information I received through the oral testimonies howeverconcerned the Bassa Vah script itself. It was generally agreed upon by the interviewees that theBassa Vah script existed long before Thomas Narven Lewis was born. Oral history suggests it
emerged in the sixteenth or seventeenth century as a tool for resistance against European andAfrican slave raiders. Members of the Bassa secret societies would chew leaves that left particularindentations and toss them in areas known for considerable slave raiding activity. This method ofcommunication was widely understood by the Bassa peoples who heeded the warnings and avoided
these identified areas. This creative resistance strategy adds texture to the contemporary literature on
African resistance to the slave trade, which has so far focused on armed combat and the creation ofmaroon spaces.7 This finding also (partly) provides a possible explanation as to why cliometricians
have concluded that the windward coast region was the least affected region in the Trans-Atlantic
Slave Trade.8
Lastly, new vistas of West African history were opened through the oral testimonies. One ofthe subtopics I explored in this work is the construction of “ethnicity/tribe” in West Africa. Cultural
anthropologists such as Terence Ranger have convincingly demonstrated how particular ethnicities

6Mrs. Utopia Lewis Greenfield-Johnson was not the only person to verify this event. Two other interviewees
shared the same story about Dr. Lewis’ ultimate demise. Unfortunately, the bulk of Liberian periodicals publishedduring this period were destroyed in the civil war of 1989 so it was difficult to impossible to find an “official” organ
to corroborate the story.
7See Sylviane A. Diouf. Fighting the Slave Trade: West African Strategies. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press (2003)
8See Adam Jones and Marion Johnson, “Slaves from the Windward Coast,” Journal of African History, 21 (1980):
17-34

Melvin Barrolle

SYLFF Final Reportin West African were not rooted in a deep past, but were in fact recent inventions.9 The sameobservation applies to the Bassa peoples. According to the oral testimonies, the Bassa peoples
resided in Ethiopia until they were forced to flee in the sixteenth century because of the EthiopianAdal War (1529-1559), which signaled the triumph of Muslim forces and the forced migrations ofChristian and animist groups. In the course of the migration, Bassa peoples settled in various
countries such as Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone. As a consequence, despite
the divisions engendered by national borders, Bassa peoples can still communicate with one anotherregardless of national affiliation. This research is exciting and should lead to the academic
devaluation of the arbitrarily constructed borders established during the Berlin Conference that did
not consider the realities of African people themselves.
It is said in Africa that when an elder dies, it is as if a library has burned down. For thisgeneration of scholars, the challenge is to (urgently) create opportunities for Africans to tell theirown narratives, to treat it with the same legitimacy as narratives forged from archival materials.
Many of these stories were passed down through griots and cultural custodians trained to repeat theessentials of the narrative and resist exaggeration. If these elders are not consulted, African history in
the academy will have missed out on a wonderful opportunity to gain insight on the evolutionary
history of African societies. My research findings were much more than I expected. I am forevergrateful to the elders who graciously took time out their schedules to share their wisdom, the faculty
and general members of the Liberian community that supported me in tracking down informationon Dr. Thomas Narven Lewis. His biography has much more depth now that I have been able toadd aspects of his life in Liberia to the narrative around his residency in the United States.

9See Terence O. Ranger. Dance and Society in Eastern Africa. Berkeley, California: University of California Press,
1975. Also see, J.D. Y. Peel. Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana
University Press, 2003 and Sinfree Makoni and Alastair Pennycook. Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages.
Tonawanda, NY: 2007.