My mother, Agnes Labor, who has died aged 96, was a Sierra Leonean educationist and politician, and the first black teacher in Leeds, where she qualified and took her first teaching post in 1956.
She was born in the Gambia, to the Rev Melville Cole, a Sierra Leonean vicar, and Louisa Brown, a Gambian teacher. In her early teens, Agnes was sent to Sierra Leone to live with an aunt. After leaving the Freetown secondary school for girls she became a primary school teacher. In 1953 she received a UK scholarship and travelled to Leeds to study at the Yorkshire Training College of Housecraft (which later became part of Leeds Polytechnic, subsequently Leeds Beckett University).
She recalled that she never saw a black or brown face in Leeds until several months after her arrival. One afternoon she was waiting for the bus to return to her hostel when she spotted a black woman on a bus travelling in the opposite direction. She ran across the road and in the nick of time managed to get on the bus. The black woman was a student nurse from Nigeria and the two women became lifelong friends.
In 1956 Agnes gained a certificate in education and became a home economics teacher with the Leeds education authority, and the first black teacher in the city. Her first teaching post was at the Bewerley Street First school in Beeston. A year later she got a job as a peripatetic teacher of home economics at various schools in Leeds.
Agnes returned to Sierra Leone in 1959 and was appointed headteacher of the Roosevelt preparatory school in Freetown. She returned to the UK in 1963 and taught food and nutrition at East Ham grammar school for girls. The following year, she joined Milton Margai Teachers’ College in Freetown as a lecturer in home economics. In 1970, she gained a diploma in educational administration from Reading University and two years later was awarded a master of education degree from the University of Maryland in the US.
In 1978 Agnes was appointed to parliament, becoming the first woman representing the Western Area of Sierra Leone to take a seat in the country’s legislative assembly. In 1982 she was made minister of state with responsibility for food affairs, the first female politician from the Western Area to serve as a government minister.
Agnes retired in 1985 and undertook voluntary work aimed at promoting the welfare of women and children in Sierra Leone. In 1990 she was made a member of the Order of the Rokel for services to Sierra Leone.
In 1945 Agnes married Joseph Labor, later town clerk of the Freetown city council. He died in 1999.
She is survived by her sons, Sebastian, Philemon and me, six grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.
