Lynda R Day
Biographic Data
| ID | 1317529 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lynda R Day |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lynda R |
| FAMILY NAME | Day |
| SIGNATURE | DAY L R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Brooklyn College |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 8 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Yoko of Senehun, 1878–1884
Madam Yoko of Senehun wielded the greatest authority ever held by a woman in Sierra Leone from 1878 until her death in 1906. Born circa 1845 in the town of Taiama, Yoko exercised tremendous influence in the western Mende region and titles such as “Paramount Chief,” “Principal Lady,” and even “Queen” have been variously used to describe her position in the political structure of the time. Though her legitimacy to hold these titles has been rightfu…
African Women Traditional Chiefs and Rulers
African Women Traditional Chiefs and Rulers
Women Chiefs and Post War Reconstruction in Sierra Leone
This paper examines the role of women chiefs in post war reconstruction in Sierra Leone, particularly the connection between women chiefs with the movement for women’s equality and economic empowerment. Contrary to scholarship which views culturally based traditional structures, including chieftaincy, as counterproductive to progressive change, I argue that traditional women chiefs have contributed to the movement for gender justice and gender eq…
Gender and Power in Sierra Leone: Women Chiefs of the Last Two Centuries
Women Leaders and the Mediation of Colonial Rule
E arly in my research, perched on one of the hard-bottomed wooden chairs, high up in the Kennedy Building at Fourah Bay College, and carefully turning the yellowed pages of dusty nineteenth-century letter books in the national Sierra Leone Archives, I noticed the name of an influential Mende chief coming up again and again in the neat handwriting of the government interpreter Thomas G. Lawson. In his letters, Lawson reached out to her over and ov…
Women Chiefs in Building the Independent State
W e drove up the road to the large compound on the other side of Blama’s town center in Attorney David Quee’s old blue Mercedes. Quee, a well-known Mende-speaking lawyer based in Freetown, had been assisting me by introducing me to people and helping me make contacts for my research. He had told me that we would be meeting the paramount chief of Small Bo Chiefdom, Madam Mamawa Benya (1935–96), a dynamic woman chief who might be interested in my w…
Women of Authority before the Colonial Era
When I was working on my master’s thesis on Afro-British integration on the Sherbro coast, I started to regularly see references to queens and other titled women of authority in the literature on early Sierra Leone. I was surprised because the general treatments of women in Africa I had read always talked about how oppressed African women were. So where did these so called queens come from? This was not ancient Egypt or the Nile Valley where I mi…
Mamatoma, “The Chief’s Namesake”: Language, Gender, and Age as Categories of Belonging in Sierra Leone
For African Americans, notions of identity and belonging have continually evolved across generations. Whether conceived of as African, colored, Negro, Afro-American, person of color or African American, the parameters of “blackness” have shifted mightily according to historical time period, cultural constructs, and geographical location. Perceptions of identity and belonging may also shift and evolve within the life of an individual, for example …
Bottom Power: Theorizing Feminism and the Women's Movement in Sierra Leone (1981-2007)
This paper examines the theory and praxis of women's political activism in contemporary Sierra Leone. In spite of the steady upswing in the number of women elected or appointed to positions of political authority, the growing influence of women in politics runs into male resistance which privately and derisively refers to women's newly held positions of authority and public clout as "bottom power." This essay proposes that male pushback results f…
Nyarroh of Bandasuma, 1885–1914: A Re-Interpretation of Female Chieftaincy in Sierra Leone
This study examines Nyarroh, a woman chief situated at the cusp of colonial penetration in what is today southern Sierra Leone. Nyarroh ruled a large, strategically located town and its surrounding villages from about 1880 to 1914. The documents which outline her public life have not previously been explored, yet they reveal the flexibility of gendered notions of political power and leadership in the region. Her life story allows us to look backw…
The Underneath of Things: Violence, History, and the Everyday in Sierra Leone
Mariane C. Ferme, The Underneath of Things: violence, history and the everyday in Sierra Leone.Berkeley CA: University of California Press. 2001, 228 pp., £40.00 (US24.00), ISBN 0 520 22543 0 paperback - Volume 72 Issue 2
