Davidson Carrol

Wilfred Davidson Carrol (born December 13, 1900 - October 30, 1941 ) was a Gambian lawyer and politician.

Life

origin

Carrol was the son of Henry Richmond Carrol, a wealthy Aku dealer in Bathurst (now Banjul) whose business declined with the opening of a provisions and hardware store in 1883. He traded peanuts and wood upstream until his death in April 1913. Carrol's mother, Anne Maria Forster, was the daughter of Samuel John Forster (1841-1906), another well-known Aku.

Education and study

After elementary school in Bathurst and Freetown , Carrol went to Methodist Boys High School . To law school , he went in 1920 to Oxford ( UK ). During his studies in England in 1924 he was elected the first President of the newly founded West African Students' Union (WASU). He led WASU by leaps and bounds and put the nascent association, which integrated influential West African leaders, including Nkrumah and Azikwe , on a solid footing. His contact with student politics inspired him to return to The Gambia to practice and face the leadership challenge his homeland so badly needed at the time.

Activity as a lawyer

In 1925 he was appointed as a barrister to the English Bar Association, in the same year he returned to Gambia and opened his law firm "Carrol and Company" in Bathurst as a barrister and solicitor . The law firm was the most successful domestic legal firm, representing a wide range of Gambians regardless of religion or origin. He won the hearts of the people in the Protectorate by offering free legal advice to those in need who were in conflict with the colonial authorities. He was the first attorney to travel upstream to defend clients in provincial courts run by Traveling Commissioners.

Political activity

In October 1930, the Gambia Representative Committee was revived by John Andrew N'Jai-Gomez to support more conservative elements of Gambian society against Edward Francis Small . Carrol was elected to the Bathurst Urban District Council (BUDC) in January 1931 for the constituency of Joloff Town North (according to another source Jollof Town South) , of which he was a member until his defeat in the 1934 elections.

In 1931 he single-handedly drafted the Gambian penal code and worked with Sir Samuel John Forster (1873-1940) to ensure that it was accepted by the local population, who had reservations about its application. The majority of the Bathurster elite had reservations about the new penal code, fearing that it would "introduce new offenses and new penalties and sweep away existing legal guarantees". Carrol played a key role in implementing the Criminal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure against fierce opposition from the Rate Payers' Association (BRPA). Hence, it has been fiercely opposed, especially by EF Small's BRPA, as yet another case of popular legal tyranny. In his newspaper, Small lamented the fact that while Nigerian, Sierra Leonean African MPs were vehemently opposed to codification, Carrol and Forster remained silent on the matter when it was introduced by Governor Richards in 1932 , and not a finger against the passage of the bill stirred in 1934. According to historian Hassoum Ceesay , Carrol was an accomplished lawyer whose appearances in court were a feast for the eyes; his rich Oxford accent and analytical power encouraged his colleagues to respect and admire him. His accomplishments include combining a rewarding legal career with a vibrant political life that began in 1931 when he won the Jollof Town South seat on the BUDC. In the spring of 1934, Carrol and others founded The Gambia Echo newspaper to compete with The Gambia Outlook , published by Small.

Carrol was the preferred candidate for the BUDC when it was given the right to elect one of its members to the Legislative Council. He was elected in March 1933 (effective May) and re-elected in May 1938 (when he was no longer a member of the council). The second time, thanks to the support of the official member, he was elected with seven votes to the four votes of his old rival Small.

In 1933, Carrol sought re-election to the BUDC but was beaten by Small's RP A candidates after he was accused of bribing voters. In 1934 he was appointed to the Legislative Council, where he met Sir Samuel Forster and Sheikh Omar Fye . Carrol has shown his zeal as a staunch defender of his people's rights and a clear debater. He threw himself wholeheartedly into the affairs of the council and soon became an advocate of better working conditions for civil servants and the rural masses. Speaking to the council in 1937, he lamented the poor price paid by trading firms for products such as ground nuts and beeswax, and also opposed the introduction of income tax in 1940 to raise money for the British war effort. Instead, he called on the government to pay allowances to the children of civil servants, as was the case in Nigeria and Ghana , to ease the burden of reliance on government employees. In 1940 he accused the colonial government of neglecting prisoners and proposed increasing the ration and introducing library facilities for prisoners.

further activities

Carrol's other public activities included serving as assistant coroner, prosecutor, member of the education committee, and serving on the commission.

Early death

He suffered from poor health from about 1938, and died in late October 1941. When Wilfred Davidson Carrol died at the young age of 41, he was honored by all parts of the Bathurst parish, including Christians, Muslims, Europeans and Governor Southorn . This was a gauge of what Carrol meant to the broad spectrum of Gambian society through his legal practice, political activism and social status. Like his Legislative Council colleague and fellow lawyer Sir Sam Forster, Carroll was one of the most educated Gambians of his time and came from a wealthy Bathurst Aku family who had carved a niche for themselves in the colony's business circles for decades prior to 1900. Many of these Aku families wanted their children to have the best education and worked hard to save so their children could go to the best educational institutions in the world. It is thanks to these Aku families that the Gambia produced a small pool of highly gifted and talented professionals in the early 20th century, when few Africans had the opportunity to see the inside of a classroom.

Awards and honors

In his honor, in the late 1990s, Banjul 's Picton Street was renamed [West] Davidson Carrol Street.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} Hassoum Ceesay : Patriots: profiles of eminent Gambians . Leicester 2015, ISBN 978-0-9574073-6-7 , pp.  127-134 .
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} David Perfect: Historical dictionary of the Gambia . 5th edition. Lanham, Maryland, ISBN 978-1-4422-6522-6 , pp. 31-32 .
3. ↑ Carrol, Wilfred Davidson. In: oxfordaasc.com. Oxford African American Studies Center, accessed July 28, 2020 .  
4. ↑ Quickly Amend Gambian Criminal Law, So External Alleged Offenders Will Not Destabilize Gambia Part II. In: standard.gm. 2020, accessed July 28, 2020 (American English).  
5. ↑ The Gambia - Daum. (PDF) p. 300 , accessed on July 29, 2020 (English).