page_title: Fatima Massaquoi
section_title: Return to Liberia
hierarchical_section_title: Fatima Massaquoi / Return to Liberia
caption_attribution_description: University of Liberia
context_page_description: Fatima Massaquoi-Fahnbulleh was an educator in Liberia, West Africa. After completing her education in the United States, she returned to Liberia in 1946, where she contributed much to the cultural and social life of the country.
  Born into a family of African royalty, Massaquoi grew up in the care of an aunt in Njagbacca, in the Garwula District of Grand Cape Mount County of southern Liberia. After seven years, she returned to the northwestern part of the country in Montserrado County, where she began her schooling. In 1922 she accompanied her father, a diplomat, to Hamburg, Germany, where she completed her school education and started a course in medicine at the University of Hamburg. In 1937 she moved to the United States for further education, studying sociology and anthropology at Lane College, Fisk University and Boston University. While in the US, she collaborated on a dictionary of the Vai language and wrote her autobiography, though a legal battle ensued over the rights to her story.
context_section_description: Upon the invitation of President William Tubman, Massaquoi returned to Liberia on 13 October 1946 to help him establish a university in Monrovia. She became Professor of French and Science in March 1947 at Liberia College, later the University of Liberia (UL). In 1956, she became director, then dean (1960), of the Liberal Arts College and was a co-founder of the Society of Liberian Authors. In 1962 Massaquoi founded and directed a programme for African Studies, which would evolve into the Institute of African Studies at UL.
  During her term at the university, Massaquoi succeeded in overcoming the requirement that students should adopt foreign names rather than keeping those of their indigenous families. In connection with this, when she married Ernest Freeman on 26 July 1948, Massaquoi adopted his tribal name Fahnbulleh, calling herself Fatima Massaquoi-Fahnbulleh. Her husband also changed his own name back to Fahnbulleh. To further contribute to the cultural and social development of Liberia, she organized a seminar through the African Studies Program in 1962 to promote the standardization of the Vai script.
  With a view to enhancing educational developments in Liberia, in late 1963 and early 1964, Massaquoi spent six months in the United States on an education scholarship, visiting fine arts colleges and university departments of anthropology and sociology, mainly in the east and mid-west. In 1968, while living in Monrovia, Liberia, with her daughter Vivian Seton and her grandchildren, Massaquoi suffered a stroke. This pressed Seton into having the 700 pages of her mother's unpublished autobiography microfilmed, calling on the assistance of colleagues at the University of Liberia. Massaquoi retired from the university in the summer of 1972, receiving an honorary Doctor of Humanities degree. She was also decorated as a Grand Commander of the Grand Star of Africa by the president of Liberia.
  Fatima Massaquoi-Fahnbulleh died in Monrovia on 26 November 1978. Posthumously, her microfilmed manuscripts were discovered by German researcher Konrad Tuchscherer, while conducting other research. Arthur Abraham, a historian at Virginia State University, Massaquoi's daughter, Vivian Seton, and Tuchscherer, edited the accounts of her early experiences in Germany and the United States. The book, The Autobiography of an African Princess, was published in 2013 and was well received by critics. Tamba M’bayo of West Virginia University, stated: "The strengths of this autobiography could be gauged at two or more different levels. First, its down-to-heart and honest account of even the most disturbing personal experiences…Second the larger canvas of Sierra Leonean and Liberian cultural and ethno-linguistic history in which Fatima’s story is told. Rich in content and well orchestrated…".
caption: University of Liberia (2009)
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