Long Live the Queen: The Yaa Asantewaa Centenary and the Politics of History
At a meeting of Asante chiefs in Kumasi on March 28, 1900, the British governor demanded the right to sit on the Golden Stool, symbol of Asante unity. Yaa Asantewaa, the female ruler of Ejisu, rose to exhort the assembled chiefs to resist this affront and went on to lead a six month war of
Long Live the Queen! The Yaa Asantewaa Centenary and the Politics of History
GHANA STUDIES / Volume 3 ISSN 1536-5514 / E-ISSN 2333-7168© 2000 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System 153 LONG LIVE THE QUEEN! THE YAA ASANTEWAA CENTENARY AND THE POLITICS OF HISTORY LYNDA R. DAY Introduction At a meeting of Asante chiefs in Kumasi on March 28, 1900, the British governor demanded the right to sit on the Golden Stool, symbol of Asante unity. Yaa Asantewaa, the female ruler of Ejisu, rose to exhort the asse…
The Evolution of Female Chiefship during the Late Nineteenth-Century Wars of the Mende
The primary and secondary sources for the history of the Mende and Sherbro people of Sierra Leone's southern province contain frequent references to influential women in political positions. For at least one hundred years, women have filled approximately 10 percent of the 113 or so paramount chief positions in this region. Though one scholarly perspective proposes that female chiefship is a product of colonial rule, another look at the region's h…
Bottom Power: Theorizing Feminism and the Women's Movement in Sierra Leone (1981-2007)
This paper examines the theory and praxis of women's political activism in contemporary Sierra Leone. In spite of the steady upswing in the number of women elected or appointed to positions of political authority, the growing influence of women in politics runs into male resistance which privately and derisively refers to women's newly held positions of authority and public clout as "bottom power." This essay proposes that male pushback results f…
Long Live the Queen! The Yaa Asantewaa Centenary and the Politics of History
GHANA STUDIES / Volume 3 ISSN 1536-5514 / E-ISSN 2333-7168© 2000 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System 153 LONG LIVE THE QUEEN! THE YAA ASANTEWAA CENTENARY AND THE POLITICS OF HISTORY LYNDA R. DAY Introduction At a meeting of Asante chiefs in Kumasi on March 28, 1900, the British governor demanded the right to sit on the Golden Stool, symbol of Asante unity. Yaa Asantewaa, the female ruler of Ejisu, rose to exhort the asse…
The Evolution of Female Chiefship during the Late Nineteenth-Century Wars of the Mende
The primary and secondary sources for the history of the Mende and Sherbro people of Sierra Leone's southern province contain frequent references to influential women in political positions. For at least one hundred years, women have filled approximately 10 percent of the 113 or so paramount chief positions in this region. Though one scholarly perspective proposes that female chiefship is a product of colonial rule, another look at the region's h…
Nyarroh of Bandasuma, 1885–1914: A Re-Interpretation of Female Chieftaincy in Sierra Leone
This study examines Nyarroh, a woman chief situated at the cusp of colonial penetration in what is today southern Sierra Leone. Nyarroh ruled a large, strategically located town and its surrounding villages from about 1880 to 1914. The documents which outline her public life have not previously been explored, yet they reveal the flexibility of gendered notions of political power and leadership in the region. Her life story allows us to look backw…
The Evolution of Female Chiefship during the Late Nineteenth-Century Wars of the Mende
The primary and secondary sources for the history of the Mende and Sherbro people of Sierra Leone's southern province contain frequent references to influential women in political positions. For at least one hundred years, women have filled approximately 10 percent of the 113 or so paramount chief positions in this region. Though one scholarly perspective proposes that female chiefship is a product of colonial rule, another look at the region's h…
Long Live the Queen: The Yaa Asantewaa Centenary and the Politics of History
At a meeting of Asante chiefs in Kumasi on March 28, 1900, the British governor demanded the right to sit on the Golden Stool, symbol of Asante unity. Yaa Asantewaa, the female ruler of Ejisu, rose to exhort the assembled chiefs to resist this affront and went on to lead a six month war of
Long Live the Queen! The Yaa Asantewaa Centenary and the Politics of History
GHANA STUDIES / Volume 3 ISSN 1536-5514 / E-ISSN 2333-7168© 2000 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System 153 LONG LIVE THE QUEEN! THE YAA ASANTEWAA CENTENARY AND THE POLITICS OF HISTORY LYNDA R. DAY Introduction At a meeting of Asante chiefs in Kumasi on March 28, 1900, the British governor demanded the right to sit on the Golden Stool, symbol of Asante unity. Yaa Asantewaa, the female ruler of Ejisu, rose to exhort the asse…
The Underneath of Things: Violence, History, and the Everyday in Sierra Leone
Mariane C. Ferme, The Underneath of Things: violence, history and the everyday in Sierra Leone.Berkeley CA: University of California Press. 2001, 228 pp., £40.00 (US24.00), ISBN 0 520 22543 0 paperback - Volume 72 Issue 2
Nyarroh of Bandasuma, 1885–1914: A Re-Interpretation of Female Chieftaincy in Sierra Leone
This study examines Nyarroh, a woman chief situated at the cusp of colonial penetration in what is today southern Sierra Leone. Nyarroh ruled a large, strategically located town and its surrounding villages from about 1880 to 1914. The documents which outline her public life have not previously been explored, yet they reveal the flexibility of gendered notions of political power and leadership in the region. Her life story allows us to look backw…
Bottom Power: Theorizing Feminism and the Women's Movement in Sierra Leone (1981-2007)
This paper examines the theory and praxis of women's political activism in contemporary Sierra Leone. In spite of the steady upswing in the number of women elected or appointed to positions of political authority, the growing influence of women in politics runs into male resistance which privately and derisively refers to women's newly held positions of authority and public clout as "bottom power." This essay proposes that male pushback results f…
Mamatoma, “The Chief’s Namesake”: Language, Gender, and Age as Categories of Belonging in Sierra Leone
For African Americans, notions of identity and belonging have continually evolved across generations. Whether conceived of as African, colored, Negro, Afro-American, person of color or African American, the parameters of “blackness” have shifted mightily according to historical time period, cultural constructs, and geographical location. Perceptions of identity and belonging may also shift and evolve within the life of an individual, for example …
Gender and Power in Sierra Leone: Women Chiefs of the Last Two Centuries
Women Leaders and the Mediation of Colonial Rule
E arly in my research, perched on one of the hard-bottomed wooden chairs, high up in the Kennedy Building at Fourah Bay College, and carefully turning the yellowed pages of dusty nineteenth-century letter books in the national Sierra Leone Archives, I noticed the name of an influential Mende chief coming up again and again in the neat handwriting of the government interpreter Thomas G. Lawson. In his letters, Lawson reached out to her over and ov…
Women Chiefs in Building the Independent State
W e drove up the road to the large compound on the other side of Blama’s town center in Attorney David Quee’s old blue Mercedes. Quee, a well-known Mende-speaking lawyer based in Freetown, had been assisting me by introducing me to people and helping me make contacts for my research. He had told me that we would be meeting the paramount chief of Small Bo Chiefdom, Madam Mamawa Benya (1935–96), a dynamic woman chief who might be interested in my w…
Women of Authority before the Colonial Era
When I was working on my master’s thesis on Afro-British integration on the Sherbro coast, I started to regularly see references to queens and other titled women of authority in the literature on early Sierra Leone. I was surprised because the general treatments of women in Africa I had read always talked about how oppressed African women were. So where did these so called queens come from? This was not ancient Egypt or the Nile Valley where I mi…
Women Chiefs and Post War Reconstruction in Sierra Leone
This paper examines the role of women chiefs in post war reconstruction in Sierra Leone, particularly the connection between women chiefs with the movement for women’s equality and economic empowerment. Contrary to scholarship which views culturally based traditional structures, including chieftaincy, as counterproductive to progressive change, I argue that traditional women chiefs have contributed to the movement for gender justice and gender eq…
African Women Traditional Chiefs and Rulers
African Women Traditional Chiefs and Rulers
Yoko of Senehun, 1878–1884
Madam Yoko of Senehun wielded the greatest authority ever held by a woman in Sierra Leone from 1878 until her death in 1906. Born circa 1845 in the town of Taiama, Yoko exercised tremendous influence in the western Mende region and titles such as “Paramount Chief,” “Principal Lady,” and even “Queen” have been variously used to describe her position in the political structure of the time. Though her legitimacy to hold these titles has been rightfu…
African history and culture studies (11 works) · Political science (11 works) · Sociology (10 works) · History (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Gender Studies (8 works) · Sierra leone (8 works) · Ethnology (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · Ancient history (6 works)